Creating a pathway from university to StartUps
“When I went through university StartUps weren’t discussed as a career option and the application pathway wasn’t clear. Today’s students do have the desire to work in smaller companies, however the route to application is still a little vague. Here’s my reflection on how we change this issue.” Ash Austin
If I think back to when I graduated, the careers service at my university was very supportive and there was a whole host of information to help me get into a corporate graduate scheme. I could easily apply to large corporate graduate schemes by simply sending a CV and a covering letter and all the information was ready to hand. Personally, I did not even contemplate going into a StartUp and didn't know very much about them. The world has changed quite a lot since I graduated and small to medium businesses make up the bulk of the UK's economy. This means that these organisations really need to be able to access graduates, however this isn't as simple as we would think.
There are thousands and thousands of businesses across the UK which fall into this category and for a young graduate to be able to find the contact details and be able to apply to these organisations is not simple. If you look at the tech start-up industry alone there is a mix of different organisations there with different levels of funding and cutting-edge technology, which would prove an attractive proposition to a lot of young people.
For somebody who is graduating this would be a daunting task to try and sift through all these different organisations and really understand which ones would be the best fit for them, how to apply and who to contact. This presents a challenge for graduates, universities and also the organisations desperate for these bright young people. There is a need for a better mechanism to bridge this gap and make it easier to connect bright young people with cutting edge technology.
Libra Careers makes this job easier. We research and engage with some of the UK's leading, well-funded StartUps and streamline the application process for graduates. We work with these StartUps to understand their culture and the kind of personalities that would fit into their organisation, as well as the different roles they've got available for young people. We then engage with university career services and make these available to students and alumni. We only work with well-funded StartUps that can give support and a bright future career for graduates. Graduates just apply to our Libra Careers programme, and we do the rest. We will handle the application process and we will work with the graduates to present their skills and experience to multiple StartUps in one go!
We understand that some graduates won't have that much work experience, so we utilise a variety of different other methods and assessments to present them to StartUps. This streamlines the recruitment process for both the StartUps and the candidates applying for the roles. In this day and age we have an abundance of technical tools to bring an application to life and at Libra Careers we practise what we preach, technology and innovation sit at the heart of everything we do. You will hear more detail about the rest of our process in future blogs please do contact us if you want to learn more.