With news that UK unemployment figures amongst under twenty-fives are at a record high of almost one million, it is no wonder we have lost our sense of ambition even though most career aims are probably more realistic that our childhood dreams of what we wanted to be when we grew up.

Walking around the careers fair last week, it was clear that graduate job-hunting for most people is no longer about finding a perfect first job, but instead about finding any first job. Staff enticed me with everything from promotional pens to private dinner invitations, and with a recent study by The Guardian UK 300 finding that on average students now make twenty seven applications before finding a position, surely recruiters are doing something right. Is this, however, just a sign that we have become increasingly desperate and less picky about where we end up.

Even if most of us are willing to stick out slavish fifty-hour week office jobs for a couple of years, we like to think that at least we will be properly compensated later. Statistically the graduate job market is now the most buoyant it has been in five years, but "competitive" salaries are certainly not on the increase. Earlier this year Graduate Prospects found that only half of all graduates polled were happy with the amount they were earning. The Guardian UK 300 survey, of 15,200 students, recently recorded the amounts that graduates expected to earn as their starting salary - media, property and retail could only hope to earn up to £16,000. Only one sector, investment banking, was likely to get you a starting salary above the median graduate wage of £25,000.

Is it simply the case that we are being undersold, or are we guilty of unrealistic earning expectations? The Times Top 100 Employers Guide has said that forty-one percent of companies claimed to have "competitive" rates of pay, but to the financially naïve student, what "competitive" actually means is hard to figure out. We can all be guilty of applying for jobs we have no real interest in, because we think the paycheque will be enough to justify it. For those of you in the same position as me, drowing in applications and psychometric tests, I would say: make sure that money is no the only thing driving your interest in a particular career; companies will see straight through it and reject you almost instantly.

Graduate salary expectations aren't what they used to be, so try instead to choose a career that gives you opportunities to progress, along with a challenging but enjoyable workload, and you might get to that ideal pay ticket sooner than you think.