After just graduating from Durham University with First-class honours in Geography and Sociology I decided that staying at home in Abingdon would be the move for me and so I began my search for a wide variety of graduate programmes in Oxfordshire.  

I knew that many graduate programmes are based in London and other big UK cities, but given Oxfordshire’s vast quantity and diversity of businesses I was expecting to find a reasonable number of programmes to apply to.  

What I found was quite a shock to the system. Not only was there a distinct lack of graduate programmes, but also almost all of these were in the science and technology industry with hardly any to be spoken of in other sectors. This was a problem not only faced by myself, but many of my friends who had also recently graduated many of whom had also resolved themselves to further study to gain more experience or moving out of the area due to a lack of options.  

It was during my (so-far) fruitless job search that I came across the Thompson & Terry Recruitment website and found a blog post which highlighted the very struggle that I was facing at that moment.  

In fact, Ben had done the research and within large and small SME’s he could only find 7 graduate programs. It was both gratifying and quite concerning that they had identified the graduate problem in a nutshell:  

“Our best graduates are often struggling to find ‘graduate programmes’ post-university and the biggest feedback is losing out to a candidate with more experience, but how do you get experience if no one will give you a chance?” 

Fast forward a few months and I am fortunate enough to have joined the Thompson & Terry Recruitment team on their graduate programme as a Graduate Business Executive and have enjoyed my first month immensely. I have experienced many facets of the business from searching for candidates to marketing to general administration to attending numerous networking events.  

It was at these networking events such as OBCN that I have been talking with business owners and listening to their struggles within their businesses with many talking about how their time is often being spent on various administrative or junior-level tasks which is where they could use someone to take those duties off them to free up more time to really spend growing their business. 

Reflecting on my experiences as a recent graduate, hearing from other business owners and talking to my friends who have recently graduated who find themselves where I was at the start of my job search. I really want to conclude this blog not just on my personal journey joining the Thompson & Terry Recruitment team, but rather if you’re an employer struggling to fill a role at that junior level I want to ask would you think about introducing a graduate programme and inviting some fresh trainable talent on board? 

Prior to joining Thompson & Terry Recruitment I thought creating a graduate programme within an SME would be difficult but the team here have successfully done so over 100 times. Therefore have all the tools in place to make it really easy for the employer to deliver a truly win-win outcome for employer and graduate with very little time investment. 

I would love to hear people’s opinions and views on this topic both those graduates who have been on the job hunt and those businesses who have thought about this or indeed introduced a graduate programme within your business.