During International Education Week in November 2013 I attended a fascinating panel discussion on ‘careers for global graduates’ at the British Academy, organised by ThirdYearAbroad.com. I’m particularly keen on the label ‘global graduates’ as it values the language and intercultural skills that those graduates have strived to obtain, and recognises that they stand out among the huge crowd of ‘normal graduates’ who flood the graduate employment market.

        Upon entering the extremely beautiful marble-covered building that’s home to the British Academy (see the photo below), I was given an agenda for the evening along with a postcard that I feel perfectly exemplifies the wide variety of opportunities available to a graduate with language skills: just look at it! Which one of these 30 jobs would you quite fancy? I’m guessing that there are quite a few that appeal… The good news is that these are all attainable and all make use of your covetable language skills. And now it’s even easier to find them, as ThirdYearAbroad have just launched their new Careers Platform where you can find employers that are specifically looking to use your language and intercultural skills. Although I’m happily in employment myself on a graduate scheme that allows me to use my languages, I would have really valued a platform like this while I was considering jobs post-university.

          As British multilingual graduates are few and far between, graduate employers generally don’t include a foreign language as a pre-requisite, and so it can be hard to work out in which companies you’ll actually get to use your languages. An interesting statistic quoted at the launch event was the fact that 57% of employers are choosing foreign graduates and ignoring our home-grown British talent, because we by and large don’t possess the international experience and language skills that our European peers have as the very minimum. So I reckon this new Careers Platform will fill a gap that language graduates really need in helping them to find roles specifically matched to their skills. It was such an interesting evening and lovely to meet lots of final year language students looking for advice, as well as members of the language teaching community and other businessmen and women.