Hello and a very warm welcome to UCL, to London, and the UK. You've reached one of
the most diverse parts of the world and you're in for an absolute treat. Walk
along any London High Street and you're bound to get a feel for exactly what I
mean, and you should know that UK workplaces are exactly the same.
They are highly internationally diverse which makes them very exciting place to work.
So while getting a job in the UK means being part of a competitive process,
there is absolutely no reason to think that as an international student you are
anything less than competitive. In fact, in some ways it could be argued that
you're more competitive having been successful in two different countries
and in two different cultures, which shows great adaptability. That said it's
important to note that there are variations in how easy or difficult it
might be to get that Tier 2 visa depending for example on the job sectors you may
be interested in. I'll be sharing this data with you a little later in this
video so stick around to find out six ways to maximise your chances of getting
a graduate role in the UK and turning that Tier 4 visa into a Tier 2.
First up, getting to know how the UK graduate labour market works. Typically there are
two main routes to getting a role: number one a graduate scheme, number two a
graduate role. Graduate schemes are generally run by larger organisations
and have a rotational aspect which allows you to experience different
elements of that organisation before settling on a specialism. These
typically recruit between September and January for a start the following autumn
many of these sponsor. Meanwhile, graduate roles are open year-round and these can
be applied through via job adverts or by generating your own opportunities
through contacts and through building up partnerships as part of your
dissertation. But you should know that you're going to have to have secured that Tier
2 visa at least three months from the time your Tier 4 expires in order to
give that organisation enough time to process the paperwork. Now the second
thing is to start early. Now I know what you might be thinking, Raj I've only
just landed, I haven't even had a chance to take a selfie with the Queen or with
a postbox, but with applications for many graduate schemes opening as early as
September it's really important to get traction early. It's also a really good
idea to start early in order to build networks around you who can help and
support you get roles, and for you to communicate your skills and abilities to
as well and also starting early allows you to develop a sense of what's working
and what's not, so if you need to make changes you have time to make those
changes and to make them work for you. Number three is building a support
network around you and crucially having conversations with those people who have
transitioned to the UK labour market before you. UCL's alumni community
website can be accessed through this URL. You have access to tens of thousands of UCL
alumni and you can sign up yourself as a current student and I strongly recommend
it. Once you've registered and signed in your homepage will look a little bit
like this and you can start building your own network by either going through
groups and identifying those whose experiences may closely resemble yours
and reaching out to them by introducing yourself or you can search by
organisation or profession type and see what matches come up that way. I'd
recommend reaching out to those people who have "willing to help" listed by their
profile name number. Number four is understanding the landscape around you
and if you're a UCL student we have a resource that can help, from the
UCL careers own website click "explore your options" then click "explore opportunities"
followed by "immigrations and visas" which is full of great information but for now
we're just going to focus on one aspect within this area and that's by scrolling
down and clicking on two really significant links. The first opens up a
sheet on Tableau with five countries data of international students
destinations. As you can see here in the country of employment pie chart you have
19 percent of Chinese UCL graduates continuing to work in the UK. Scrolling
down a little you can see bar charts representing which sectors Chinese UCL
graduates have ended up in or indeed any countries that you select from the
drop-down menu, with colours representing geographies of their particular
destinations. But even more significant and important I feel is clicking on the
second data dashboard link. The page opens up onto data of organisations
that gave Tier 2 sponsorship to UCL students and graduates from their Tier 4 visas
between 2014 and 2018. You can see there are over 27,000 such
organisations that have a recent, live history of employing UCL international
talent just like you. The data is listed in descending numerical order so right
at the top is the organisation that provided the largest such Tier 2 visas
in 2018 and another thing to note is that organisations can operate under a
range of different subsidiary and legal names. Why is this significant? Well if we
look at Goldman Sachs here you can easily assume that it didn't offer any
Tier 2 visas to UCL students in 2014 or 2015 but if there's a particular
organisation you're interested in then it's a good idea to use the search bar
to identify different legal or subsidiary names that that organisation
might operate under. Scrolling down to the bottom area it becomes really
apparent that there are significant differences in visas granted relative to
the sector in question. Particularly strong are finance and insurance, health
and social work, education as well as professional, scientific and technical
activities which is the largest single sector. If you aren't sure what these
categories might include then I'd recommend filtering on each specific one
that interests you and seeing what kind of organisations are contained within that.
Number five is taking full advantage of the Careers resources available to you. One
crucial way in which you can do this, as an international student, is attending
employer led skills sessions so these might be where employers take you
through what it means to make a good CV, what it means to make a good application
form and this should really help you understand the recruitment culture in
the UK. So number six, have a plan B. You can definitely make it work, this
transition into the UK labour market, but not everyone who tries will succeed and
by having a plan B you can fully then allow yourself to focus on making that
plan A work. One way you can do this is by applying to multinationals in your
home country. It's significantly easier to move internationally once you're part
of an organisation that can help and support you through that process. Okay so
that's it for now if you want to talk over your individual career planning as
an international student I'd encourage you to book in for an appointment
through the UCL Careers website. We can talk over all those Career Planning aspects
with you. For status or individual visa queries, we recommend you speak to
trusted individuals and personnel who are authorised to help you with that. For
any career-related questions we would love to see you in the service.
Lastly I'm really excited about a video I'm currently working on behind the
scenes. It's going to come out in a few weeks time and it's going to be a video
featuring your careers questions, and me answering them directly. Please email
careers.marketing@ucl.ac.uk from your UCL email address.
Those are the ones we are going to prioritise, but you can also leave your
questions in the comment section down below.
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