How to Choose Which Job
to Aim For After Graduating
Last updated 15 September 2026
Every other tool on this site measures you against a target role. A CV score, a skill gap list and a course path all need one, which makes choosing it the first step of the whole thing and the one nobody writes about. This is how to do it from live adverts in an evening, rather than from your degree subject or from a list of careers.
Work Backwards From Adverts, Not Forwards From Your Degree
The standard approach is to start from what you studied and ask what it qualifies you for. It produces a list of job titles and almost no information, because a title tells you nothing about what the work is or what getting hired into it requires.
The approach that works is the other direction. Start from adverts that exist right now, read enough of them that the repetition becomes visible, and let the requirements tell you what the job is and how far from it you are. It is less satisfying than a careers questionnaire and it is about the market you will actually apply into, this year, in your city.
It also has a property the introspective approach lacks: it produces a target you can immediately test. Within a week you can score your CV against it, see which requirements you already answer, and find out whether the target was realistic, which is information no amount of thinking would have given you.
The Five Steps
1Name three or four candidate titles
Not a field, titles. Marketing is not a target, marketing executive and digital marketing assistant and marketing analyst are three different jobs asking for different things. Take them from adverts you have already seen and from the job titles of people a few years ahead of you, rather than from a list of careers.
2Read ten real adverts for each, and write down what repeats
This is the whole method and it is the step people skip. Requirements that appear in most postings are the job. Requirements appearing in one or two are a single employer's preference. An evening of this tells you more than any careers article, including this one, because it is about the market you are actually applying into rather than the market in general.
3Check what each one pays where you actually live
Before you commit months. Pay varies more by city, sector and employer type than by title, and a direction that looks better paid in the abstract may not be in your market. Check published bands for your own city rather than a national average or a figure from another country.
4Measure yourself against each title, honestly
Take the repeated requirements and mark each as evidenced on your CV, asserted with nothing behind it, or missing. Do this for all three titles. The distribution is the answer: one of them will come back mostly evidenced or mostly asserted, and that is your target, whatever you felt about the titles beforehand.
5Pick the nearest defensible one and start
Not the most appealing, the nearest that you would not resent. Beginning against a target you can reach lets everything else start working: you can tailor a CV, close one gap, and apply. A perfect target you are two years from produces no action at all, which is the most expensive outcome available.
Where the Site Does Each Step For You
The method above needs nothing but an evening and a text file. Step one, the reading of the adverts, has no tool behind it here and cannot have one: nothing on this site reads a job board. The steps after it do.
- Job Scout, for the pay question on a shortlisted title. Search a job title and a country for a pay band by experience level, a median, the employers that hire for the role, the factors that move pay and the skills a model names as in demand. It is one model call, not a job board: it reads no postings and counts no vacancies, so the adverts in steps one and two are still yours to read.
- The salary pages, for step three. Published bands for Dubai, Riyadh and Jeddah rather than a national average, so the pay question is answered for the city you are actually in.
- CV and Job Match, for step four. Paste your CV and a posting and it marks each requirement as evidenced, asserted or missing. Run it against all three candidate titles and compare.
- Course Path, for what is left. Once a target is chosen, it orders the gaps between your CV and that role and names one course against each.
Five Ways Graduates Choose Badly
- Choosing from job titles alone. The title tells you almost nothing about the daily work, and the gap between what a title sounds like and what the person does is where most early career regret comes from.
- Choosing from your degree subject. It narrows the field less than you think, and using it as a rule removes roles you would get.
- Choosing from salary alone. Pay differences between adjacent graduate titles are usually smaller than the differences between cities and sectors within one title.
- Waiting until you feel certain. Certainty comes from applying and interviewing, not from more deliberation, so waiting for it guarantees a year of not moving.
- Targeting the job you want in five years. That job is filled by people who did the one before it. Target the one before it.
If You Are Applying in the Gulf
Two things change the calculation. Postings in Saudi Arabia and the UAE tend to be more explicit about named requirements and credentials than UK ones, which is genuinely useful at step two: the repeated list is easier to build because employers state more of it. And the spread of pay between employer types, multinational, local group, government linked, is wide enough that it is worth treating as part of the target rather than a detail to sort out later.
Our Gulf salary guide covers what moves pay in the region, and the salary pages hold the city by city bands.
Once You Have Picked One
A target is not a commitment, it is a measuring stick. Everything downstream gets easier the moment one exists, and nothing downstream works without one.
- Job adverts are not vacancies. If you picked the target by which field looked biggest, read this: the counts behind that impression measure advertising rather than jobs.
- How to find the skill gaps on your CV. The distance between where you are and the target you just chose, and which part of it is real.
- How to improve your CV, in the order that matters. Six steps, most of which are free, and only the last one needs a course.
- What to put on a CV with no experience. If the honest count at step four came back mostly missing.
- The job hunting guide. What to do once the target and the CV are both settled.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I decide what job to go for after graduating?
Work backwards from live adverts rather than forwards from your degree. Pick three or four job titles that sound plausible, read ten real postings for each, and note what they actually ask for and what they pay. Most people do the opposite: they decide on a career from the title alone, then discover two years later what the work involves. Ten postings per title takes an evening and it is the cheapest research available.
Should I pick a job that matches my degree?
Your degree narrows the field far less than most graduates assume, and treating it as a rule closes off roles you would get. What a degree reliably buys you is the filter that says degree required, plus whatever specific skills you can actually demonstrate. Outside genuinely licensed professions like medicine and law, the subject matters much less than the evidence. Read the adverts, not the course title.
How many roles should I be targeting at once?
Two or three related titles, not one and not eight. One is fragile and leaves you with nothing if the market for it is thin this year. Eight means every application is generic, and with limited experience relevance is the only lever you have. Two or three adjacent titles usually share most of their requirements, so the same preparation serves all of them.
What if I do not know what I want to do at all?
Then do not try to answer it in the abstract, because thinking harder about it does not work. Pick the three titles that look least objectionable, read ten adverts for each, and notice which list of daily tasks you react to least badly. Negative selection is much more reliable than trying to identify a passion, and it produces a target you can start moving towards this month rather than a decision you postpone.
How do I know if a role is realistic for me right now?
Count. Take the requirements that repeat across the postings and mark each as evidenced on your CV, asserted with nothing behind it, or missing. If most are evidenced, apply now. If most are asserted, you have a writing problem and a good weekend fixes it. If most are missing, the role is one step too far and the right move is to find the job between here and there.
Should salary decide which role I target?
It should inform the choice and not make it, and it should be checked early rather than discovered late. Pay varies more by city, sector and employer type than by job title, so a title that looks better paid in the abstract may not be where you are. Look at published bands for your actual city before committing months of study to a direction.
Is it better to take any job or hold out for the right one?
Take the adjacent job. The useful question is not whether a role is the destination but whether it moves you towards one, and a job with some overlap does that while an unrelated one mostly does not. A year in a role that shares half its requirements with your target leaves you far better placed than a year of applying from outside.
How long should choosing take?
An evening for the research and a week to sit with it. This is not a decision that improves with months of deliberation, because the information that would settle it comes from applying and interviewing rather than from thinking. Pick a direction that is defensible, start, and change it when the evidence says to. A wrong target you correct in three months costs less than no target for a year.
More on your CV and your job search
- How to List Online Courses on Your CV in 2026Where the certifications section goes, the five parts of one entry, and worked before and after examples.
- What to Put on a CV With No ExperienceThe four things that fill a graduate CV, the order to put them in, and where a course actually helps.
- Best Online Courses to Change Career in the UKEight UK destinations, the domestic credential each needs beside the platform certificate, the funded routes, and the ONS advert count for every occupation.
- How to Plan Your Career Path with Online CoursesA practical method to map your direction, close skill gaps, and change careers.
- How Language Certificates Boost Your CV in 2026Which language certificates employers recognise and how to present language skills professionally.
- Advancing Your CV with Language Skills in 2026How to build language skills strategically and stand out in international job markets.
Price the target before you commit an evening to it
Search a job title and a country for what the role pays by experience level, the employers that hire for it and the skills a model names as in demand. The adverts of steps one and two are still yours to read: nothing here counts postings.