THE difficulty postgraduates often face in finding appropriate opportunities in the world of employment was the catalyst for entrepreneur Esther Dingley to establish her business.

PostGrad Room, which is in the process of being established, will manage a postgraduate recruitment service alongside a series of training courses to help in promoting themselves to top graduate recruiters.

The business, which she is aiming to take UK-wide, comes as an extension of Ms Dingley’s initial venture, postgraduate networking website Graduate Junction, which she set up while herself a postgraduate and secured 13,000 users within ten months.

There are about four million postgraduates worldwide, and Ms Dingley, an Oxford graduate who became a postgraduate at Durham University, said the skills acquired in studies after an initial degree are very specialist and are often not fulfilled by the general employment market.

Dutch-born Ms Dingley said: “Postgraduate study has become increasingly popular in recent years. There is a common misconception amongst graduate recruiters that postgraduate study is too specific to be useful and that the choice to remain in education after a first degree indicates a desire to work in academia.

“The market for undergraduate recruitment is a £1bn industry, but the difficulties of targeting highlyemployable postgraduates mean the market is practically untouched. The decentralization of information flow to postgraduates presents great opportunities in this sector.”

Through her imminent creation of PostGrad Room, which will offer both online and offline resources, Ms Dingley has been named as one of two finalists in the If We Can, You Can challenge, run by the Entrepreneurs’ Forum in conjunction with The Northern Echo, which seeks to find the North-East’s business leaders of tomorrow.

She is competing against Claire Mitchell, joint founder of online male make-up business astonmitchell, based in Bowes, County Durham.

The venture has already struck a deal to become one of only a handful of global outlets to sell products made by Michelle Probst, personal make-up artist to President Obama.

Ms Dingley’s previous venture won the Durham University prize in the Blueprint awards, which commend businesses established by university students, and was highly commended in the regional awards.

She said being an entrepreneur is something she had always wanted to achieve, and is looking forward to the future.

“I have known for a long time that I wanted to be my own boss.

“Starting out in business has been such a steep learning curve which I find very satisfying, having enjoyed learning throughout my entire life,” she said.

“I am confident that I have identified a significant gap in the market based upon my own personal experience and am very motivated to make this vision a reality.”

■ How to vote: TO vote for Claire or Esther to win the If We Can, You Can challenge by texting necho followed by a space and the full name of the selected finalists to 07624 803 199; or by emailing Northern Echo to voting@entrepreneursforum.

net with the full name of the chosen winner.

The public vote will then be combined with scores given by a panel of judges to determine the overall winner.

Further information on how to vote can be found at ifwecanyoucan.co.uk