Most international students will have permission to work in the UK for a short amount of time after the end of their studies. If you want to stay and work in the UK after this, then you will need immigration permission and visa sponsorship.
We provide access to Student Circus, a job search portal for current international students in the UK, which contains the following resources:
- A jobs board with skilled worker visa opportunities: verified, up to date full-time and internship job listings from employers who can sponsor international students in the UK
- Immigration advice: expert, vetted advice by immigration solicitors about working in the UK.
- Country guides: locally-relevant recruitment insights and an overview of the job market for various countries if you’re planning to return home or relocate.
- CV builder: a place to edit and store CVs. However, we would strongly encourage you to use our CVs and resumes resources and not to reply on templates.
- Ignition Hub: access to panel events, workshops, blogs and FAQs
The UK job market is highly competitive and it’s common for students and graduates to apply for job opportunities up to a year ahead of the employment start date. As well as strong academic results, recruiters in the UK are interested in your career motivations and look for a range of skills and competencies developed through studies, extra-curricular activities and work experience. It’s important to also have a good level of English language skills if English is not your first language.
Your suitability for a role can be assessed through several criteria and it’s very important to be familiar with the UK style of writing CVs and application documents and how we interview job candidates. The UK style or recruitment might be very different from what you’ve previously encountered. You can find information and resources on our Application and interviews and What's on? webpages to help you.
The main types of graduate job routes in the UK
- Graduate Training Programmes (or Grad Schemes) are usually offered by large organisations that aim to recruit many graduates each year into a range of areas such as engineering, IT, finance, consultancy or management roles. These normally involve a structured training programme over one to three years. Many tend to open applications in August or September and deadlines can be as early as October while others remain open until March. If successful, you’ll usually start your job in the summer you graduate.
- Direct Entry Positions can be found in any type of organisation when a position becomes available. Typically, these are often found in small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) that generally do not need to hire many graduates, although larger employers do advertise too. Your training is often less structured than on a Grad Scheme but you may be offered the opportunity to work toward a qualification if relevant. Vacancies can be advertised at any time of the year but they can have an immediate start date so you may need to apply late in your degree or wait until you finish your studies.
There is no definitive list of companies that hire international students but the UK Home Office provides a Register of licensed sponsors which lists organisations who are licensed to sponsor work permits for workers coming from outside of the UK. This list is useful as a starting point for candidates seeking a visa but needs to be cross-referenced with current information on company careers pages or through speaking to the recruitment team. Recent WONKHE analysis explores which organisations sponsor international students and can be a useful tool to explore a variety of data.