Knowing when you will need to make applications to internships, postgraduate study or graduate jobs helps you to map out when you will need to begin your career research. You can start to add appropriate dates to your Plan: Me and make sure you don’t miss out on important events and application deadlines.
Every organisation sets its own application timeline, some choosing to recruit at one time of the year (like many funded PhD programmes or larger organisations) and other choosing to recruit as they need positions filled (like Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and start-ups). The timelines outlined in the tabs below are for the UK market and international application timelines can be very different. Visit GoinGlobal to find out more or talk to relevant academics to learn about international postgraduate study timelines.
The Careers Service runs many recruitment events in the autumn term, mainly in October and November. We run sector specific careers fairs where you can meet prospective employers and ask them questions about their company or job. Sign up to the weekly newsletter via JobsLive to make sure you don’t miss out on event information. We also run a Careers Essential: postgraduate study frequently throughout the year.
Application timelines tabs
What time of the year a company advertises its internship and graduate roles to students is generally linked to the size of the organisation and how many students they recruit. To find out more about working for different sized companies, visit our working in industry and work experience webpages.
Large companies – tend to recruit a lot of students and run structured internship or graduate programmes. They usually advertise their roles in the autumn (Sept – Nov) with the expectation that you will start the job the following summer. They recruit almost a year in advance in bulk. Large companies will also advertise specific entry level jobs throughout the year.
Small to medium companies (SME) and start-ups – tend to recruit smaller numbers of students into specific roles and usually advertise their roles closer to when they would expect you to start. If you would like to work for this sized organisation, you would begin to look for job advertisements four to five months before your course ends. However many smaller companies also rely on students approaching them speculatively to fill their jobs and you can begin doing this at any stage of your degree. Visit our pages on making speculative applicaitons to companies or networking to explore further. The Careers Service and the Enterprise lab offer an SME internship scheme annually exclusively for Imperial students and graduates.
Keeping track of deadlines
Big companies decide their own deadlines and these may change annually. There is no list that will tell you when these are. The best way to ensure you don’t miss companies’ application windows is to follow them on whatever form of social media you prefer. Visit the companies recruitment pages for direct links. You can also keep up to date with jobs boards where these companies post, many of which are listed on our job hunting webpage.