mediumHrBehaviouralEntry
Your university has no campus recruiting programme. How does a new graduate get interviews?
Through off-campus hiring routes: career fairs, graduate job boards and employers' early-careers pages, direct applications to smaller companies, and referrals from alumni and people you meet. Apply early in the hiring cycle, target roles properly, and give every application a project worth asking about.
5 min readUpdated 2026-10-10
Answer
Short answer
Through the off-campus hiring routes that every employer runs alongside, or instead of, campus recruiting. Those are career fairs, graduate job boards and employers' own early-careers pages, direct applications to smaller companies, and referrals. The two things that decide it are timing, because graduate intakes recruit months ahead, and warm introductions, because a referral reaches a person rather than a pile.
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Likely follow-ups
- An alumnus agrees to refer you but asks what role you want. How specific should you be?
- You missed the main graduate intake deadlines this year. What are your options now?
- How do you follow up after a career fair conversation without being a nuisance?
- Which of these routes would you drop first if you only had five hours a week?
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