Scottish Graduate Jobs Fair (5 June 2024)

We are delighted to extend the event to all 15 universities from Scotland again this year. The event is open to students from any subject background and at any stage in their course but it is primarily targeted to final year Undergraduate and Postgraduate students.  Whilst we are unable to say how many students will attend this year’s virtual event, there are over 15,000 final year undergraduate students graduating from universities across Scotland this summer. We are hoping for student attendance from all universities. We would expect attendance from University of Edinburgh students to be around 60% Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences, 35% STEM and 5% Medical and Veterinary Medicine University. To see the range of disciplines offered at the University of Edinburgh, please visit our College and School webpage . 

In terms of level of study, traditionally the fair is most popular with Postgraduate Taught (Masters) students followed by final year Undergraduate students, welcoming much smaller numbers of early year Undergraduate students.  

University of Edinburgh are proud to have a very diverse student population – our international students make up 48% of our student population and come from 167 countries. It is likely you will be asked about visas and so we encourage you to think about how you will handle these enquiries on the day.  Recruiting international students can be easier than you think. Read through our guidance and familiarise yourself with your organisation’s procedures. 

We encourage students to prepare for the fair by researching the organisations who are attending. Realistically though, we know that some students will not have done as much preparation as others – but they may still be great potential candidates for you.  You can make the most of your interactions with students by:  

• Ensuring your exhibitor stand is as comprehensive as possible. This is often the first point of contact for students in the fair, so having a comprehensive stand will enable quality, varied conversations on the day.  

• Include on your stand why you hire from Scottish Universities, what someone from X discipline brings to your organisation and the kind of work previous hires from Scotland are doing now. This makes an organisation much more approachable than just sharing generic content from your website. It makes students more comfortable to request conversations to find out more and means the conversations you have on the day are of a much better quality.  

• Rather than lots of short conversations with many students, at an online fair you are more likely to have fewer live chats than at an in-person event, but these are likely to be longer, with students who are more engaged and have done more homework (given resources are easily accessible on the virtual stand)  

• Having a minimum of two/three representatives in the platform that are available to speak with attendees throughout the day.   

• Being prepared to answer a wide range of questions - even if your main aim is to talk to students relevant for your graduate level roles, some early year students may still attend and ask you advice on what they can be doing now to enhance their applications later; a great opportunity to build your brand for the future.   

• If you don’t have live vacancies, give students a general picture of how your organisation recruits - so that they understand how they can increase their chances of finding roles you may have in the future.    

• Talking on a personal level – be prepared to share detail of your own career path, and give real life examples of what you/your colleagues are working on.   

• Being mindful that some students will prefer to use the text or audio function to speak with exhibitors - this is a personal preference.    

• Being mindful of using jargon on your exhibition stand–  the level of technical expertise of attendees will vary so we would encourage you to consider that use of acronyms or jargon may be off-putting – we’d ask for your help in supporting as many students as possible to feel like a future in tech may be an option for them.   

• Familiarising yourself with your organisation’s processes regarding sponsorship of international students. Are you sure you can’t sponsor? You will really widen your pool of potential candidates and it is easier than you think.  

• Get in touch with employers@ed.ac.uk if you have any other questions or if anything isn’t clear.