The crowd around the Civil Service Fast Stream stand is three deep. The
McDonald’s management trainee scheme is doing a brisk trade. Even Access
Self Storage (“Growth industry, ongoing supported training,” it proudly
advertises) has the occasional inquiry. There is not a bank to be seen. At
the London Graduate Fair, traditionally the last-chance saloon for graduates
who have spent too much of the preceding year in another kind of saloon,
there is a vague air of credit-crunch desperation this summer. This is, it
is generally agreed, the worst year in a generation to be looking for work.
Over the next six months The Times will follow the progress of five
graduates, from a range of universities and courses, as they enter the jobs
market. They are some of an estimated 350,000 UK students leaving university
this summer. With the collapse of the banking sector, and with half of
British companies saying that they have no plans to take on more graduates,
many will be unsuccessful. The class of 2009 were the first group to pay
full tuition fees; they may well also turn out to be the biggest victims of
the financial crisis.
Amid the free biros, lollipops and varied inducements of the recruiting
stallholders, there is evidence that many graduates now value job security
above the vicissitudes of the private sector — but even a job on the
Government payroll is becoming harder to achieve. At a well-attended talk
entitled The Job Market in the Public Sector, Hilary Moor, a careers
adviser, asks if anyone applied for the Civil Service Fast Stream. Someone
puts up their hand. “How’s it going?” she asks. “I failed,” he replies.
Moor tells us that the Fast Stream is excellent, but competitive. “Last year
there were 16,000 applications, this year there have been more than 22,000.”
One member of the audience asks how many places there are. Moor checks with
a colleague. “Definitely more than 100,” she says, brightly.
It is little wonder that graduates are looking for alternatives. In the main
auditorium, many of the stands are not for jobs at all. Bournemouth
University is here, as is Birkbeck — and even King Abdullah University,
Saudi Arabia, all advertising postgraduate courses.
Outside the News Associates Journalism Training stand, Richard Parsons is
greeting a steady stream of prospective students. “We’ve seen a huge surge
in interest,” he says. “We almost can’t cope. I think a lot of people have
written off this year and said: ‘Right, I’ll do some training and get a job
I really want next year’.”
The hope is that by then — for all graduates as well as for our five — those
jobs will exist.
Hena Husain
Hena, who studied politics and philosophy at Liverpool, is torn between
marketing and teaching. “The application forms for marketing graduate
schemes are terrible: ‘What is the most challenging thing you’ve done over
the past five years?’ ‘How have you overcome difficulties in your life?’ You
have 800 words on each. I’m going spend most of my summer filling in forms —
and doing work experience. This is one of the best ways in, and I don’t mind
working for free for a bit. Other than that, most of the best graduate
schemes have gone so I’m looking for next year now.
I’m also considering teaching — it’s one of the few jobs where there’s a need.
I’ve always thought about it, but when I told my friends they found it an
odd choice. Now though, they’re all looking at it as well.
I’m hoping to get onto Teach First — a scheme that prepares you for business
while giving you a teaching qualification. It’s very competitive though, and
there are tests for applicants as well. Hopefully if I revise hard enough
I’ll get in. If I don’t though, and don’t get on a marketing graduate
scheme, it’s not disastrous. I always seem to find a way to muddle through —
and I know that some way or another I’ll end up where I want to be.”
Ketan Lad
Ketan, who studied marketing and advertising at the London College of
Communication, has never had trouble finding work in the past, but even with
a full CV, he is struggling to get his dream job. “Until now, I’ve always
been lucky. I had fully-paid jobs throughout my degree — in ad sales, for a
PR agency and for Saatchi and Saatchi. It was a nightmare juggling the work
with my studies, but it got me a lot of useful experience — that I thought
would guarantee me a job.
This year, though, it feels as if there is so much more competition. It has
been hard. I have had some freelance work, but nothing permanent. In the
past, I have always known when an application has gone well. You get a sixth
sense: I would build a rapport with human resources, research the company
and write a good cover letter, and I would just know I was going to get the
job. Since graduating I’ve made some applications that I thought would be
great, but then heard nothing more.
I have a few applications pending and, ideally, in six months’ time I will be
working for one of them. Hopefully I won’t be on the dole. Perhaps jobs are
like buses — they all come along at once. If so, I think that my time to
catch a bus is coming along very shortly.”
Andrew Garman
Andrew, who studied engineering at Edinburgh, has worked as hard on job
applications as on his finals. The effort has paid off, but many of his
course-mates have not been so lucky. “People go into engineering expecting
to get a guaranteed job. That’s how universities and companies have pitched
it over the past few years. In the boom there was always demand for, say,
construction work in the private and the public sectors. Now there is only a
niche public sector demand. Fewer than half of my friends have something to
go to next year.
The internship competition is also extremely tough indeed — there are now
fewer internships than graduate positions. I was unsuccessful last summer,
so this year I focused on jobs that I wanted to get. It takes three or four
days to apply properly. You have to research the company and write a cover
letter, something most people can do without in their final year. Perhaps,
because I had a clear idea of what I wanted, I have found a job. In
September I will start work for Jardine Matheson as a general manager, based
in Hong Kong. I’ve been lucky. I know of people with first-class degrees
who, a year after graduating, are still struggling to find a position.”
Michael Appleton
Michael, who studied politics at York, feels that he has been a victim of the
financial crisis and the political crisis. “It feels as if there are
too many people applying for too few jobs. My hope was to get into political
work in Westminster or Brussels. But because of the political turmoil, a lot
of MPs and MEPs aren’t recruiting. The Civil Service is not much better.
After the banking crisis, a lot of graduates who would normally go into
finance are looking for something more secure — the Civil Service is ideal.
I have been rejected twice.
For now, I’m going home to Chelmsford, where I have a restaurant job. I
suppose I’ll keep working there until something more permanent comes up.
Otherwise I will just be sitting around — looking at my Dad, my Dad looking
at me.”
Romola David
Romola, who studied English at Loughborough, has all but given up on the jobs
market. She hopes to go travelling until things have settled down. “Because
everyone has been talking about the credit crunch, I probably haven’t tried
as hard as I could. Very few friends have been successful, and if there
isn’t any work, then what’s the point of looking?
My other problem is, I don’t really know what I want to do. I’ve applied for a
few jobs, but when you’re not even sure that you will want them if you’re
offered them, it makes it harder! I’ve got a bar job to go back to at home,
and I may try to get some temping work. Hopefully in November I will have
enough money to go to Australia and travel around doing part-time work. It
is extremely hard to get work at the moment and going abroad seems the
easiest option.”
