Administration & management JOBS

Administration and management are extremely broad and varied areas - organisations from all kinds of industries offer the chance to join a graduate-trainee manager scheme. Graduates are attracted to these for a whole host of reasons, including the opportunity to take responsibility for tasks and ensure their completion, and the chance to be a leader.

What qualities do you need for management?

Do you like to be in charge of other people? Do you get a buzz out of meeting deadlines? Do you like to think creatively to solve problems? A career in management involves all this and much more.
It is also about getting things done, running things, and making sure they work – usually with the help of other people.
All organisations need good management to make sure their business works efficiently. Managers work in finance, retail, government, advertising, media, law, charities and hospitals. Whatever the sector, there are graduate management opportunities open to you.
Read job profiles for different administration and management job descriptions.

What does a graduate manager do?

This really depends on what type of manager you are, but let’s take an example. Imagine you are a manager of a supermarket. You would have loads of things to sort out on a daily basis. Your responsibilities might include:

• making sure you have enough staff to work in each department
• overseeing decisions about ordering and delivering goods
• dealing with customers’ complaints
• motivating staff
• coming up with new ideas to improve the service
• dealing with administration / paperwork.

Although the job of a manager is very broad, any graduate management job can be broken down into three main areas:

• fixing problems (dealing with any problems from staff, customers, or faulty equipment)
• keeping things going (completing paperwork such as processing invoices needed to keep a service in operation)
• doing new things (generating new ways of doing business, particularly if it saves money or generates extra income).

Different types of management

Management can vary greatly in different contexts and your experience will be affected by all of the following:
Environment and culture
Being a manager of a supermarket, for instance, will feel very different from being a manager in the National Health Service: each work environment has different values and aims.
Level of responsibility
As a graduate manager, you will be more involved in ’hands-on’ management such as making sure things are run properly, serving customers and generally mucking in. As you become more senior, you will have grander issues to consider, such as the strategic direction of an organisation.
General versus specialist managers
As well as general management, people are often recruited to work on specific projects. If you like a specific focus and the option of not always having to manage lots of teams, project management could be for you.
Project managers can also work in particular functions such as human resources (HR), sales, marketing, logistics, finance and IT. Specific knowledge and qualifications are usually required for these roles.
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Graduate routes into management

It is possible to get to senior management positions by starting from a low-level administrative position, but for many new graduates, an accelerated entry route into a managerial career is through one of the many graduate management training schemes on offer.
It is important to look carefully at the quality of training and management qualifications as much as starting salary; good training will ensure success in the long term.
Graduates generally enter management in three main ways:

• through a graduate management training scheme (apply in the autumn term of your final year)
• by joining an organisation in an administrative capacity and working their way up
• by training in a specific function (HR, finance, marketing, sales, etc) and then moving into a specialist or generalist management role.