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What to do when you don’t know what to do after uni

For all the recent grads who are yet to secure a job, the time after uni can be incredibly difficult. You are trying to enjoy your Summer, but the knowledge that you don’t know what you doing can make that hard. This can be made even harder if you don’t even know what you want to go into! I’ve previously written a post about what to do if you don’t have a grad scheme. This time I’m going to focus on what to do if you don’t know what you want to do.

1. Do some proper research

Investing a significant amount of time into doing real research is really important. I’ve never known what I want to go into and I did a broad degree, meaning I was applying to anything and everything. Although this strategy can work, it often means you end up with interviews with companies/jobs you really aren’t interested in. Doing some research can help eliminate the roles you aren’t interested in, and can help you hone in on what you want to do. Even if this is five possible roles within 8 sectors, it is more specific than just applying to every job you see.

2. Try things out

A job isn’t something you can just put up with, a job should be something you enjoy. If you don’t know what you want to do, you could end up with something that you are not interested in. To avoid this, once you’ve honed in on a few sectors or jobs, find out as much as you can about companies within them. Knowing what you don’t want to do is as important as knowing what you want to do. If you’ve got a few ideas, get in touch with companies within those sectors and see if you can go in for a couple of days and experience the job/company first hand. You will gain valuable insight that will hopefully help you make a decision!

3. Don’t panic

It’s easy to think that you’ll never find anything, especially when most of your peers have things lined up. Something it took me a while to realise is that there will be a job for me somewhere. Whether it takes me a month or a year to find it, it’s out there. As I mentioned in my previous post on the topic, you could consider a gap year. You could travel the world or work in something entry level and reapply to grad schemes next year. It’s not the end of the world, so stay calm and keep applying!