University of Manchester Careers Blog

If you’re just about to graduate – assuming that you’re not in the comfortable position of having a job, course or other plan for the next few months lined up – you might find the sobering reality of life after university hitting home at this point. It’s an exciting time, but it can be pretty scary too! However, if you’ve been reading this blog, you’ll know that the Careers Service doesn’t abandon you the moment you graduate. In fact, as we know this is such a crucial time for you to sort your career plans out, we’ve introduced some new services for brand new graduates who need some help getting started.

To support you through that tricky transition from student to graduate professional, we’ve just set up a new ‘University of Manchester 2013 Grads’ group on LinkedIn. It’s a friendly networking and support group where we’ll be posting lots of tips to get you using LinkedIn like a pro, as well as advice on job hunting and developing your careers plans. We also want to know what’s on your mind and we’ll do our best to answer your questions on any career or job-related topic, and hopefully you’ll get lots of advice and support from your fellow new grads too. The group is a closed group just for graduates, so it’s a nice safe place for you to share your worries and your successes. You’ll just need to register with LinkedIn (free) and set up a basic profile in order to join the group.

If you’re not familiar with LinkedIn, it is THE networking site for serious ‘careersy’ stuff (I sometimes dub it ‘Facebook for professionals’) and it’s an increasingly key place for students and new graduates to learn to network with alumni and recruiters who might be able to help you with your career plans, and also for you to develop your online professional profile to complement your CV.

Find out more about LinkedIn on the Careers website here and watch our 2 short videos to learn how to create an effective LinkedIn profile.