The GradRoom

Graduate-Recruitment.co.uk

Ease of Use 8/10

Variety of Jobs 5/10

Industry Specific Jobs 2/10

Spamming 7/10

Advice Available 10/10

It is proclaimed as “The UK’s leading recruiter of graduates” and it takes a fairly hands on approach to online recruitment. Not only is there a call-back service offering CV advice, but they also arrange mock interviews at their London and Manchester offices in order to prepare you for the real thing. 

They have qualified advisors on hand to help you out over the phone or by appointment, and appear to take genuine individual care over careers. There are several videos on the site advertising exactly what they do, as well as top 10 CV tips and more generic advice relating to interviews and applications- all good stuff, but nothing industry specific or straight from an employer.

In fact the range of jobs advertised on the site is very limited; my search for “any job in any location” returned a grand total of 22 results, half of which were “executive” sales roles. There are the usual alerts to your email address and mobile, which can be blocked if necessary, and the site itself is easy enough to use.

I would therefore recommend it only insofar as a starting block, if you are looking for some advice from a qualified careers consultant, or having trouble getting your CV to stand out from the crowd, this could be the site for you. For anyone already competent and looking for their dream job, I suspect you will just have to keep looking.

But perhaps the top employers are only revealed to you in person? Have you found a fantastic job through this site? If you have experienced this application process or have any comments about it please post them below.

Overall Rating 6.5/10

Just4Graduates.net

Ease of Use 4/10

Variety of Jobs 2/10

Industry Specific Jobs 8/10

Spamming 6/10

Advice Available 0/10

“Winner of the Best Job Board- Recruiter Awards for Excellence 2009”. It sounds pretty impressive, and it still is 2009, so surely here is the perfect place to find the perfect job? Well not quite. 

The site itself is split into several different individual sites, just4graduates, just4engineers, justsalesandmarketing, just4finance….you get the drift, which, irritatingly, you have to register for individually. This makes the already arduous process of signing up even more frustrating, but then you have probably heard the phrase “nothing in the world worth having comes easily”. 

Unfortunately, unless you are looking for an engineering job, you are probably going to be disappointed.

There are very few jobs listed for popular industries such as finance, marketing and management, some jobs are listed under the wrong heading (you are more than likely to find at least one engineering job wherever you look) and changing between these sites is a hassle.

However, engineering is the sites speciality, and there are at the time of writing several thousand engineering jobs advertised with some of the biggest employers. So if this is your chosen path, I would advise you to take a look, but for everyone else, I personally wouldn’t waste the time.

As always we want to hear your thoughts and experiences, is the review fair? Have you had a good or bad experience with just4graduates? Post your comments below.

Overall Rating 4/10

Ease of use    6/10
Spamming    7/10
Variety of Jobs        6/10
Industry specific Jobs    6/10
Advice Available    9/10

Vibrant and clear this is a very pretty and well presented site.  Signing up, like on many grad sites, takes a little while.  You enter your personal details, your interests and activities as well as which sector you would like to work in etc etc and after half an hour of giving the finest details about your life you are finally able to access the site’s variety of tools. Unlike some it does give you the option , to say whether you want regular emails from them detailing available jobs etc – therefore limiting the amount of spam, spam, spam, spam, eggs and spam that you receive.

It is also, in my opinion, one of the best sites on the net for advice and tips on recruitment.  It offers interactive support on CV, assessment centres, cover letters as well as the different stages of the recruitment process.  There is also the “Prospects Planner” tool which helps students to identify their key skills and different industries that they might be interested in.

However if you are actually looking for a job, this site does lack variety of jobs -  your bg standard grad opportunities are there – if you are looking for a job in Management or Finance there are opportunities there however if you are more interested in the charity sector, PR or Marketing, as well as more Arts oriented opportunities  the site does not offer much.

The functionality of the site is not that brilliant.  It is not the easiest site to use either, as it often is not working and when it does it is more complicated than other sites to use.  I think that it is unfortunately trying to do too much – which leaves you unsure as to what you can do on this site and what its main use is.
Overall – the best site I have come across for jobs, and at least it doesn’t clog up your inbox too much.  However if you are looking for opportunities there is more variety on other sites.

Overall rating: 7/10

Monster.co.uk

Ease of use  9/10
Spamming  8/10
Variety of Jobs  4/10
Industry specific Jobs 7/10
Advice Available 9/10
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