Spotlight
Finding a way through the graduate jobs maze
A career is tricky. But the University of Edinburgh is working to make it easier.
Photo credit: Laurence Winram
19 August 2026
For many graduates, the step from university into the workforce can feel overwhelming. In an era of AI-driven disruption, shifting job markets and rising competition, knowing where to start is half the battle. Shelagh Green, Director of Careers and Employability at the University of Edinburgh, sits down with QS Insights to explain how Edinburgh is helping students navigate the maze — and why the human touch still matters most.
QS: I had the opportunity to look through Edinburgh’s career services offerings. It strikes me as a soft-touch approach that guides students along and helps them understand their passions and options. Can you walk me through it?
Shelagh Green: Our Careers Service is staffed by exceptional people who are driven by a desire to help our graduates fulfil their potential. Our approach is very student-focused and flexible in its offerings, to meet the needs and requirements of the individual and to support students at every stage of their career development — from exploring options to securing graduate opportunities.
Students and recent graduates can access a wide range of comprehensive resources, careers events and employer opportunities, alongside personalised support through drop-ins, in-person consultations and practice interviews. The service offers tailored guidance on career planning, CVs and applications, interview preparation, finding internships, part-time and graduate work, further study, and making informed career decisions.
Vital to a student-centred approach is recognising and responding to the differing needs of our diverse student body. This is reflected in resources such as our Academic Skills and Career Planning for Taught Postgraduates, which is hosted in our VLE and is particularly valued by our international students, enabling them to “hit the ground running”. We also offer an Insights programme to provide students from widening participation backgrounds with supported contact to a diverse range of career areas through our alumni network in the UK and overseas.
Support also doesn’t stop at graduation. Part of our alumni community and recent graduates continue to have support from our Careers Service via graduate coaching and extensive online resources for two years after graduating.
We are involved in all stages of the student journey, from our Welcome team, who organise Welcome Week for freshers, to support for recent graduates. Our ethos is to empower our students, setting them up for ongoing career success. And we support them in responding to and overcoming challenges. For some people, such as final-year law student Ariadne, this can be navigating the tricky visa processes that have now allowed her to take up a coveted place on a legal trainee scheme.
We also want to expand our students’ considerations too, to be “career curious”, to think about all of the options available to them, including avenues that they might not have explored before, and to challenge some of the myths and headlines. Recent English and History of Art graduate Georgia had a passion for film but had never seriously considered this as a career that could be within reach. We worked closely with her and helped her to tap into our vast network of alumni working in the field to seek advice and learn from their experience. Now, happily, Georgia is in her dream career and a very successful Assistant Director working with household names like Apple TV.
QS: What are the challenges of the modern graduate job market? Does this play into some of the reasons the approach above was taken?
SG: We work closely with key graduate recruiters of all sizes in the UK and globally, meaning that we are tapped into employment trends, changes in the job market and the attributes that employers are seeking. That’s informed by the University’s Skills for Success Framework; we want our students to recognise, own and articulate the crucial skills that are inherent in their experience with us.
Over and above the world-leading education our students experience at Edinburgh, we are preparing our students for some of the challenges that they could face in seeking a job in an ever-changing market. As well as careers fairs and application preparation, we have a wealth of opportunities to enable our students to be exposed to the challenges that employers face in the real world. For example, Casey, a MA Politics graduate we have recently supported, has started on a competitive Accenture graduate scheme. He says that while his degree equipped him with incredibly valuable skills, much of his professional growth can be attributed to opportunities that Edinburgh offers outside the classroom, citing initiatives like Prosper Social Finance, a student-run ethical equity fund, and 180 Degrees Consulting, a student-run consultancy for non-profits. Together, these experiences reinforced his confidence, resilience, and connections, helping him stand out in the trainee application process.
Changes in the job market are not new – we have guided our students through challenging periods before, including during the 2008 financial crash, Covid and the cost-of-living crisis. It is core to our function that we stay ahead of the curve. The current pace of change and headline stories can leave some students and new graduates feeling paralysed; we help them find and take the next step. It’s helpful to remember that there isn’t a single graduate job market; there are sectoral and regional variations — where some areas are contracting, others are expanding. Navigating this means recognising that there isn’t a single destination nor a single route – we support our students with career planning and development tools, not just finding their first role.
QS: What are some of the misconceptions graduates have when looking for their first job? How can a university help overcome or correct those?
SG: Graduates underestimate the value of their soft skills, for example, their critical thinking, their analysis, their lateral thinking, working with incomplete information and collaborating with their peers. Graduates have these in abundance. They often focus on the content of the degree and not on their learning and development. In the modern workplace and in a future age of automation, these skills, and others, like communication, are all the more valuable. Employers are looking at speed to productivity – how quickly can you learn, adapt and make a meaningful contribution? – much of which comes from these skills. Through our programmes, coaching and real-world experiences, we emphasise the importance of these skills (which are anything but soft) and show students how adept they are already.
We try to hone the professional soft skills that students need alongside our Careers offering, working closely with our academic Schools. For example, we offer a Professional Issues course in Engineering designed to support students develop skills in professional ethics that will provide a foundation for a successful career as an engineer. The course uses a combination of real case studies, ethical reasoning and example problems to provide students with a range of tools and resources that allow them to develop their skills to investigate, analyse and make decisions about ideas related to their professional ethical development.
A key thing that universities can do to correct misconceptions is to tap into our incredible network of alumni. No one knows better than them about the concerns that graduates will have in their first job, and we are lucky that we have so many alumni who are generous with their time and willing to engage with our students, providing mentoring, guidance, tips and reassurance.
QS: Most headlines speak to the concerns around graduate jobs, particularly with AI. The cover of last month’s QS Insights. in fact, looked at the loss of entry-level jobs. Is it all doom-and-gloom for graduates, or are there other advantages? SG: The job market is undoubtedly going through changes, but we also know that data shows that degrees offer greater resilience in the workforce. It’s not all doom and gloom – our graduates have huge potential, and we are committed to helping them fulfil this. Precisely how AI will affect jobs is still under debate. It is altering the nature of some entry-level roles, with some employer research suggesting increased importance in the key human skills mentioned above and the need for new employees to work alongside AI technology to be more skilled and deploy greater judgement — all of which can point to a need for highly skilled graduates. We certainly know that upskilling in digital and AI will likely be very valuable to employers, and further, that using AI can actually be a tool in helping to navigate job applications.
As we tell our graduates and students, for applications, AI should be used wisely and only where it adds genuine value. Our recommendation is to put quality over quantity — don’t send out 200 blanket applications written by AI; instead, harness it to showcase yourself in the best light. Applicants could use AI to summarise information about the company, structure their cover letters a little bit better, or suggest interview questions so that they might practice how they respond.
Many businesses now use AI as part of the course, and it is important that our students are well versed in using it sensibly, effectively and ethically before entering their careers. At the University, we offer courses in everything from an undergraduate BSc in AI to Responsible AI adoption courses for businesses, so we really couldn’t be better placed for upskilling students in these areas.
QS: Edinburgh has also carved out a significant space in the start-ups and spin-outs space. What are some of the success stories?
SG: The University of Edinburgh is a real hotbed of entrepreneurship and is a vital cog in Scotland’s economy, driving growth and tech innovation. We foster this through a Student Enterprise Hub and with Edinburgh Innovations, the University’s commercialisation service, offering schemes such as a Startup Summer Accelerator and PhD Max+ Pre-Accelerator Programme. The University ranked first in the world for industry, innovation and infrastructure in the Times Higher Education Impact Rankings 2025. We have a rich history in AI and tech and are the home of AI in Europe, with a heritage of AI spanning more than six decades.
A shining example of student startup success is Two Big Ears, acquired by Meta in 2016. Bioliberty combines the latest robotics and tech to help people with reduced mobility get more independence. Co-founders Rowan Armstrong and Ross O’Hanlon first met while studying engineering. After teaming up with fellow engineers from Queen’s University, Belfast, they co-founded Bioliberty in 2020, raising more than £7.7m in investment this year for expansion.
Mekila Ngwambe, who studied at the School of Social and Political Sciences, is a graduate of Startup Summer Accelerator and came up with a low-cost solution for low-income homes to get easier access to electricity. He is a great example of where our student entrepreneurs are making waves worldwide.
Our Data-Driven Innovation hubs, including the Bayes Centre, bring together industry, research and students to connect enterprise to academic expertise. Bayes is host to some of the world’s most exciting spin-outs, and to some of the world’s biggest companies, whichhave offices on our campus. Close proximity to industry allows unparalleled experience for our students to learn real-world skills, and some of the tenants here end up hiring some of our graduates.
We have supported more than 350 student startups in the last four years. In 2024/25 alone, our student startups secured more than £11.8 million in investment, grants and funding.
QS: What can other universities learn from Edinburgh’s approach?
SG: Our approach is very person-centred, responsive to the diversity of our students, driven by the students and graduates in front of us —not just by the content of their degree — and informed by our industry and business connections. We like to meet students where they are, not where we think they should be. Our Making Transitions Personal Reviews, on entry and at graduation, enable us to target resources and support, which aalignwith students’ needs. We enable and recognise student development through our Edinburgh Award, which wraps around a wide range of student activities. We’re especially proud of our asynchronous work-experience award, which supports students who are working part-time to maximise the benefit and development from their student jobs. As one of the largest employers in the city with multiple professional areas to explore, we support our students’ development by offering structured, paid internships in the summer. This is such a win-win, as we benefit from their incredible talent and often get invaluable student angles on our work.
Our programme of careers events recognises the diversity of student interests. We facilitate access to a wide range of sectors from our week-long Creative and Cultural Careers Festival to Career In Engineering and PhD Horizons. And we love our pop-up Careers and Coffee events, which happen across campus and are a great way for smaller, lesser-known organisations to connect with our students. By embedding industry into our campus, we are giving students tangible real-world experiences that they may not otherwise have been exposed to.