 By Graham Trickey, Editor, Prospects. Knowing where to start looking for a job can be difficult. Sending a targeted CV to even a fraction of the employers out there would be a lifetime’s work in itself. Narrowing down the field of search is necessary. The small and medium enterprises that account for almost half of all employees (graduate or not) make up a category that is worth looking at closely for more than stop-gap jobs. Then there are the different sectors within this group. ‘Manufacturing’, ‘hotels and restaurants’ and ‘real estate and business activities’ are the major employment areas with average or better proportions of jobs in small and medium units. For graduates who do not have career-specific qualifications, such as in engineering or hotel management, possible roles need not be tied to one sector. All businesses have common activities, as Lucie Ness finds in her role as director of Edinburgh-based Graduates for Growth, an employment and advice service focusing on small businesses. ‘We find we get all sorts of companies,’ says Lucie, ‘but in those businesses, marketing and sales are quite a big area of activity for us. IT work is another area – it goes through peaks and troughs but overall is quite productive and that’s anything from web design work to IT support jobs. Being in Edinburgh, financial services is a sector we are involved in. The other sector is business administration which covers a multitude of things.’ The number of smallish companies is vast even when the 2 million or so with no employed staff are put to one side. Figures out this month show 1.15 million companies with employees, when the owner-managed small high street company is democratically equated with something like BP. When size is taken into account, only 7,000 businesses have more than 250 employees, while another 28,000 are in the medium category (50-249 employees). That leaves a vast number in the smallest division. Dave Bishop of the Federation of Small Businesses advises: ‘There is a huge variety out there which is reflected in our membership and I would urge any graduate not to ignore small businesses. There are good opportunities out there even though there are not the formal graduate recruitment programmes in place.’ Related topics
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