As a recent graduate you may be experiencing some difficulties within the UK job market. The IT boom has drawn to a close and the promise of three or four years ago, easy employment in IT has disappeared. There are many things you can do to help yourself achieve the perfect position especially as interviews can make the difference.

Strengths and Weaknesses
essential to know where you need to enhance your skills, If your only experience of programming is in Haskell and the position available consists of some Object Oriented languages like Java then it is most significant that you do some reading and start teaching yourself – let your interviewer know and highlight it. It will show that you are aware that you need to learn and are the type of person who is trying to improve their experience level outside of working hours. Many directors will then take an interest in training you especially when they can see a genuine willingness to challenge yourself and learn new things.

Working Experience
If you are straight out of university you will not have had much practical working experience , applying your knowledge in real life working environments then, make sure you highlight areas such as team projects and any practical support you gave to other students as well as working within deadlines and project management you experienced especially in your final year. Chances are if your application made it to interview stage that the company is looking for someone with little experience but lots of fresh innovative ideas. Have faith in yourself! If you don’t then who else will?

Read Up On The Programme In Question
Do not just apply for a job because you have programming experience. If all of your experience is in PHP but have little or no .NET experience and in the position available .NET programming is heavily featured in the job role, then use your intellegance and at least know basic constructs and standard object libraries for .NET.

Be Prepared For A Test
It is quite usual to set IT professionals a test to ensure you have the practical skills and to see how you react to pressure. Going back to the previous point, it may be easier to understand the test if you know a bit about the background of the person who has set the test for you, so basic research and learning the language is a must.

IT Environment
Have a question prepared about the current working environment you may find yourself working in, question them about the seating arrangements, should they practice extreme programming, brainstorming or other activities and ask how they to relieve stress! Questions like this emphasize that you are sincerely thinking about the conditions of this particular work place.

Chelsea Butterworth is a freelance writer, writing infrequent overviews on flat fee business recruitment, and specialising in fixed fee, low cost and flat fee recruitment on behalf of RecruitmentRevolution.com.