Thousands of students are graduating this summer and if you’re one of them then it will soon be time for you to knuckle down and start searching for a job. After three or maybe more years of studying you may think that most of the hard work is behind you, but in the current economic climate finding a job is not the easiest task for anyone, and this includes graduates. The competition for graduate jobs is just as tough, if not tougher, than competition across the rest of the job market, and you’ll need to put in the hard yards to ensure that you get the rewards you’re after.

As a job hunter in the 21st century, you can be safe in the knowledge that searching for a position is far easier than it used to be. The time where you had to trawl around individual shops and employers looking for vacancies is long gone and even having to look through the job section in newspapers is largely a thing of the past.

Now you can search through the available positions in your area from the comfort of your own home and with just a few clicks of your mouse you could be a step closer to landing your dream job.

Having spent a good deal of time working towards your degree, it’s likely that you’ll want to use the skills you’ve learned in your first post-student work. Depending on the subject you studied, the employment sector that you wish to work in could be a straightforward decision; a science-based degree such as mathematics, for instance, is likely to lead to a job where you use numbers every day, with vacancies including those in accountancy likely to be your number one target.

Many degrees, however, teach you a broad set of skills that can be applied to a number of different jobs, leaving the direction in which you choose to go relatively open. It’s down to you to make a firm decision about the sector of work in which you wish to be employed, as this will help you to narrow down the vacancies you search through and will ultimately lead you to find a job you’re happy with more quickly. Whichever industry or range of jobs that may be, you can specify it during your online searches to bring up a number of vacancies that tick all of your boxes.

Like most job hunters, the location in which you wish to work may be your main concern and is likely to be one of the first criterions you state. You may have a preference to work somewhere near the area that you have lived in for most of your life and returned to after finishing studying, or conversely you may wish to seek employment in the city in which you went to university. Either way, you can narrow your job search by entering a location and then specifying how far you’re prepared to travel to work each day.

As a recent graduate, you’re also of the age where you’re largely free to choose your place of work. Having few ties to specific locations, it’s feasible that, if your perfect job were to become available in a certain city in the UK, you’d be able to relocate. Such scenarios are becoming more common: in the current climate job seekers are forced to go where the work is. Luckily, it’s much easier for youngsters who don’t have to carry much baggage with them.

As with many jobs London is home to a fair proportion of graduate employment and the capital is a good location in which to focus your fledgling career; many of the UK’s top companies are located in the city. A high proportion of graduate schemes and jobs that involve university leavers being trained on the job are situated in London, too, so there are plenty of options.

If you’ve done plenty of research and have found a handful of specific companies that you wish to work for, then you can see what vacancies they currently have listed online. If they have nothing available, then you can always look again in a couple of days as the available positions are constantly updated. Alternatively, you can search through the jobs that are listed and see if any take your fancy.

If you have your heart set on working for a specific employer, then it may be that they have vacancies available somewhere else in the country. The BBC, for instance, is one company that is relocating a lot of its staff and if you’re looking for BBC jobs Manchester is now where you may have to move to. So if you’re really keen on working in the media, whether that’s radio or TV, then the option of moving to the north-west is one you’ll have to consider.

Once you’ve searched the Internet for post-university employment, you’re likely to have come across a number of jobs that interest you. The next step to take is actually applying for them, and with the national press recently reporting that, on average, 69 university leavers apply for each graduate job, you may have to make many job applications before you’re successful.

You’re bound to experience a few setbacks in this tough time for graduates and it’s just a case of persevering. By making a number of applications it's only a matter of time until you get called to an interview, which gives you the opportunity to catch a potential employer’s eye. In the meantime, it’s worth looking at part-time employment so that you have a regular stream of income. This also gives you something to keep you going while you’re in search of that perfect job.