When someone tells you that you have a bright future ahead of you, you believe them. Of course you believe them – especially if they’re your university tutors, beaming at your graduation and saying you’re destined for great things. But it’s been nearly two years since that day, and I’m now a semi-jobless, semi-homeless and very tired graduate, with two fancy degrees and too much experience with British bureaucracy. Turns out the real test came after my last exam, in the form of the unassuming – but all-consuming – graduate visa.
A post-study scheme meant to attract ‘the best and brightest global talent’, the graduate visa lets international students work here after graduation, typically for two years and seemingly without the usual red tape. No employer sponsorship is required; no job offer is needed to apply. You can work in pretty much any job, in any field. The application takes just a few clicks.
It seemed like the perfect opportunity for someone who wanted to start a career here. I’d moved from Singapore to the UK at the age of nineteen, shivering off the plane but undaunted by the weather. Everything felt so much bigger than the tiny country I came from; everywhere I turned were traces of history, art and literature – from the blue plaque saying Virginia Woolf once lived down the road from my university, to the artists’ quarters I found along a quiet cobbled street in Forest Hill. My love for this expansive, interesting, offbeat side of British culture was why I chose to study English Literature here, first at UCL and then at Oxford. It’s also why I wanted to stay on after my studies.
So I applied for the graduate visa, hoping that it’d bring me one step closer (albeit nearly £3,000 poorer) to the life I’d moved across the world to build. Those dreams were promptly dashed. I was well aware that the job search wouldn’t be easy, even with good grades, several internships and a smattering of extracurriculars. I’d even started sending out applications while still writing my final dissertation. But I didn’t expect it to be nearly impossible.
Post-graduation life quickly settled into a grim routine of doomscrolling job sites, cold-emailing recruiters and firing off applications that soon stretched beyond publishing and journalism to anything I was remotely qualified for. Ironically, the only people who approved of my resumé were the two strangers who deemed me flatmate material in London. The real employers, not so much. Endless interviews bounced me between every rung of the org chart; application tasks had me churning out press releases and campaign ideas that disappeared into the void. Occasionally, a personality test would even roll around, asking me to rate everything from how happy people were when they saw me (a bashful ‘somewhat’), to how good I was at making decisions (revealingly, ‘neither agree nor disagree’).
At first, I blamed the market. 2023 had been brutal for job seekers, with graduate vacancies dropping by around 40% compared to pre-pandemic levels. I was lucky to even get callbacks, I told myself, trying to remember that the rejections weren’t personal. Until an interview made me realise that, actually, some of them were.
My call with the recruiter had been going well; she said I was a perfect fit and just needed to confirm my right to work. But when I assured her that I was on the graduate visa, the line went quiet. That means I can work in the UK for two years, I added, thinking she might be unfamiliar with the scheme. She sighed.
‘I’m sorry, but we’re really looking for someone we can see staying with us long-term – someone already settled here.’
