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Graduate careers: How to tap into your inner entrepreneur
 It should be a happy coincidence that a record number of bright graduates have been unleashed into the jobs market just as the UK struggles to master the recession. However, a recent survey has found that two-thirds of UK businesses reckon that graduates are ill-equipped to help turn around the nation's fortunes.
 

"We are in danger of failing our young people by not providing them with the necessary business skills and experience they need to succeed," says John May, chief executive of the education charity Young Enterprise, which carried out the research. "A workforce lacking in business acumen simply cannot drive an economic recovery." 

 

The sheer number of graduates is part of the problem. Companies that might once have recruited raw talent on the strength of a 2:1 and then allowed time and money to mould them, can now pick and choose from an expanded pool of talent. A unique grasp of the classics is no longer sufficient: graduates who succeed are likely to have interpersonal skills and work experience that will enable them to fit seamlessly into the corporate regime. 

 

 "There's a general disconnect between university courses and the workplace," says Iain Heath, head of graduate programmes at Centrica Group which, with other leading companies, has helped found the Chartered Management Institute Academy to equip students and school leavers with leadership and management skills.

 
"Graduates are lacking in essential soft skills such as independent thought, problem-solving, working collaboratively and engaging with people from different backgrounds, and the tone and content of their correspondence can be startlingly inappropriate."
 
Launched this year, the academy has so far encouraged 3,000 14 to 21-year-olds to complete certificates in team leading and management, helped by corporate mentors. By 2015, it hopes to award 10,000 qualifications a year.
 
Young Enterprise, meanwhile, seeks to tap the entrepreneur that John May believes lurks within the majority. Its Start Up programme allows students to establish and run a business in a relatively risk-free environment while at university. "We'll help them come up with ideas by introducing them to like-minded people and appointing a business person to mentor them and shoulder some of the responsibility," says May. "They find the funding but we point them in the right direction."
 
Adam Soliman used support from Young Enterprise and Blackpool's local Get Started Programme to found his company, the Global Tea and Coffee Exchange, which specialises in fine teas. A year on, his blends are stocked by 20 different stores including Lakeland. He had hoped for a career in investment banking but on graduating from Newcastle University, realised that the economic climate lessened his chances. Instead, he harnessed his hobby – tea drinking.
 
"Supermarkets had encompassed the whole range of quality when it came to the wine, chocolate and coffee markets but when it came to the tea… everything was pretty much the same," he says. "I researched the market and Young Enterprise on what questions to ask and where to go, as well as how to analyse my findings and to create my brand, Charbrew."
 
Surprisingly, a recession is often a catalyst for successful enterprises such as Soliman's as employees who lose their jobs are forced to relaunch themselves. "We've always been a nation of small businesses but our education system points people towards a career in employment and focuses on technical skills without teaching students how to apply them in the corporate world," says May.
 
"Previously, people would apply to university to broaden their horizons and develop their critical thinking, but now students tend to start courses with a focused view on what job they want at the end of it and universities are starting to realise that they have to do more to help prepare them."
 
By Anna Tims,
6 November, 2010
Source: 
www.guardian.co.uk