Applying online is the slow lane.

It gives you the categories — professional body boards, industry association pages, university careers services with employers recruiting only their graduates, company careers pages, local business networks, sector newsletters, public sector portals and specialist agencies — plus how to find the current ones in your field. Naming live sites would be out of date almost immediately, and the big ones you already know are the most crowded route anyway.

The arithmetic is stark. On the same assumptions, 20 applications a week for 12 weeks produces about 9.6 conversations. Twelve applications plus five direct messages a week produces about 20.8 — more than double, with less time spent on application forms. That's because reply rates to a specific, personal message are many times higher than to a posting with hundreds of applicants.

Never "are you hiring?" — that ends the conversation. Ask for fifteen minutes of advice about how they got into the field and what they'd do in your position, mention a genuine connection (same university, same course, something specific about their work), and make it easy to decline. Alumni in particular reply to their own graduates far more often than to strangers.

Usually that's inaccurate rather than true. Dissertations, society roles, part-time jobs, volunteering and projects all contain the things employers actually buy: specific skills, evidence you delivered something, and reliability. The guide translates what you've done into that language, and widens your target to roles your degree genuinely qualifies you for.

Nobody can honestly promise a timeline — it varies by field, country and year. What the guide gives you is diagnosis: no responses at all points to targeting or materials, responses but no interviews points to the application, interviews but no offers points to interview performance. And if the search is grinding you down, that's common rather than a personal failing — the university careers and wellbeing service, or a doctor, are worth talking to.