The Graduate Market Decoded: What Students and Parents Need to Know

The graduate job market is competitive, fast-moving and very different from the one many parents remember. Recruitment starts earlier than many students realise, and employers are using everything from online assessments and video interviews to LinkedIn and AI-assisted screening to identify future talent.
For students, knowing where to start can feel overwhelming. For parents, knowing how best to help can be just as difficult.
In this free live webinar, City CV CEO Victoria McLean will share practical insight into how graduate recruitment really works and what students can do now to give themselves the strongest possible start.
Drawing on nearly 30 years of recruitment and careers experience, including recruiting for Goldman Sachs and Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Victoria will explore what employers are really looking for, why strong academics alone aren’t enough, and how students can make their potential much more visible.
We’ll look at the key stages of the graduate journey, from deciding what to target and building the right experience, through to creating a strong CV and LinkedIn profile, networking, applying strategically and preparing for interviews and assessment centres.
We’ll also talk about how AI is changing recruitment, where it can genuinely help, and why students still need to develop a clear, credible and individual professional story.
Most importantly, we’ll explain why successful graduate job searches rarely come down to one thing. A good CV helps, but so does career direction, positioning, networking, interview preparation and knowing where to focus your efforts.
We’ll finish by introducing the City CV Graduate Career Programme, our structured career support programme designed to bring all of those elements together.