CAMGraduate jobs
Graduate jobs market
Things are tough right now for new grads — even Cambridge ones. Is it the impact of AI? And how are the Careers Service — and our newest alumni — responding?
A few months after graduating with a First, Finley Brighton (Caius 2022) opened yet another rejection email – and realised he had lost count.
“I think I probably applied for about 200 jobs, mostly in publishing,” he says. “Most people I know are struggling.” Brighton is far from alone.
Scroll any social media feed or talk to friends and family and you’ll find similar stories, often featuring recent graduates from every university across the country: hundreds of applications, silence from recruiters, bruising multistage assessments and wisecracking trolls suggesting grads should have trained as plumbers instead. So what is really going on in the graduate employment market?
Is this a historically bad moment to leave university, or a familiar downturn amplified through AI anxiety and the shiny veneer of social media? And what – realistically – can today’s graduates do to navigate it?
"I think businesses generally are just quite cautious and waiting to see what happens before they commit to the long-term relationship of hiring and training somebody"
Diane Coyle, Bennett Professor of Public Policy, has watched multiple generations graduate into recession and recovery.
She says the current slowdown is serious, but not unprecedented. “The early 80s and early 90s were much worse,” she explains – while recognising that is small succour to those struggling to get onto the job ladder.
“We had really steep recessions in the UK then, and so for those cohorts, that was a very tough time,” she adds. Today’s graduates are instead entering an economy that is not crashing so much as stuck in second gear.
The single percentage point economic growth we’re seeing now is much less than historical averages, she says, and it’s a picture shown globally, too.
“I think businesses generally are just quite cautious and waiting to see what happens before they commit to the longterm relationship of hiring and training somebody.”
I think we’re seeing a very normal jobs market for flat economic conditions
Graham Philpott, Head of Careers at the University Careers Service, is also realistic. “I think we’re seeing a very normal jobs market for flat economic conditions,” he says.
“There’s absolutely nothing unusual about the jobs market at the moment, though there’s an awful lot of bad news about it.”
What is different is the whirl of debate about why things are bad – including the impact of AI and how that could change the workplace. “We know things are going to change,” says Philpott.
“We’re not sure exactly how it’s going to change, and that’s the abnormality at the moment.”
For another recent graduate from St Catharine’s, now working as a fundraising assistant, the shift from degree to job hunt was abrupt, and she soon realised that an entry level job was no longer what she thought it was. “You get the sense that the qualifications needed for an entry level job have increased because of the amount of demand that there is for those roles,” she says.
The biggest challenge was during the early parts of the application process, the point where many employers now implement situational judgment stages.
These are designed to root out large swathes of jobseekers for roles that have hundreds of applicants. “But it means you don’t have your CV being looked at by an actual person,” she says.
“It was particularly demoralising to feel that I wasn’t being able to represent myself.”
I really tried to plan it out, to personalise my applications, a lot of time and effort went into them, but I wasn’t even getting offered interviews
History and politics grad Manisha Riley (King’s 2021) had a similar experience after Cambridge. Following time spent travelling, she targeted public sector and charity roles outside London.
“I really tried to plan it out, tried to personalise my applications,” Riley says. “A lot of time and effort went into those applications, but I wasn’t even getting offered interviews.”
And the hurdles seem to multiply as would-be employers put in place processes to try and tackle a rising number of applicants using AI to apply en masse for jobs.
“Over the period, application processes became more and more demanding,” she recalls. One graduate scheme required a personal statement, a video submission, an online interview and a full-day assessment centre session with a prepared presentation.
Even then, she didn’t get the job. A subsequent application, for a role as a communications assistant, was happily successful.
AI, bots and the new gatekeepers
For Brighton, the silence was its own verdict. “It’s pretty disheartening, because I think I just didn’t hear anything back from most of them,” he says.
When he requested feedback, companies would say they couldn’t provide any because of the high volume of applicants. “So you don’t even really know where you can improve.”
Rigorous testing and assessment centres have long been part of the milkround process, but today, automated scoring, AI-driven screening and online tests are now a routine part of graduate recruitment.
“The way you get jobs has transformed so much for the worse,” says Coyle, “and AI is clearly making it worse still.” In her view, AI isn’t coming for jobs on a large scale yet, but it is reshaping how candidates get them – hence the request for Riley to submit a video.
“I don’t think it’s to test what you actually have to say,” Riley explains. “It’s just to check that you’re not a bot.” International graduates face an additional layer of difficulty. “The UK job market right now is in quite a state of distress,” says Micheal Akintunde.
It’s never been the case that you shape your whole life with decisions that are taken now. I know people do worry that if they don’t get the job they want right now they’ll be doomed for the rest of their lives. But that’s absolutely not the case.
(Wolfson 2023), now development officer at Caius, who completed an MPhil in African Studies in 2024. “The core issue is ‘relevant experience’. Combine that with visa limits and culture shock and the challenge is stark. It has all the ingredients for disaster.”
Postgraduate international students, Akintunde points out, have very little time to secure a role. “Usually for postgrads, you’re just doing nine months, so you really have to focus on how best to position yourself.”
Akintunde credits a short, paid internship at his current organisation for helping him secure a role, and urges others to think more broadly about where to get a job.
“People should start looking beyond the UK. If you’ve got a Cambridge degree, it’s one of the biggest assets in the world.” But for some Cambridge graduates, it’s hard to separate the economics of graduate hiring from the psychological shock of leaving the city itself.
“If I’m honest, I found the whole process really affected my mental health,” says Riley.
“When you’ve worked so hard for your degree, what gets you through it is knowing that it will lead to future success, and it will set you up for life. So when you graduate and realise you’re not using your degree – or even basic skillsets of critical thinking, creative thinking and time management – it’s so demoralising. You start asking yourself what it was all for.”
Coyle has some reassurance for those who don’t immediately walk into the ideal – or any – job.
“It’s never been the case that you shape your whole life with decisions that are taken now,” she explains. “I know people do worry that if they don’t get the job they want right now, they’ll be doomed for the rest of their lives. But that’s absolutely not the case.”
She also points out that economic downturns and jobseeking struggles tend to be cyclical.
“And those cycles tend to be a few years at most,” she explains. “There’s also the longer-term trend of an ageing population, and so a lot of people like me will be retiring in the next decade, and that will mean that demand for younger workers will structurally increase.”
What actually helps
If the system is tough and not about to be transformed overnight, what practical steps can graduates take? Akintunde argues that internships, volunteering and any practical work are crucial, not just for CVs but for interviews themselves.
“There are specific questions that you could only answer if you have experienced it first hand,” he says. “If you’ve not actually put yourself out there, there’s no way you can find the example.” Riley came to a similar conclusion.
“I would say that experience is valued over anything else,” she says.
“But that doesn’t mean a brilliant previous job or the most amazing internship ever. Experience can come in so many different forms.” Volunteering helped her get experience in a job market where hiring was a rarity.
But it’s still important not to turn your undergraduate years into a constant job hunting exercise. “I wouldn’t want to tell people that they need to be forward planning from day one of their degree in order to get a job,” says Riley, “as that’s likely to fundamentally change the student experience for the worse.” Which is why the bottom line, says Philpott, has to be: don’t panic.
“What tends to happen is that people don’t really think through what they’ve got to offer and what to apply for, so they start applying for things that they don’t really understand and wouldn’t be right for.”
The Careers Service helps with narrowing choices, offering online resources, employer contacts and one-to-one advice for both students and alumni. And those ºalumni have a unique role to play, he says, offering internships and genuinely entry level roles or by signing up to mentoring schemes.
Doing that may just help ensure that today’s difficult market is a phase – not a fate- for the next generation of Cambridge grads.
Alumni have a unique part to play: participating in mentoring schemes, offering internships and providing genuinely entry level roles for the next generation of Cambridge grads
Looking for help with your career or to support other alumni and students? Sign up with the Careers Service for networking opportunities and more: careers.cam.ac.uk/careers-support-alumni
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