Early-career guidance for graduates, National Service personnel and students about to become both. The recurring theme is evidence: employers are not scoring where you sat, they are looking for proof that you can be handed something unclear and produce something useful, which is most of what early-career work is.
That shapes the advice. Keep a record of what you actually did, because a year reconstructed from memory becomes one line on a CV that says nothing. Ask for the task nobody wants, because it is the one whose completion is visible. Leave with two people who can describe your work specifically, rather than twenty who remember you were pleasant.
We also cover the mechanics candidates lose on before anyone meets them — the CV mistake that costs interviews, the opening interview question that is not asking for a life story, and how to answer it when you have no employment history but plenty of experience. Those are different things, and treating them as the same is the most common self-inflicted wound at this stage.
