Tanya de Grunwald is the founder of graduate careers advice blog Graduate Fog and author of How to Get a Graduate Job Now. One of the UK’s most vocal campaigners on fair pay, social mobility and diversity, she regularly names and shames employers who pay less than the minimum wage (high profile scalps include Tony Blair, X Factor, Vivienne Westwood and Arcadia). Graduate Fog now attracts 45,000 page views per month and has just secured its first corporate sponsor, professional services firm Grant Thornton.
What inspired you to start Graduate Fog?
The challenge facing today’s graduates is exciting – so I can’t work out why graduate careers content is so boring, especially as it’s meant to be written for a twenty-something audience. I’m proud to have proved that you can engage young people on the subject of jobs.
How did you attract your first readers?
When Graduate Fog launched, the media was obsessed with tuition fees – but no-one was talking about the problems graduates were facing after university. Unpaid internships had become a huge issue – yet no-one was writing about it. When I saw an advert from a big name employer advertising an unpaid role, I’d ask for an explanation. Then I’d publish our email exchange on Graduate Fog. Usually it was excruciatingly awkward, or the employer was outrageously rude – or both. Either way, graduates loved it.
How did you know you were on to something?
One of Graduate Fog’s first ‘name and shames’ was James Caan. The headline was “Dragons’ Den multimillionaire wants you to work for free”. It went crazy on Twitter. X Factor was another big hit. When Caitlin Moran retweeted the story during the show’s live final, 5,000 people visited Graduate Fog in one hour.
What keeps you awake at night?
I get really angry about powerful, wealthy business owners beating down young people on wages and rights. The darkest thing about the normalisation of unpaid work is that many young people now feel their labour has no worth. From there it’s a very short step to feeling they themselves have no worth. I’ve had several readers post comments saying they’ve considered suicide. I worry about that a lot.
What makes a good day?
It’s crazy when a Graduate Fog exclusive story goes viral. I wrote about planned BBC TV show called ‘Britain’s Hardest Grafter’ which I thought sounded rather tasteless – and within 24 hours it had been picked up by all the mainstream press and 25,000 people had signed a petition for the show to be scrapped. I also enjoy doing live career advice events. Most recently I spoke to science graduates at ‘New Scientist Live: From Class to Career’ at Imperial College London. So much of my work is online so it’s fun to meet graduates in person. Often their questions are familiar, but one or two will always surprise me or teach me something new.
How important have mentors been when building your site?
Hugely – but I didn’t realise that’s who they were until recently, as mentors don’t wear a badge wearing ‘mentor’! For example, many are younger than me – and have taught me a lot about using WordPress and Twitter. I never went out to collect new mentors, but I’ve collected and kept in touch with a huge range of smart and interesting people. That means that whenever I face a problem now, I think ‘Who will have the answer?’
How do you identify a possible mentor or coach?
By the glint in their eye. People either get Graduate Fog and love it instantly, or they never will. A great contact will practically high-five me when I tell them about naming and shaming Tony Blair and X Factor. That’s when I know I’m talking to someone who is likely to be generous with their contacts and advice.
What is the secret to a good relationship with a mentor?
Keeping in touch. It’s easy to email someone, meet them for a coffee, thank them – and never contact them again. The key is to keep nurturing that relationship. If you meet someone they introduced you to, remember to report back how it went. If you see them mentioned in a newspaper or magazine, drop them a line to say you loved the story. Or if you hear a bit of gossip that will make them laugh, ping it over. It helps if you choose mentors who you actually like. Then keeping in touch isn’t a chore, it’s a laugh.
What personal qualities have helped you make Graduate Fog a success?
My weirdly high tolerance for confrontation and awkwardness is a gift. I never worry if a news story is too much – so I’ll happily name and shame Tony Blair, Simon Cowell or Sir Philip Green for having unpaid interns, or expose a weird Conservative Party memo instructing MPs to re-brand their interns as ‘campaign volunteers’. Bring it on. If I’m worried about a legal issue, I run it past a top lawyer I know. He hates unpaid internships too, so he helps me for free.
What advice can you give about the benefits of networking?
Be picky. You can waste a lot of time schmoozing the wrong people. I quickly discovered that many ‘networking’ events were just a room full of other entrepreneurs, all looking for investment. Nobody had any money – or anything else of value to me. So what was I doing there? That sounds ruthless but you have to be when you’re not being paid. The only good thing about those events was meeting other entrepreneurs with really terrible business ideas, who seemed to have found investment. That’s always encouraging.
Any advice for budding entrepreneurs?
My mantra is: be bold, not boring. I don’t publish anything I wouldn’t read myself. Being the founder, editor and main writer has been a huge advantage – being entirely independent means I can get things done quicker than anyone else. If you have a business idea, get a pilot or trial version going fast, see what sticks – and tweak it from there. Don’t spend months planning something that you’re not sure there’s a market for.
Any surprises?
I thought Graduate Fog was going to be a careers website – I had no idea the blog would take off as it has, or that unpaid internship would become ‘our’ issue. I also didn’t expect such a warm, inclusive community to emerge as fast as it did. Quite often, graduates post comments saying they feel really down as they’re struggling with their job hunt. Before I can reply with my support or advice, five or 10 readers will already have chipped in with theirs. That gives me goosebumps.
What’s next for you and the website?
Graduate Fog’s partnership with Grant Thornton is going brilliantly, so I’m keen to start working with two or three more firms. I don’t want dozens – I’d prefer to work with a handful of really special, committed organisations who love Graduate Fog and totally get what we’re doing (if you’re reading this, get in touch!). For it to work, we have to share the same values. It’s vital they feel passionately about social mobility, diversity and the importance of fair access to the best graduate jobs. I’m also doing more speaker events and consultancy work. My big goal for next year is to improve the relationship between employers and graduate job seekers. The ‘them’ and ‘us’ dynamic shouldn’t be that difficult to change. It’s all about understanding where the other side is coming from.
