About Us
Graduate Coach… All the strategies and tools you need for career success.
We decided to start Graduate Coach when a group of students who I was coaching at a Call Centre I was overseeing in 2008 asked me to help them create some CVs. I was appalled to discover that none of them had any real idea of how to create a CV, nor even that the job they were doing could really help them in their future.
The Call Centre hired less than 10% of applicants, a further 50% would be weeded out after two days so the application to success rate was about 1 in 20. These students were all really good at selling on the phone, they had been taught all the essential components of selling e.g. how to open a conversation, develop rapport, different closing techniques etc. Every girl had developed their own unique style and was tremendously impressive.
How sad it was to discover that despite this really hard core success they had very little confidence in themselves and their ability to get a job after graduation. I worked with them all that Summer brainstorming ideas and out of this some 18 months later this site is ready.
What I learnt from them and my subsequent research was;
1.Very few students have any real idea of what organisations are looking for in a potential hire.
2.Nobody is teaching students that getting a real postgraduation job should be a matter of real long term career planning over their entire stay at Uni. There is no chance that just turning up to a few job fairs in the last few months before you graduate is going to get you a job nowadays. You need a meticulously planned CV which shows you really tried to discover what it is what you are suited to and that you have gained some very real experiences that are not just academic ones.
3.Employers are so overwhelmed with responses that any single spelling error or just something that looks like it has been hastily assembled means the reject pile. (Over 30% of applications carry at least one spelling or syntax error)
4. Even 1st class honours graduates from Oxford and Cambridge can't get a job based on their academic achievements alone. If they can't, you certainly can't rely on a 2.1 from an average Uni. You have got to look and feel distinctive, interesting and must interview well.
In essence you have to work as hard at getting a job as you do as getting a degree. After all, once you have your first job, no one will ever ask you what type of degree you got, whereas they will spend ages quizzing you about what you have learnt, both before, during and after Uni.
So we have the first site that we think gives all the strategies and tools you need to succeed. Just remember that Thomas Edison said "Success is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration".
We are here to help you make the most of your 1% inspiration and to give you some real insider knowledge that will help make the 99% perspiration more helpful.
Chris Davies November 2009.
Chris Davies Founder
Chris graduated with an 'ordinary' (that is worse than a third) degree from what was then Woolwich Polytechnic (now the University of Greenwich). His degree was in Biology. But he became fascinated with Marketing and Advertising when it became apparent that they had a lot less lectures than the Science students. After applying for over 30 jobs in Advertising he eventually managed to land a job at J. Walter Thompson. Then as now one of the World’s leading advertising agencies. After 2 years he left to join, Collet Dickenson and Pearce(CDP) then the leading creative agency in London. Eventually at 32 he bought out a subsidiary of CDP which he was running and became his own boss.
Since then he has created and run a number of companies. Graduate Coach is his 7th start up.
