“The job market is so insane right now. I’ve got work experience and internships from the UK, Paris and Hong Kong. I’ve taken courses, networked and am working in an admin job to try to get more skills, after no luck with applications.”

Having graduated from the University of Oxford with a first class BA in English and French last year, Emma*, a 23-year-old from London, said she has been on the hunt for a graduate job in publishing and adjacent industries since. She is now sending out five applications a week, alongside a full-time job, and has so far secured just four interviews and an offer of a minimum wage internship – which was retracted.

“My parents’ idea of ‘if you work hard, you’ll get what you want’ doesn’t really work any more. The older generations’ expectation that if you’ve got a ‘good degree and good skills you’ll be fine’ is just no longer tenable. I feel like I’m throwing myself at a brick wall.”

Emma was one of dozens of recent university leavers from across the UK who shared their struggles to secure their first graduate job, in response to an online call-out by the Guardian.

Graduates described “soul-destroying” job hunts in many apparently saturated fields spanning months or even years, companies that had “ghosted” applicants who had completed online assessments or taken months to respond, and being unable to land jobs they felt they were overqualified for.

Even respondents who had graduated with a first class degree, often from prestigious universities, and even in subjects such as engineering, computing, cybersecurity or other STEM sectors thought to be crying out for skilled workers, said they had been sending dozens or even hundreds of applications without getting an interview.

Although most UK students find jobs not long after leaving university – with 61% of those who graduated in 2022 having gained full-time work 15 months later – many of them will find non-graduate work only: according to the Office for National Statistics, last year just 60.4% of graduates living in England aged 21-30 were in “high-skilled” work, while 26.4% of this group were in medium or low-skilled employment and 5.5% unemployed.

About half of the recent graduates who got in touch said they had taken non-graduate jobs in hospitality, retail, administration, call centres, supply teaching or in temporary positions on the minimum wage to keep afloat. Many said that jobs labelled as “entry level” positions usually require at least one, and often several, years of professional experience.

Various people reported that they had been unaware how important practical experience was to recruiters, or that they had simply been unable to find a placement in a relevant industry or lacked the funds to support themselves through an unpaid internship, citing the high cost of living as a significant factor.

“It’s been really tough,” said a 21-year-old from Suffolk, who has been unable to find graduate work. “I wish I’d known how important placements were – I had to drop my placement year as I couldn’t find any placements to apply to. There were a couple but I couldn’t afford commuting to London to then work for free.”

One 25-year-old modern languages and literature graduate from Edinburgh, who is now working in hospitality, after failing to secure a single interview from more than 50 job applications sent in recent months, said: “The competition is extreme. I may have found employment more quickly and easily if I had taken a vocational degree and put my interests to one side.”

Of the respondents who had been successful, many said their best advice for students was to contact their university’s careers service, to gain as much practical experience as possible before, during and after their degree, and to pick up additional skills.

Noah, 23, a data analyst from Norwich, said he found his £36,000-a-year job because he had taught himself the coding language Python during his international relations and modern history BA, and subsequently applied for graduate schemes at two large software engineering companies.

“Although I didn’t necessarily have the skills they expected for a software engineer, Python gave me a bit of an edge, and my now manager picked up that I was easy to get along and work with in a team,” he said.

Several respondents from overseas said they had all but given up on the search and were likely to return, or had already returned, home to countries such as Poland and Italy, where they felt they may have better chances.

Scores of graduates cited frustrations with time-consuming applications recruiters rarely responded to, and many felt that it mattered more “to know the right people” or to possess insider knowledge than to meet the formal job criteria.

Notably, graduates looking for work in the arts, design and humanities said they had found it impossible to find graduate work without connections.

Gabriel, 25, a history and English graduate from London, sent 500 applications and, after being rejected from more than 20 internships for being “overqualified”, he finally landed a £25,000-a-year admin job thanks to “secondhand nepotism”, he said.

“It’s all based on referrals,” Gabriel said. “There’s just too many people looking for entry-level jobs.”

Despite recruiters’ claims that there is strong demand for highly skilled workers, employers on average received 86 applications for each graduate vacancy in 2023, up 23% on the previous year, according to a report by the Institute of Student Employers. Yet, 54% of employers told the survey that they found it difficult to recruit at least one of their graduate roles – an 11% increase – suggesting that there is an oversupply of graduate workers lacking relevant skills. Employers also appear reluctant to take on or train young staff amid a fragile economic climate.

Total UK employer investment in skills has been in steep decline, having fallen 19% for each employee, in real terms, between 2011 and 2022. There have been even sharper declines in larger businesses (-35%) and primary (-44%), and public (-38%) service sectors, leading to an underequipped workforce and employers struggling to fill vacancies, despite steady growth in graduate numbers.

With graduate jobs increasingly concentrated in London, 42% of university-educated workers outside the city now work in a job that does not require a degree, up from 31% in 1993. The share is highest in Lincolnshire and Cumbria, where more than half of graduates work in non-graduate jobs (58% and 52%), according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

Some of those respondents whose parents lived in London said they were able to stay with them while job hunting, while others reported having to return to their home towns as they lacked the funds to search for graduate work in bigger cities.

A number of people said they had, in desperation, enrolled in master’s degrees or even PhDs because they had been unable to find gainful employment after graduation.

Several respondents said they had big concerns about potentially discriminatory AI tools aiding recruiters in their selection of candidates, and many complained about having to film awkward video interviews that did not allow them to present themselves naturally.

Joshua Morgan, 30, from Tarbolton, South Ayrshire, who managed to find a job as a power systems consultant, said he is very happy after graduating with an MSc in renewable energy systems technology last year, but he is concerned that the recruitment systems he encountered were “geared so much against people coming in”.

“Getting through that initial sift is so much harder now than it was. Amazing people from my course are still looking [for jobs] because automatic filters don’t allow people to show you their worth,” he said.

“I applied to 150 jobs over several months with a 10% success rate for interviewing. Just sending that many tailored CVs and cover letters into a void is soul-destroying and I’m one of the lucky ones who landed a job in the industry I wanted in a relatively small amount of time.”

Application processes for graduate schemes in particular had been, in his experience, “hostile, impersonal and condescending”.

He added: “Employers know they have a lot of choice and many treat you poorly in the application process because of it. It’s very depressing.”

*Name has been changed