As a director of graduate careers site Gradplus, Helen Cartwright (pictured) finds herself deeply involved in every aspect of the business. "I get involved in everything from finding new ways of reaching candidates to running client presentations," she says, "but if anything my main focus is on the ongoing development of the site - making sure it's as good as it can be in every respect."
Helen learned the graduate market ropes at Graduate Prospects, where she spent four years from 2002 to 2006. Here she initially focused on online careers advice, setting up chatrooms, graduate forums and other interactive services before moving into product management and gaining exposure to both online and offline publishing. Her final task at Prospects was to manage the employer side of the site.
With this broadly-based experience under her belt, she joined Gradplus - then a recent start-up - in late 2006. "Gradplus started out as a simple job-board," she says, "but it quickly took off with employers. Since then we've introduced a range of other features, such as a news section and sector-specific coverage. We've also expanded our offline activities - in particular, we do a lot in terms of client-branded, on-campus events for employers."
This isn't the only thing that helps to distinguish Gradplus from its competitors, of course. "Graduate recruitment is a massively crowded marketplace," says Helen. "But as a relatively small business we can be very responsive and do new things very quickly. Everyone in the business has worked in graduate recruitment before - the site was built from the perspective of developing graduate talent, rather than from an IT focus. Everything is handled by dedicated account managers; it's a very personal service."
Helen also has clear views about students' aspirations in the current climate, and their need to maintain a strong sense of realism. "Students need to make sure they're going to university for the right reasons," she says, "and to make sure they know what they're going to be doing when they get there. They need to keep an eye on potential employers, take up work experience opportunities and manage their own online profiles." (To this end Gradplus has recently being doing a lot of work with a third-party organisation on behavioural profiling, with the aim of helping graduates to find the sectors and employers best suited to them in terms of their specific talents and overall cultural fit.)
"Our clients are still primarily looking for the top 15% of the graduate cohort," Helen continues, "and the graduates should be aware of this. A degree on its own isn't enough these days - any work experience is very important. We're always trying to get hold of quality candidates for our clients - working with RateMyPlacement, we're encouraging students to take up work placements and, in turn, are attracting people with work experience to use Gradplus. The key thing for students is to focus on what benefits their work experience and other university experiences can bring to future employers, and knowing how to communicate this effectively in interviews."