Well this is the beginning of my new blog, an idea that has been knocking around since I finished my Masters course at the end of September.
According to latest figures the number of unemployed young people is set to rise past 1 million, many of whom are graduates. That a lot of skilled, intelligent, young, moldable individuals out there. I am just 1 in hundreds of thousands and so far through my job search I have found little that allows them to connect.
To the many employers out there we are just nameless, faceless individuals who don't have the experience to join their companies. We are not just a statistic to be bandied about by government, we are people and we deserve better. After all, University is meant to enhance employment prospects, particularly if you achieve qualifications from red brick institutions or learn vocational skills. I have done both and it hasnt helped, not in the slightest.
So this blog will charter me, just one in the mass, and my attempts to join the gainfully employed. I will update what I have done each day, and the relative success or failures of my actions. I will also dicuss University, the general job environment, government "attempts" to address the issue and anything else related to jobs, graduates and business.
Its an unprecedented situation and certainly does raise interesting questions. The problem as I see it has of course been bought about the economic recession. The following points are the reasons I think it is so hard for graduates to gain employment in the current climate.
1. Unemployed or dissatisfied employees in other industries are going after Graduate jobs which offer salaries they would have previously scoffed at. This means that instead of being up against a biochemist from Leeds and a historian from Manchester for the position of Marketing Assistant, your now going up against a claims adjuster with 5 years of experience and a secretary with 3 years of experience.
2. When given the choice of a graduate leaking raw talent and someone who has experience in an office in the present climate most companies will take the experience. Its playing it safe and safe is a watchword of the recession.
3. Practical is everything in a recession. Knowing the theory and the practice is not good enough. If you have not applied it then it really does not count for much.
4. Companies can offer jobs with tiny tiny salaries and still be confident of filling them, there will be competition for every job and as point 1 states the extent of that competition has changed.
5. Perhaps the most controversial, Universities are no longer the elite, people can go to University so long as they just avoided failing their A Levels. The government wants more and more people to go to University, thus devaluating the whole process. This is just one other factor which makes experience more attractive and graduates less palatable.
6. One of the biggest employers are the graduate programs. But if your not interested or fail to get onto any. What then, companies just dont look to cater for graduates outside of carefully designed graduate programs.
7. Even Agencies wont take people with no experience. Yes apparently if you have never worked a photocopier before then you will struggle to do so in an office environment. This just leads to the vicious circle. No experience = no job, but if agencies wont even give you the experience then its impossible to get anywhere.
8. "Graduate" jobs are drying up. Retail companies are focused on Christmas and other companies arent generally looking to get new employees at the end of a year.
All in all its pretty grim out there. All I can do is cross my fingers, keep flinging out applications and hope that someone is willing to take a gamble on me. I'll be so grateful to them that I will go out of my way to make sure they arent mistaken.
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