"Is this actually right for my situation?" It's the question I get more than any other about career coaching for graduates, and here's the honest answer: it doesn't depend on your situation the way you'd think. It doesn't matter if you studied engineering or English literature. It doesn't matter if you're aiming for finance, the arts, or something you haven't fully named yet.

Across the founding cohort of Get The Job You Want – Graduate Edition, the graduate job search course I built from over thirty years on the hiring side of the table, I watched the exact same four things trip people up, regardless of degree or industry.

Graduate hiring is in one of its toughest stretches in years. Employers are now receiving an average of 140 applications per graduate vacancy, more than triple the number from two decades ago. The real question to ask isn't whether you're the right type of candidate. It's what's actually blocking you.

"I'm applying everywhere and hearing nothing back"

This is usually the first one people recognise. Alin Linca, one of the founding cohort, described it precisely: applying to roles randomly, hoping something would stick, and getting filtered out at the application stage with no idea why. That's not a talent problem. It's a targeting problem, applying broadly instead of applying specifically, and it's fixable the moment you understand what's actually happening on the other side of the application.

"I keep editing my CV/résumé but don't know what's working"

This one's quieter and more exhausting, because it doesn't feel like a clear problem, it feels like something's wrong that you can't identify. Amariah Rigodon, also in the founding cohort, had her CV/résumé rejected for months before starting the course. Less than a month after reworking it with an employer's eye rather than guessing at edits, she had five interview invitations. The CV/résumé wasn't the whole problem. Not knowing what to change was.

"I get interviews, but I don't get offers"

If you're getting through to interview stage and still not converting, the pattern across the cohort was consistent. Emily Ardron described gaining "knowledge of how things come across from an employer perspective." Edward Lee pointed specifically to the STAR method and structuring his answers around clear soundbites. Oksana Pankeviciene said the course made her think about interview questions "from another angle." Three different founding cohort graduates, three different fields, none of them lacking competence. What they lacked was a structure for showing it.

"I don't actually know what I'm aiming for"

This one sits earlier than the other three, and it's often the real root of them. If you don't have a clear target, you end up applying broadly, which makes it harder to tailor a CV/résumé properly, which makes interviews harder to prepare for with any specificity. Idowu Adeniyi, another founding cohort graduate, described the shift as becoming "more intentional and proactive" rather than reactive. If this is where you're stuck, it's also the reason starting the thinking earlier, whatever year or stage you're at matters more than most people assume, it's not about final year urgency, it's about giving yourself time to actually get clear.

What happens next

The founding cohort proved this works: seventeen respondents, every single one rating the content practical and immediately applicable, full marks across the board. Government research backs the underlying logic too: having a clear plan by the time you're job-searching is one of the three strongest predictors of a genuinely positive outcome. And because it's self-paced, career coaching after graduation doesn't need to fit a fixed timeline, you work through whichever of the four things applies to you, at the point you're actually at, whether that's three months or three years out from graduation.

The waitlist closes before general launch opens. If you recognised yourself in any of the four pain points above, that's your answer to "is this right for me." Join the Get The Job You Want – Graduate Edition waitlist before it closes, and if you're a parent who's just read this on behalf of someone who won't check their email, sending them the link is the fastest thing you can do today.