Credit: WIktor Szymanowicz/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
It’s graduation day at the University of St Andrews and I keep thinking that the ceremony, which happens virtually, must have been pre-recorded. The speakers take turns to recite their speech, framed by a display of heraldic designs. Little is lifelike about the words and gestures of the vice-chancellor in her address to students, and already by the third studied pause for breath I grow impatient.
When my name is read out, I affect a smile for the benefit of my mum. There is a wicked pleasure to feeling so removed from such a major life event. The choirboys and bagpipes add extravagance to an already surreal spectacle: beyond the screen, we are afforded no interlude from the cacophony of the present job crisis (for which the university’s emphasis on “networking” over the years has done little to prepare us). My precarious situation has, by now, clearly become a monomania, through whose filter any show of gaiety appears in bad taste.
I belong to what some unpalatably call “Generation Covid”. Just as I and thousands of other graduates were preparing to enter the job market last May, open vacancies dropped by 278,000 and two thirds of graduating students saw applications paused or withdrawn due to the pandemic. Since then, job-hunting has bordered on the farcical: an entire corpus of myths has originated from the effort by applicants to understand the dos and don’ts of the hiring process.
The practical value of university degrees has been publicly called into question, and academic career services have finally revealed their raison d’être: none whatsoever. And so CVs are handed out like flyers, in a scattershot fashion. Most of them are bound to disappear into a black hole: my couple hundred applications obtained a total of two interview invitations. Rejection letters, too, were provided only by a courteous minority.
Some of us young jobseekers cannot rely on generational wealth and a family home to sustain us through this crisis. My single mum raised me way beyond her financial means: though I missed nothing growing up, supporting us through her freelancing gigs was never what you’d call a breeze. A recent eviction notice has eroded the little security we had left, and made finding employment crucial to affording rent elsewhere.
Whenever applying to a role, I wish I could convey all that is contingent on the simple “yes” or “no” of my faceless correspondent. I yearn to explain that, even though my CV looks like that of countless others, a secure position means an immensity more to me than what is discernible. Yet, an unwritten rule binds me to reticence.
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SubscribeThe practical value of university degrees has been publicly called into question, and academic career services have finally revealed their raison d’être: none whatsoever.
this all depends on the degree. Major in engineering or some branch of technology, and finding a job is not exactly climbing Mt Everest. Major in grievance studies and companies have no idea where you’d fit and they worry about the social baggage you might bring along.
If you think struggling to find employment fresh out of college is tough, try doing it at 50 when you are suddenly deemed ‘too old’ or ‘out of touch’ by people who have not lived as long as you have worked. Either way, welcome to adulthood. It’s not for the faint of heart and there are no participation trophies.
Nice post. So true.
Over the last 6 years we have had over 100 young people from all over the world (mainly Europe) come and help us on our small holding, it’s a form of exchange.
Those who studied any form of technology, whether computer, any kind of engineering, geography etc have all found jobs.
Those that studied art, media, social studies etc have all struggled.
Boy, I loved the “grievance studies”… what a sharp summation!
The supermarkets are desperate for delivery drivers to provide food to people unable to get out. My experience is that they do not have long questionnaires and you can be earning within three weeks which may help with the creditors. The shift patterns will also allow you to continue writing and keep applying for other jobs. Good luck, and remember life doesn’t give you anything, hard work and talent are as important as qualifications. Never give in.
I doubt she went to the University of St Andrews to end up delivering food to other people. This kind of work would solve her most pressing needs, but it’s not a viable long-term solution. The truth is that she and her cohort have inherited an economy that has much less to offer them than to previous generations.
I realize that not all degrees are equal, nor are they meant to be. But it would be nice if universities acknowledged that fact and stopped promoting useless university degrees as the springboard to a prosperous, fulfilling life (and charging a lot of bucks for it too, as they do where I live).
Why would universities stop promoting useless degrees when they are making a lot money from it all?
Ain’t that the truth. There’s a dearth of leadership throughout society today, but someone ought to be holding the universities and colleges accountable for their widespread malfeasance and dishonesty.
it may not be a long-term solution but it solves a short-term need. We may want to recall that there is dignity in work, any work, and most of us have done jobs that are less than outstanding career moments but they served a purpose.
Thanks for your reply E.E.. If you read my comment again I think you will see I am not suggesting a long term solution. Periods of unemployment are caustic (although I am from a previous generation recession and unemployment are not new concepts to me) and the benefits and discipline of working go way beyond income. Particularly when, even in a lowly paid position, you are helping other people in need. Such jobs also ground you in life hopefully benefiting your eventual career when it takes off.
Mr Price, I think the problem here is not that there is a dearth of low-skilled job opportunities for the author. The problem is that we’re entering a new kind of economy defined by widespread obsolescence: there is a good chance that large swathes of the population will not be able to find jobs as machines will have taken over (hence all the talk about a universal basic income). This is a phenomenon largely unknown to previous generations, and it is one that may only be exacerbated by the economic damage caused by the response to COVID.
The risk, in short, is that the kind of solution that is supposed to be “short-term” for the author might actually turn out to be a long-term one, and this is what the author is worried about. Rightly, in my opinion.
You make a good point E.E. I agree that COVID will accelerate changes but I am more optimistic that this generation will adapt to the environment if they remain flexible and determined. It may not result in careers they dreamed of following but was it ever thus?
I am wondering quite what constitutes a ‘useless’ degree. Several generations of my mother’s family taught English, the first graduated in the early ’30s. All were highly respected as graduates. Education of any kind was appreciated at one time I suppose. Increasingly an Arts degree of any kind seems to be regarded with contempt and it saddens me that there is so little respect for any university degree that does not guarantee a corporate job. I graduated (with an arts degree) in the early 1980s and by being willing to work my way up from a fairly basic role was quickly promoted. I have encountered many middle class professionals as friends and colleagues down the years who fulfilled their parents’ wishes that they study a ‘practical’ subject that will lead to a ‘good’ job and ended up depressed and miserable fulfilling roles to which they were entirely unsuited. Conversely I know several people who have demonstrated that an Arts degree can be the basis for a fulfilling and flourishing career.
I disagree. The ability to find a job out of an Arts degree is predicated on individual talents that have poor correlation with the Arts curriculum. The portion of Arts graduates that needs to count on such skillset is huge and keeps growing, in part out of intellectual laziness that make so many cringe with the very mention of the acronym STEM.
The Arts will always have value, as a few of the graduates will indeed deliver something needed by society. Unfortunately right now, the Arts Colleges and Universities are no more than a repository of people that “chose it” because it is easier to get in. It is surely giving the Arts the bad name it currently has in terms of academic and social value. Not to mention the Arts academia eternal vulnerability to nefarious ideologisms…
Too many undergraduates in the Arts makes sense I suppose. A glut of Sports Science graduates in the aftermath of The Olympics did diminish the currency of that degree for a time as I recall and many were unable to find relevant employment. As far as ultimate success is concerned (rather than just immediate employment) an top class arts degree from a good university trumps a middling degree from an erstwhile technical college if the graduate is willing to work hard and embark on whatever further training is required. It is not right to generalise.
The insane growth of forensic science degrees coz we’ve watched TV crime shows and it looks cool. The number of actual jobs UK wide is tiny.
Ms. Mowat, a “useless degree” is one that leaves its holder drowning in debt and with little in the way of job prospects other than working as a “barrista” at Starbucks.
I find this situation deplorable and sad, but it’s not one of my own making! I am just being realistic. I have seen too many young people with a humanities degree ending up with jobs that they had never wanted (or studied) to do, underpaid and intellectually unfulfilling. If they were lucky, their parents had paid for their degrees. If not, well, the creditors were waiting.
Thanks for replying EE. My generation of graduates, because of sky high unemployment, also found themselves taking on jobs that were unfulfilling and entirely unrelated to their degree subject. I did not graduate with a Masters degree from Edinburgh University to become a filing clerk or a credit scorer or a copy typist but these are the jobs I did until the situation improved so I get your drift. We graduates were vilified in the press for stealing working class peoples’ jobs. I agree that individual talent and attitude is key. I hope that the present situation will clear faster than previous ones and that young people (my own son included) will have a chance to embark one the careers that they have studied towards before too long.
Thanks E.E. Very interesting to learn that there are far too many people studying in the arts right now. Sky high unemployment when I graduated meant that my generation of graduates were also faced with accepting what you could call ‘unfulfilling’ jobs entirely unrelated to their degree qualifications. I did not obtain a Masters degree from Edinburgh University with a view to becoming a filing clerk, credit scorer or a copy typist but these were the jobs I did ( to the best of my ability for the sake of my future references) until the situation improved. I hope that for this generation of graduates (family and friends included) that this dire situation turns around quickly. If all you say is true, let’s hope that lessons are learned about the allocation of university places. There was a glut of Sports Science graduates post the 2012 olympics and the huge disappointment of those unable to find a relevant job was very sad to see. We also need to manage parents’ (particularly those who have not been to university themselves) and students’ expectations of what any university qualification can reasonably offer. No university degree whatever the subject is a golden ticket to fulfilment and prosperity despite what school guidance on the matter might have one believe: for every high-earning graduate I know there are many average-earning ones slogging their guts out under huge pressure to keep their clients happy.
It was a serious question as I have long been unsure about the plethora of degrees on offer in erstwhile technical colleges and thought that you might be referring to some of those. The requirement for entry to such courses is pretty low compared to those needed for more or less any course, including the Arts, at say Edinburgh. I fail to see how those could have greater merit than a top class Arts degree in an elite job market. Those students would indeed be better getting a job and doing in-house training where they could earn money and not be saddled with debt (which they might never earn enough to be asked to repay of course). I do appreciate your standpoint and know young people in a similar predicament. I graduated (from Edinburgh) into record unemployment in the early 80s and my first few jobs were very much as you put it ‘intellectually unfulfilling’ and graduates were accused by the press of stealing the jobs of less academically qualified people. My experience was commonplace and it did not last. It was soon replaced by stress and sleepless nights worrying about deadlines. Such is life. Let’s hope the current situation resolves itself quickly.
We don’t need as many such graduates as before now that we have Google Translate, machinery learning, etc.
I can understand that. I see that happening in the case of many traditional (and rather dreary) professions too. Interestingly the civil service are currently looking to recruit arts graduates to their most senior level for their ability to think and analyse (in a way that ‘machinery’ is certainly unable to do). The type of arts graduates who are genuine higher thinkers and who could have chosen any subject they wished to study at university. It may well be necessary to have fewer arts students but let’s have fewer dreary Gradgrindian plodders too just for balance
I read, some years ago, that a number of companies were looking to hire those with degrees in philosophy, (This was in the US.) They valued their ability for lucid, logical thinking. However, I believe this was just for those with doctorates in the subject. Perhaps in the UK it’s different, as I believe that the British separate the academically gifted from the others at an early age, so your college graduates may be, on average, more advanced academically than those getting just a bachelor’s degree in the States. I’m assuming, Fiona Mowat, that you’re British. Correct me if I’m mistaken on that.
I’ve always wanted to hire history graduates but they never apply.
I’m not sure in my field at least, which is IT… the move to machine learning and easier development has slowly pushed software developers to do more roles around systems and business analysis (where AI is a long way off), data science, distributed computing and collaborative CI development all of which require a lot of background knowledge, that doesn’t have to come from a degree but in 90% of cases usually does. All of which means it is a lot hard (certainly not impossible) for your average non-graduate techie to get into the field these days, compared to 20 or 30 years ago when someone who could bash a BASIC or later a Pearl script together could get a job, at least for the non-freakishly gifted end of the spectrum.
A job is a job is a job! She will be competing for
delivery drivers jobs against airline pilots and
others with proven track records. Welcome to
the World. Many people have started below their
“Uni-forecast” pay grade and made good.
“A job is a job is a job” is a perfect example of an untrue truism.
To someone who has spent their entire life after age 6 training, studying, spending, and taking on debt to enter a profession, a job that doesn’t cover basic expenses and that requires no academic credentials is not just “a job.” You might personally dislike this author or resent her (for whatever reason), but that doesn’t change the basic facts.
I think college should largely be abolished (of the 18 years I spent in school, from kindergarten through my graduate degree, I received about 18 months of relevant, useful, or interesting instruction), that entrance into the trades should be destigmatized, and that customer service workers and manual laborers deserve a lot more money and a lot more respect.
But giving glib, unhelpful advice to people who are understandably in a panic about their individual and collective futures”advice that would make me roll my eyes if my Boomer parents offered it with the best intentions”is not humane.
Also, where did older people get the idea that young college graduates have childishly expected for years to be handed excellent jobs? After graduation, I worked as a food delivery driver, a restaurant host, a hotel clerk, and a bookstore clerk, earning so little that I had to live at home. Eventually I got a professional degree because I couldn’t see where any of this work was headed.
It was only years later that I realized how badly all of my schools had failed me: never giving me any (and I mean any. any!) career counseling, never linking the courses I was taking to some way of paying the bills after graduation. My parents and teachers just praised me for getting good grades, and that was about it.
Should I have had the perspective of a 40-year-old when I was 15, or 20? Uh, I guess”but I didn’t. I was just a dumb kid, like most people are at that age.
Finally: people who have “done the right thing” and gotten degrees in chemistry, pharmacy, and other in-demand fields are now finding that their degrees and knowledge are not so in-demand at all. I know a dentist who’s struggling to get by and thinks about bills all the time.
And in job interviews, someone like the author will likely see recruiters sneering at her “work experience” at McDonald’s when she end up competing against wealthier applicants who have had the luxury of doing relevant internships. In several fields, a depressing resume is a major ding against an applicant.
Just have some humanity. It’ll be better for other people, but it’ll be better for you too. It truly feels good to be compassionate to others”just try it for a month, and you’ll be hooked.
I’m a school teacher an, while I do my best for my students, I don’t think schools offer much to their students. Universities are much worse. It’s fine and good to study something in which you have an interest willing to to take on debt and to take a tough job market. But that’s not what the universities sell.
My brother lost his job flying for a major airline a year ago. He soon obtained an HGV license and delivered carpets for a week until he was offered a job flying freight.
I’ve always been proud of my little brother.
I don’t understand why universities offering useless degrees aren’t going bankrupt. They should do.
There are many worthless (or worse) enterprises that still make huge profits because they are selling to a market of the clueless. Vaccines are the most prominent currently, but the shelves full of very harmful “food” (such as organic grapes and orange juice and vegetable oil and vege-spreads) are just one other example. Of course if your only job is in a supermarket you’d best not complain about selling that junk. Add to that much of the “journalism” industry, and a whole building full of worthless charlatans next to Westminster Bridge.
It’s of course true that demand for delivery drivers exploded over the last few months. I’m not sure how many opportunities there are now though. I have a friend who is eminently qualified for this job and eventually did succeed in getting one as a driver for a major supermarket. Not in his home town though. About 30 miles away. My point is that the idea you can just walk into jobs like this is a bit of a myth.
And those jobs may not last much longer, given the recent conviction that we may soon have a fleet of driverless cars and lorries/trucks.
These jobs are surprisingly tough to get, and applicants whose qualifications make it clear that they actually want/plan to be paralegals or office workers will be passed over in interview processes as “overqualified” hires who are likely to bolt at the first opportunity.
The supermarkets are desperate for delivery drivers
Many people do not have driving licenses, and under the present Covi-lunacy it is impossible to have driving lessons.
Welcome to the everyday lives of the working class, your class now has to struggle like us….
Unemployed
Overlooked
Underpaid if working
Struggling every pay day
No prospects
No future
That’s equality and your class suddenly realise oh, life is hard
Maybe you should learn to code?
Welcome to our world
(Harsh maybe but we have been overlooked for years but now it’s affecting middle class university educated people, we must take action, years to late)
This is a great post even if I don’t agree with you. Today it is probably easier to get a job without a degree if you have the right attitude. You work, keep your head down, don’t look at your phone every 30 seconds and you get noticed by somebody who helps you up the ladder.
The point is not that the students are middle class (they may be or my not be) but that they and their parents EXPECT an easy life because they have a degree.
I don’t think there is an expectation of an easy life so much as a high standard of living and a certain social status. Anyone who has managed to get a place at a reasonable university and passed all of their exams will likely have a decent work ethic
The working class people I know n the construction industry
Employed – feel free to pick and choose and therefore unreliable
Overpaid in comparison with better educated colleagues
Pissed every pay day and every foreign holiday
No interest in prospects ( earning too much already
No future – poor diet and too much booze but the squeezed (fitness and diet aware) middle class will keep paying for the NHS so they can use it
Perhaps she did learn to code. I don’t see any mention of her actual qualification.
I’m fairly certain that Andrew Best meant learning to code sarcastically. Here in the US, we’ve had two Democratic Party nominees for President in a row tell workers afraid of losing their jobs to do so, and both instances merited a fair amount of ridicule IMO.
Ah I see!
In the USA, Kamala Harris’ is recommending that coal workers be taught to ‘find land mines’ and John Kerry is telling pipeline workers to go ‘make solar panels’. That’s what goes for leadership under the new Biden regime, folks who are hardly problem solvers.
I hear a lot of resentment in the writing. I suggest that you lower your expectations and take a low-status job to make ends meet. I hire new grads and the CVs that I see are very strong. It’s competitive at the entry level.
Your story is not unique. It’s the story of many who graduated after the 2008 crisis, many who studied bullshit degrees, many who failed to obtain summer internships, etc.
I myself have suffered vastly more misfortune than this author, and consequently I recognise the superficiality behind your comment. Basically a person who has sufferred misfortune, when they simply state the facts of it, are then instantly found guilty of “resentment”, or “huge chip on your shoulder”. No. They are simply stating the facts. Just because you have not had such misfortunes (and so have no need for making similar comments) does not make your condescending opinionations more worthy. PS: When I read of people being upset at being jobless for just a year or two…..jeez, JEEZ.
PPS – What I noticed in this essay was that the writer is very competent at writing, in HUGE contrast to most Guardian “journalists”!
I wish the author the best of luck but It is interesting that all the comments focus on degrees and graduates.
What you need to get on is the skills and attitude that are in demand. This country (blame Blair) has over focused on degrees and under focused on vocational and technical training. Our children have been miss sold the myth that a degree = a good job. The idea of 50% going to university is just silly. Should be more like 20%. The rest need non-degree education and training.
We are desperately short of Plumbers, Electricians, carpenters and bricklayers, to name a few areas. These are all highly skilled jobs.
Indeed, highly skilled and in some countries highly valued, but in the UK perceived as too physically hard and ‘dirty’ by many young people.
Working in a UK University based Research Institute we only take the top 1% of the top 1% of worldwide STEM graduates to interview for Postgrad posts, thus most are NOT UK graduates. The few that do make it through that process often have stories of being called nerds and being ridiculed by the ‘cool kids’, that is also a problem.
The US focuses on university degrees as well. Is that Blair’s fault as well?
The reality is that as economies prosper, more people can afford university degrees and then of course, it’s parents who encourage them, particularly parents without degrees themselves. My mother had no college but she felt it important that all of her children were college graduates, regardless of what they wanted to be in life. It isn’t about politicians, it’s about parents wanting a better life for their children than they had and many believe a degree will help them achieve that. Today, in the US, it’s graduate degrees (which also vary in usefulness depending on what they focus on) that are the hallmark of “doing better than your parents”.
I don’t accept the Working Class/Middle Class difference is relevant in looking for work – if anything it is easier to find work without a degree but the wages are low. The problem surely is that more and more people are being guided into taking a degree because if they didn’t, the unemployment figures would rise alarmingly – for those five years they would possibly be just unemployed. Cynical government.
In Wales, where I live, the Welsh Assembly is Labour led and tuition costs and some maintenance costs are paid, meaning that the debt after study can be much lower or even zero. The Assembly is proud of having more students, arranges and pays for exchanges with students in the USA, etc. But there are still no jobs at the end of it. Meanwhile, we are short of plumbers and electricians. When I graduated I could have had 30 jobs but the idea of encouraging young people now to have a degree, for the sake of having a degree is a nonsense. What happened to the old-fashioned Careers Officer? Maybe the parents have killed him off.
Meanwhile, we are short of plumbers and electricians.
same story in the US. There are quite literally millions of unfilled jobs in the skilled trades. But those involve work and that could mean getting sweaty or getting some dirt on one’s shoes. Instead, we shove kids into the university factories so they can first, be indoctrinated to hate the country and second, ‘earn’ a degree in some field of study with no practical application.
There does seem to be a practical application to these degrees in the sense that they equip the recipients to throw things at the police and smash up small businesses in Seattle, Portland and various other places.
Incidentally, did you see that Portland has gone from being the third most desirable city in which to live/do business to the sixty-sixth (out of eighty) in just three years? That’s progressive local governance for you.
Wow, that’s quite a drop. Self-inflicted wounds, without the self-awareness to realize it.
Actually, Portland’s government might not have been the creator of that downfall. I’ve watched my close friends who are Portland natives freak out at gentrification, and rather than enjoy the rise to most desirable city, they wanted to make it unwelcoming for more outsiders, and “keep Portland weird” as they say.
Also, because of the temperate weather on the west/left coast of the US, there are so many homeless and I’d say the majority are under 50, and many have chosen to live on the move, migrating from Seattle to LA (estimated 80k or more homeless) and some on a route from Seattle to New Orleans, working as buskers if they work at all, or panhandling their way back and forth.
Cancel culture has taken most of what was good in these cities and turned them into rabid cesspools where free speech and solving problems has been traded in for a frothing at the mouth culture of young people demanding that our sexual identities be the classification system for a new social order.
And in that order, the most pathological are celebrated as magical unicorns who must be allowed to control all forms of thought and expression.
FORBES had an article just this week entitled “Is Portland a Failed City” which to this Portlander is no longer a question but has already happened.
Yes, you can ignore it all by staying in your own neighborhood and never venturing downtown. However , if you are interested in what used to be the delights of city life: the museums,. the symphony, the restaurants, the beautiful old buildings that are now either closed permanently or boarded up, Portland has indeed, failed.
And sad, to say, there is no light at the end of the tunnel.
Obama was the worst when it came to ‘everyone should go to college’ whilst he ignored the vocations. Let’s face it, IQ is measured on a bell cure and half of the population is below 100 IQ – ergo everyone shouldn’t be going to college or university, it’s a terrible waste of resources.
Cathy, the problem is finding the honesty to tell people that their earnings will mirror their IQ and sheer effort. In times where “equality of outcome” is a political banner that so many foolishly embrace, people have a problem accepting that there will never be such thing as free lunch for everyone. Way too many younsters are lulled into believing that they are owed a comfortable future just because they were born where they were born…
There is a thesis in this and the impact on society of large numbers of people over-educated for the limited opportunities available.
Historically, GCEs were taken by about 45% of the school population – the top 45% – while the rest did CSEs or vocational qualifications.
When Blair decided that 50% of yoof must go to university, a percentage he apparently plucked from his bottom, he thus inadvertently decided that people who were previously considered CSE material were fit to take university degrees.
Labour’s plan, under Bliar, was to use Universities as an intermediate dumping ground for the youth, they were desperate to reduce the headline unemployment numbers so introduced it using the concept of increased ‘social mobility’.
The younger generation wanted a new future and rejected everything that created jobs for us oldies. Now they have politicians delivering their new future they are discovering that it does not work and does not provide work. I suggests that she complains to Tony Blair.
Yes: the 6- and 10-year-olds who rejected the economic wisdom of the Baby Boomers are to blame for the world they now live in.
Good point.
I was shocked that the author should be asked about “ethnicity, gender, sexual preference, and religion”. Isn’t that illegal discrimination? I recently applied to the UK tentacle of a big US company via their website, and wasn’t asked any of that.
It is regarded as obtaining a “fuller picture” of the person in question so as to give “equal opportunities” to (certain) disadvantaged groups . . .
In my experience, this information is withheld from those making shortlisting/appointment decisions. It’s used to create a statistical post appointment picture of how recruitment processes might unknowingly benefit certain characteristics.
I’m 21 myself and have been working since I left college now in a junior accountant role, ofcourse I had to work through some shitty jobs before that like car washing and stock taking.
The issue I see with modern job finding for our generation is that without experience we are essentially blank slates, a company can mould us into anything they like however it also means that you are on paper no different to any other canditate, online job applications for starting positions I would argue are slightly better than random for finding work and to give an example at just the sheer amount of competition, a sales assistant role at your standard shop in a shopping centre had I saw had well over 1000 applications, it is no wonder people feel like the odds are stacked against them.
I will add though that one solution for this is simply doing things the old fashioned way, I must have sent out 100s of CV’s online and often times wouldn’t even receive a response. But one afternoon just going around to those same places in person and actually asking to speak to a manager, introducing myself and giving them my CV, I got maybe 3 calls back after just 15-20 tries.
Work is certainly out there but there are certainly many forces working against the younger generations rather than working for us.
A small business owner once told me that all his best hires were people who came knocking on the door.
The modern big-company hiring practices are definitely soulless, and the absence of proper regret letters makes it hard to know what companies are actually looking for. “We like you but…” provided a lot of guidance when I was looking for my first job.
People think that getting a job is all about a CV and wearing a suit at an interview. Getting a job is about projecting yourself by being keener than everybody else, by researching the company/organisation and being a bit of a chameleon to show that you can fit in.
‘Small businesses’ – ah yes, now you come to mention it they used to be a thing, didn’t they?
‘The issue I see with modern job finding for our generation is that without experience we are essentially blank slates,’
What makes you think it was any different for any other generation?
Everyone is a ‘blank slate’, Until they aren’t. Until they have gained experience.
Even a ‘proper’ degree doesn’t necessarily equip you for the job which you eventually find.
That’s a well-written but sad piece. Like so many, she is a victim of decisions made by well-remunerated people facing no risk of penury themselves, but who get to pass laws that wreak havoc with the lives of others. Here’s the result.
I must add though that many of the problems she mentions (competition for good spots, the robotic nature of everything, the gap between the “haves” and “have-nots”, etc.) were already there before the pandemic. The response to the pandemic has only made a bad situation worse.
Best of luck to the author.
You have two choices either warehouse work or entry level state employment as
a teaching assistant or hospital porter/cleaner. You would need to drop the victim narrative and work on acquiring high level language skills, computing skills or STEM
qualifications. Most of all you need to to have a good look around there are many hard-working, desperate, driven people out there who aren’t sitting around sending off job applications.
You overlooked the other option, of starting a revolution. The present Prime Criminal is a good inspiration to any such movement.
The solution (at least a partial one) is to end these insipid lockdowns and open the economies again. The ones suffer the most (young people) are the least likely to be affected by COVID. For God’s sake, let them work. I am retired which means I am more likely to be negatively impacted by COVID and I don’t need a job to pay my rent. Why should a young person’s life be ruined in an effort to protect mine? If I’m worried about this disease (and I am not, by the way), then I should voluntarily quarantine myself and let others live their lives. We are told it is selfish to not wear a mask, social distance or adhere to these nonsensical lockdowns but I ask you; how selfish is it to ask people just starting out in life to destroy their lives to protect mine? We should limit lockdowns, etc. to those who actually benefit from them.
Amen
I understand the author’s situation and sympathize. Many have pointed out important elements in this comments section – don’t indulge in useless degrees, realize that the first job is always hard to get, etc.
But I’d like to drive an yet untouched point – flexibility. I am an Engineer that hires engineering newly-grads, and you can tell from a 5 min interview who expects the path to be laid for them and who realizes the need to make oneself needed. I always fall for those who candidly ask “what does the company need right now/ how can I help right away?”, and never regret falling for that.
I have plenty of experience and a solid CV, yet I never chose what I do – I do whatever needs to be done, make a point of showing initiative and take nothing for granted.
Last but not least: Have you considered moving? I am 54 and have immigrated twice in my adult life, always in search of greener pastures. If you do your homework (i.e. get solid information) and move to where opportunities are, you will stand a better chance to start your career.
Very well-written article Maria. Sorry this is such a frightening time for you.
Your biggest problem might be that you don’t actually know how to do anything except write – you clearly can do that. This means any employer is going to have to invest in teaching you some useful skills. It does seem to me that most graduates have no more skills after leaving Uni than they did when they left school. They have, literally, wasted 3 or 4 years of their life (and gone into debt) and now want an employer to teach them how do do something useful.
Too late for you Maria, but my advice for many years has been to only do a Uni degree if it fast-tracks you to a professional qualification and teaches you how to actually do something useful which not many other people know how to do.
Excellent piece of writing. You pinpoint exactly how work is crucial to one’s self-esteem, and, in my day, was predominantly the way people met their life partners. Also how the digital age has become so utterly un-human. (I’m glad I am old enough to have avoided all that.) My advice, which may be of no use at all, is to continue to use your writing skills and intelligence in every way you can, to consider whether you could become self-employed, and to try to persevere. (It took me six years of hard graft, after two University degrees, to finally establish myself in one of the ‘creative’ industries.) Good luck.
There is a fundamental misconception here. A job is not charity, or at least should not be. A real job involves doing productive work, and being paid a fair wage for that. Recruiters, if they are doing their job, should be looking for applicants who will be the most productive in each role and – perhaps – can be expected to learn, grow and move up the promotion ladder later. Explaining on an application form how desperate you are for the job is irrelevant at best, and may be a sign of someone who might not be the best fit for the role.
The saddest part to me is the dehumanization, rampant everywhere,
That’s a good point and the “erase the face” feature of mask mania only contributes to that.
It’s called ‘the market’. It has no ‘feelings’ or empathy, but it works. Just get on with it.
Well it depends on your definition of ‘work’. As long as the UK is broadly capitalist, work will be created. It might not be the kind of work the entitled and gullible holders of our so-called degrees expect, but that’s another issue. I’m sure the supermarkets are hiring.
I suppose one impediment to job creation may be that people will be wary of starting businesses that, we now know, can be shut down by government fiat at any given moment. This could turn out to be problem going forward. If I were you i would fight tooth and claw to get a job with the state. As we have seen during the scamdemic, the state will always look after itself and its own, everyone can live on air as far as they are concerned. And they now know that they can print money to pay themselves – they don’t even need to tax business.
On this point I feel very sorry for you:
‘Ticking the “BAME” box, too, involves a contradiction: I may have non-white blood in me, but I was raised exclusively by a white mum.’
But this is the madness of the world we live in. However, according to the rules of this madness, surely you can identify as whatever you want to be and take legal action against any potential employer that does not recognise your identity.
All that aside, every generation seems to think that their employment prospects are the worst in human history. I came on to the job market in the year that yoof unemployment reached its 1980s peak. I had no particular problem getting what was considered at the time to be a very good job.
Take issue with the word ‘gullible’. My granddaughter was virtually forced by her parents to start a degree course – she didn’t want to but she felt that to leave school at 16 would be to let everybody down. So she struggled through A-levels with private tuition added, started a course and dropped out after a month. She immediately found a ‘boring’ job, got promotion and is thinking of starting her own business. Parental pressure.
“I came on to the job market in the year that yoof unemployment reached its 1980s peak.”
So did I. And I still resent the idiots at the time, who insisted that of course there were jobs out there, the young just needed to get off their arses and find them. The difference between then and now, is that only one in eight of my cohort went to university. In today’s cohort, it’s one in two. It is becoming clear that many of these young undergraduates and postgraduates are wasting their time and money, when they would be better served with apprenticeships and blue collar qualifications from further education.
Ditto. I eventually found work, but being told to get on my bike by old people in high paying jobs provoked a rage I’ve never lost, and I sympathise entirely with kids coming onto the jobs market today.
Because of the private sector’s predilection to save, the market never creates full employment. This has been understood at least as long ago as Keynes.
Thank you for sharing such a personal tale so eloquently. Good luck and don’t stop writing.
Of what I term the “blessed generation” born 1940 I find the majority of the comments disheartening, self-centred, when not simply disparaging.
Fi on you this is the generation which will be keeping you in your old age! Graduates are needed as well as plumbers, electricians & the suggestion after the taxpayer has expended funds thereon the ROI can be met by truck-driving leaves me in a quandary.
To my mind “human resources” are a useless appendage. Responsable staff, line managers are more likely to know what is required & it is NOT TICKING BOXES FOR LOGARITHMS which we have learnt are manipulated anyway is only a method for selling software operated by drones.
I thank the young woman for her article. I am doubly convinced for St Andrews for my granddaughter.
Don’t expect I will have time to read any more & certainly not reply.
Congratulations for get this far!
Is this in part a symptom of the fact that, pre-Covid and now, we have a mis-match between societal aspirations (full time work, financial independence, secure housing, saving for retirement) and the ability of capitalist market economies to deliver? Capitalism has gone bonkers (eg. Gamestop, 2008 Crash, Philip Green selling up) – money makes money, not people. A system based on the return on Capital has no interest in maintaining a certain level or quality of employment, no matter how much education you do or don’t have.
Yep, all true. But you will have a problem to come up with an alternative. In the past the aim was to get a job for life and use the income from this job to find somewhere to live and raise a family. Today that is more difficult.
Lots of young people don’t have any future so the only possibility is to make fast money. Become an influencer on the internet, be a Celeb, marry a footballer, be a psychiatrist to advise everybody how to get out of their depression. What is the answer?
As I said on another topic, one answer is to split everything into smaller units and become a socialistic commune. Grow your own food, make you own clothes, do away with money. I’m not sure that anyone can believe this type of solution but what else?
Governments can’t do anything. From the last few years you can’t build anything because you are invaded by environmentalists. There are only so many people who can be hairdressers or manicurists. Everyone wants to be sick when you say the word, ‘Business’, especially if it has a Big in front of it.
I feel that the problem with our colleagues on UnHerd is that they tend to be older so they think back to when they were young. But this is not apt.
Maybe no solutions – certainly no endpoints – although I’m rather fond of the socialistic commune model I would be completely useless at growing my own food or making my own clothes.
Starting with assessing what it is we want from society (and internationally) and whether the current model of delivery can meet it would be a start.
Yes Mark, I wasn’t in any way criticising you but there aren’t really many ideas around except for socialism and communes and none of us think that this is the answer. Capitalism really does seem a bit dormant, especially when the environmentalists are just stopping every thing in this country – so that it can be made elsewhere. About 40 years ago, before people travelled the world in great numbers, I met an accountant who said that the wealth of the countries in the world would tend to equilibrate but not by them climbing to our level. I feel that we have to get a lot poorer before people learn to fight for themselves again.
There is much truth in your post, except that for some time we have not really had capitalism. But this has been said countless times so I won’t labour the point. And the state and public policy is just as much to blame in all this – open borders immigration but pathetically insufficient new housing, education systems devoid of all reason or rigour, a country in which London dominates everything etc etc.
You’re right. E.J. Hobsbawm says, “Communism is the only solution.” But our institutions are now so corrupt, and the dynamics of doom so imminent, there’s really no hope for even that long shot. So it’s really not germane to Maria Albano’s thesis.
Although she’s averse to Welfare, as long as her heart is true, I’d wish her take that route. The “dignity of work” and “self-worth” thing- is an absurdism in the conventional sense that our Society proffers.
She’d much rather grasp Eliot’s: “The only truth we can hope to obtain is humility. Humility is endless”, make “The Four Quartets” her gospel, and loose the dream of the burbs, two kids and dog, the Xanadu of bourgeois nihilism.
Pardon me, I thought ‘Critical Race Theory’ was the solution to all that ail ?!
Exactly! The author points out the humanity-diminishing effect of newspeak and pigeonholing; but, that’s not new for the Covid Gen, nor these lean times. It’s long since the Culture of the West is become, not a Palace of Promise, but, Lies, composed in the Ministry of Truth (London & New York Times, etc., and Guardian), and dispensed by the Spectacle factories. So, felix culpa, …and as seeming perverse as it sounds, Welcome! …you are already on the road to becoming human. And your affinity to Simone Weil bodes well.
And, whatever you do, do not, please, join the military.
When I joined the Navy (When we had one!) it was the biggest tertiary education system in the UK.
That was when the shortest time was 9 years
after reaching the age of 18. Now, you can join
for just a few years, get paid for learning to walk
(In time and step with others) and in all the Armed
Forces there are lots of jobs which do not involve
killing people on a regular basis. I practiced the
art and science of killing people for 17 years,
then, as a civilian (Shipmaster) legally shot (very
dead) a dozen human beings as part of my duty
to protect my crew. And that over a period of 3
years without the back-up organisation.
Don’t knock the military, you can learn quite a lot
of life or life saving skills some of which do not
involve killing people.
It’s long since any US/European military has been used legitimately, i.e., defense of the realm. Its mission has been domination and exploitation abroad of comparatively defenseless people for the benefit of its elite.
I hope the author remembers the politicians who did this to her generation, who locked them up unnecessarily. I hope they all pay a high political price for it.
Parts of this essay, while heart breaking, were very unclear. I’m not sure what race has to do with socio-economic status, can you not indicate you are low income unless you are also non white?
“The practical value of university degrees has been publicly called into question”
Some but certainly not all. I do wish that students would research the job prospects of specific degrees before they sign up for them. Some simply aren’t worth the paper they are written on while others open lots of doors. It depends on what you need. A student with less financial means may want to consider a degree that will open more doors. This is how you move out of the lower socio-economic rungs. Those with more flexibility have the luxury of obtaining less useful degrees.
Good article, writing the truth. This is always going to attacked by bitter people who want gradates to fail like them or, ironically, people that are also struggling to find work and feel it’s only fair if everyone else has to become a bitter, unfeeling robot, doing work they hate in order to get by. If you don’t like the system, don’t criticise the people that attack it, even if they are ‘middle class’.
With families from working class backgrounds struggling to feed their kids I find it difficult to summon up sympathy for someone who had the benefit of private schools, foreign holidays and a degree from St Andrews University (one of the acknowledged elite universities in the UK).
There is a huge problem facing young people and gig economy workers at the moment but writing op ed pieces about how difficult it is when people don’t see the unique you, is naval gazing at its worst.
Maybe the author should consider that recruiters don’t want someone seething with resentment and playing the system to claim special treatment just because mummy can’t afford the holidays and their little flat in London is getting difficult to afford.
That was a bit harsh
Life is inherently difficult. Make your bed.
If we all got what we deserved life would be very tough indeed
Actually it was very nasty about an author who describes her disadvantaged origins and current desperate situation. The real negative attitude can be seen in the comment here rather than what she is commenting on. Cheers
This assumes that all graduates are middle class and rich. If you were poor but your children managed to break through, you would want the best for them and that might mean getting a degree. That makes you ‘mummy’ and rich?
Like the author, my daughter is in the same position. But I read this article and didn’t really grasp any central point, a structure, or indeed any reason why I should be concerned.
Great article, and you’re right to highlight the increasing role of automated bots doing HR work. I would also add that in a time of crisis employers are less willing to take any risks so revert to ensuring boxes are ticked – that way no-one will have a go at them if things don’t work out with a hire. Another development I can’t stand is the use of “supporting statements”. You can put a lot of time and effort into these, only to not even get a response from the recruiter let alone feedback.
Maria, thank you for sharing what you’re going through. I’m probably not the first person to ask you this, but I’ll ask you, anyway. Have you considered going into a legitimate business for yourself; i.e., starting your own business? I wish you luck. I have to remember your name and the title of your article…
Throughout the ages, Jews have been stigmatized and were not seen to be employable which is why so many of them are entrepreneurs, working for themselves. Remarkably, many have done quite well without the establishment’s endorsement. Start a business.
Starting a business is not easy and the skills needed to run a successful business are very rare. By a ‘successful business’ I mean one that consistently makes a profit and employs people.
The vast majority of businesses fail and Maria’s apparent ability to string a few words together does not in any way correlate with running a successful business. in fact, the ability to write well probably has an inverse relationship with ability to run a business.
Moreover, excepting some very rare circumstances, most people should not run business until they have gained experience in a particular field. They will then have an understanding of how they can add value within that field, of what they can offer potential clients etc.
Unfortunately, this is the problem with socialism: state control. In a free market, education is valued, skills are valued. Unemployment, underemployment is low. Wages, the price of labour, settle at an appropriate level, much higher than in a socialist society as we have now. Unfortunately for this younger generation (I am 68), we are facing more and more socialism. Sunak is bound to raise taxes and steal even more of our money. We cannot even go to the cinema. Pregnant ladies are detained by the UK state police. It would most likely not happen if they were BAME.
I did two detailed studies of how high taxes reduce pre tax incomes. It is a myth to believe that the UK is becoming wealthier, it is not. Taxes are going to go through the roof in the next years to pay for state pensions,…
I too was brought up by a really poor single mum, but am partly asian. In those days (and of course today) I faced racism. But, 50 years ago, it was much easier to progress in life, not face discrimination because you are not BAME,…
Maybe we will not soon become like Venezuela. But, what about climate change? Another result of socialism (granting of limited liability and immunity from prosecution in exchange for taxes in the form of bribes).
In my opinion, food, water,..shortages etc. will make our future pretty bleak.
Another point. As intelligence levels decline, as poorer quality students in universities are taught by less and less well qualified professors, incomes will also continue to decline.
I know that that is no consolation to the article writer, but there is no help I can give him.
This is quite an extreme post. Nobody seems to say nowadays that the students are of poorer quality. I think the problem comes from the belief that if you can write something, then you must be clever. Years ago everybody could write something so there was no point in bothering. Now it is seen as a special skill.
I am a similar age to you. I remember students in the streets with banners protesting about things and everybody just ignored them and said, “It’s just students.” Today they think they have something to say, which is important and different – and of course it isn’t. So they have to make up things to get noticed, BLM and the environmental issues being the thing of the moment.
You just know that when we have become very poor a new set of students will come along talking about free enterprise – why don’t we mine coal to burn instead of relying on a faltering wind supply? What a great idea! We need to get rid of these old people who are always talking about the environment.!!
Good post.
Maria, I feel for you, especially as you don’t enjoy the safety net provided by well off parents as I did when looking for my first job.
You are clearly an excellent writer, but part of the difficulty for any new graduate is simply being young and untested: you don’t know who you are and what you really want to do. This is a recipe for floundering and wandering in the career wilderness. It doesn’t help if you have lofty expectations (get rid of them fast!) about the kind of job opportunities your degree at a fine university should engender.
My advice? Take a job – any job – and be grateful. Be open to taking the road less traveled and work on skills that college didn’t teach you such as honoring the 9-5 grind and interacting with people from all walks of life. Keep writing, and don’t stop honing your craft. You are good and one day, if you have an open mind and heart you will find your place. I promise.
I would ask if the author was able to actually do all the 200 jobs she has applied for? Having had a successful career change in my 50s I would suggest that she focus on those jobs she could do rather than those she could ‘have a go’ at. Employers are looking for a good fit for their vacancy not someone who may be willing but not necessarily able. Concentrate on the few she really could do and refine the application form so it matches the job requirements as perfectly as she can. That takes a lot of time but is more useful than firing off CVs for jobs that she cannot really do.
Yes, exactly. You are measured by the number of CVs you fire off into space. Reminds of a young guy I met, living in a village in the middle of nowhere, couldn’t drive because ‘driving was too big a responsibility’, degree in Fine Arts, hugely unfit and slobby. He had sent off almost 400 CVs and hated the government.
Parliament Square is in the middle of nowhere. Having grown up next to a farm, I know that there have been no real villages in the Uk for many decades now.
Thank you for your essay. More people everywhere need to speak up.
There are parallel experiences from the last generation, of course. The generation that inherited the post-bubble economy in Japan knows itself as “The Ice Age Generation”. But, 30 years of deflation and and deleveraging seems (finally) to have put Japan on to a better trajectory. Mature companies in Japan have much lower debt ratios than their counterparts in Europe and America. A foundation for sustained growth (and better prospects for young people) may have been laid — albeit not guided by the genius of the self-anointed best-and-brightest but by private enterprise making adaptations and muddling through.
Much of America and Europe has been hollowed out, too, starting in the early 1970’s. It’s no accident that membership in labor unions is down. Firms set up shop overseas. Laborers still suffer in their own Ice Age economy. But might decoupling from China or the enforcement of legal immigration turn that around?
Sad to say, but “more people everywhere” are speaking up ““ social media is full of indignant outrage. Unfortunately, much more is needed than merely speaking up. The voices of the mouthy but powerless are all too easy to ignore.
When the industrial giants of the West decided to take advantage of cheap labour and low cost re-tooling by moving production to the far East ““ in the process shrugging off the costly burden of supporting their native employees ““ speaking up didn’t help.
I graduated in 1990 and was jobless for two years almost so this is nothing new. I now have a daughter who graduated last summer and found a pretty good job within 5 months. I do sympathise with elements of this article but a lot of it can be filed under “welcome to the real world”.
Heart breaking. I really feel for young people at the moment. The sacrifices they are making to save old people lives – which I question. (I am old BTW.) I sincerely hope this article grabs the attention of someone and the writer finds a great opportunity.
But the sacrifices they are making has not really saved the lives of any old people. Allowing young people to live normal lives would not have killed any more people in care homes. The whole lockdown thing is a giant scam.
Feel immensely sorry for this writer. Those who graduated in 2020 have been dealt a particular blow as so many job opportunities have evaporated. Made worse by the modern day de-humanising job application process. I remember the 1980s and the long term unemployed. Being unemployed for a long time saps one’s sense of self worth. Hopefully with the vaccines, the economy is just in hibernation and will bounce back as soon as lockdown is lifted. Hang on in there – it will get better.
BTW not everyone is cut out for a science degree. Arts and humanities have much to offer. Not everything can be done by a robot. And St Andrews is a very good university.
Humanities are interesting and St Andrews is excellent (I’m biased as I also studied there) but that doesn’t mean the author necessarily has skills useful to employers. She can clearly write well but so can many many graduates. Students need useful skills if they want employment and simply going to a top uni isn’t necessarily enough.
A question to the writer and other people of similar age.
Do you feel as if the lockdown has been a benefit to you?
Seems to me a lot of younger people want Cush jobs and not to start at the lower levels to gain experience and become useful to employers.
They won’t find any tears with me. I have long felt they needed to be given a bucket of truth over their pointy heads to wake them up to reality.
Now they’ve gotten that.
During the pandemic, my fine gardening company doubled in size because I had so much work and paid a living wage to start, but I also let people go very quickly if I see they are slacking or don’t care about the work.
The trades are all dying for help. All of them. But the average age of a person in the trades in the US is roughly 56 years old, and no apprentices coming in to fill the gap.
These are jobs that pay well, especially as rates go higher with the lack of available people. For a carpenter, which you are lucky to find if you don’t already have someone, it’s name your rate and take your pick of work.
You get to work for yourself if you’d like, and that means setting your own terms to some extent.
But if you want to be a corporate drone and work at some meaningless job for Twitter or something then you get what you deserve. I love seeing those useless jobs go by the wayside. It’s been good for me to see who falls into essential worker versus nobody giving two shits that your meaningless waste of time job going by the wayside. The great leveler.
I’ve said for ages to all people, especially the younger ones, “what are you bringing to the party. Figure that out.”
Meaning, as the shit hits the fan and chickens come home to roost on all things political and environmental, what are you able to offer or supply?
Because I don’t carry deadweight, and IMO only the old, infirm and very young deserve that privilege.
Repeat after me : ‘You want fries with that?’
The UK needs a Job Guarantee to prevent labour wastage and mitigate the damage of hysteresis along with a host of social ills associated with long term unemployment.
“I’m afraid that I most commonly rejected applicants because I had to judge that they were clearly too clever and ambitious for the role on offer. That as soon as something better came up they would leave us.”
Or you didn’t want a bright young thing upsetting the status quo by working harder, faster and smarter than you are capable of doing. ‘Low turnover’ was a problem in offices where I worked: saddled with lazy staff whose dated methods and unimaginative thinking held back progress because their length of service afforded them a status that they did not deserve.
I was intrigued by the author’s reaction to the HR jargon “competencies”. I can’t say what the companies she was applying to meant by that, but in my experience they can be more or less summarised as follows, and I’ll take the liberty of addressing the author.
Can you adapt to novel situations?
Can you explain things effectively to other people?
Can you read a document and find out what it means?
Can you cooperate with other people to get work done?
Can you manage work so that it gets done effectively and efficiently?
Can you engage with other people to find out what they want you to do?
Can you gather and assess information and use it to choose a course of action?
What an employer will want is evidence that you can do these things. It isn’t going to be on a large scale for most people, and most employers will know that. You should also provide some evidence that you have thought about that aspect of yourself and can identify your own strengths and weaknesses. It really isn’t oppressive to expect you to be able to do those things, in some proportion, in almost any job — and your university experience, both formal and informal, will have given you the opportunities to demonstrate those abilities.
So, think to yourself what evidence you have for being able to do those sorts of things. Do your best to be honest with yourself about your strengths and weaknesses — work on it in a group with some friends, for example — and use your thinking to help you understand what sort of jobs you want and how best to present yourself for them.
Is there a major gap in your profile? Think how you might fill it by learning or experience. Consider the effect of the following three answers to a question:
“What have you done since graduation?”
1. “Not much really”
2. “I got a job stacking shelves in a supermarket. I didn’t like it but it paid the rent.”
3. “I realised I didn’t have much experience of team-working, so I got a job stacking shelves in a supermarket. It was uncomfortable at first, but I did learn about being a member of a team.”
Which of those would be most likely to get you on to the next round of the interview?
Well, my wise words of advice were rejected by the moderation system as spam. Sorry not to be able to help …
Don’t exactly feel the love from the commenters on Maria’s very touching post.
I find it truly bizarre that a recruiter would tell her to turn off her video link for a virtual interview. There are very good reasons for wanting to see the applicant’s face or body movements in such an interview. Even simply understanding what the person is saying is simplified since we all lip-read. Best of luck, Maria. I hope UnHerd offers you some more work.
Learned helplessness is strong with this one…
Alas situations like Maria’s are not confined to graduates. I have 30+ years experience in the IT industry and have been without work since I finished my last contract last September. Admittedly I am in Australia, proud possessor of the most neck-down economy in the OECD (a third of our wealth comes from selling raw materials to a single, very capricious, customer), and I imagine things would be better in a more diversified economy like the UK’s.
A single role I applied for last Wednesday evening drew a phone call on Friday morning, to tell me they had received 140 applications already.
Most of my working life has been a tale of more bums than seats. There was talk years ago that the situation would reverse and grads could play the market, but any whiff of such halcyon days invariably disappear into the maw of some crisis, courtesy of stock market excess or something more left field like this bug.
Just hang in there Maria. You will crack it eventually.
Any jobs site shows employers imploring people to apply for domestic and industrial electricians jobs at circa £27-30k plus. You don’t have to be a genius but diligent and intelligent of course and train for 2-4 yrs but being paid. Or sit at home moaning about no pay arts jobs and ludicrously thinking you might fancy becoming a tattoo artist or a cake maker or just sell candles on etsy.
Unfortunately Blair’s experiment of a “degree for all” has backfired with many children (not all from Labour supporting backgrounds) doing degrees that are worthless in the job market whilst saddling them in debt. A youngster is easily bribed by student loans and the idea of the”experience”
The only real beneficiaries are the largely very left wing lecturers and University employees who continue on nice salaries and very fat final salary pensions schemes whilst not being properly monitored or held accountable for the number of students who succeed in getting sustainable appropriate jobs
The Government needs to align education with a long term industrial vision, supported by many more corporate sponsored degrees with conditional jobs at the end and a reduced number of the social “grievance type degrees”. You can read about social sciences, arts, history, languages having an embedded political bias to promote studies on discrimination whether race or sex but where is the proof other than circumstantial? What independent Governance do Universities have?