Modern graduate recruitment and the future of British industry ...

[XmisterIS]

Back when I was a scruffy 21-year-old, fresh out of Uni and looking for a job, things seemed very different to the way they are now - the recruitment magazines seemed to feature people from all walks of life, all shapes and sizes, going into all sorts of jobs in a wide variety of industries, from electrician right through to white-collar jobs. Furthermore, the jobs that were advertised for graduates were typically like glorified apprenticeships in a particular trade. It was unheard of for a fresh graduate to walk straight into a management job - you had to roll your sleeves up and get stuck in "on the shop floor" for at least a few years before you could start climbing the greasy pole.

Unfortunately, being young and stupid, I made a pig's arse out of my first degree and only just scraped through by the skin of my teeth, so I didn't get a particularly good job, and I got it in an industry that I didn't really like. Now, being older, possibly wiser and definitely less hirsute, I haved almost completed another degree in a subject that I actually like and I'm on course for a 1st class honours degree, because nowadays I have what the Russians call "Dizipleen!"

Anyway, I digress. I'm writing this in the University library where I've just finished reading a few of those graduate recruitment magazines. Oh my, how things seem to have changed! The magazines are full of impossibly beautiful, stylish, go-getting, hard-hitting, bmw-driving, executive young Wunderkinder who all stepped straight out of university into jobs as "management consultants" and who, in their interviews, seem to wax lyrical about how their jobs are so totally dynamic and challenging and how they love getting up at 6am every morning for a great game of squash and how they love nothing more than having a business breakfast at 7am, super-alert and fast-talking about the latest sales figures before they've even taken the first sip of their designer latte. They continue by describing the hilarious challenges that await them every day, often requiring them to skip lunch and work flat-out until 8pm. The phrase "work hard, play hard" seems to crop up in every other sentence and their interviews are accompanied by photos of them beaming from ear to ear, displaying bleach-whitened teeth, immaculately coiffured, and wearing incredibly expensive "power suits".

Is it my perception, or has recruitement into British industry really be reduced to nothing more than a parody of The Apprentice, where looks are everything and an obnoxious, formulaic personality is essential? And how, in the name of God, Christ and the Holy Mother Mary, can a 21 year old graduate possibly be a "management consultant" when they have no idea what actually goes on on the "shop floor"??!! God forbid that I should still be a software engineer, I don't think I'd be able go two weeks without physically destroying some jumped up spikey-haired impossibly beautiful little sh*t who's job it was to tell me how to do my job without knowing the first thing about what my job actually entailed ... That's just the impression that I get from it all, anyway, and it certainly seemed to be the way that the industry was going when I handed in my resignation letter and returned to academia!

 

[Red Light]

Most of it is marketing spin rather than much of a change in reality. But my daughter is spending part of her university course working on real problems in real companies and they are planning to go out to Japan and Korea to see how they do things. So she will hardly be green behind the ears when she graduates. As for "have never done the job" as a once management consultant its amazing how obvious some of the problems are to someone with a little distance and naivety that are invisible to those who are working close up. I am reminded when Martin Brundle was doing his grid walk a few years ago and bumped into Gerhard Berger doing the same for Austrian TV. The conversation went something like this:

MB: Hows it going Gerhard - I thought you didn't have a very good opinion of motorsport reporters?
GB: I didn't. Most of them had never driven a racing car and while I was one of the top drivers driving to the edge of my ability they were all sat up in their comfy commentary boxes telling people I was doing it wrong.
MB: So what's it like now you're a reporter yourself?
GB: You know its amazing how many mistakes the top racing drivers make

 

[TVC]

Graduate recruitment magazines, Cosmo, Mens Health, et al. They just paint portraits of entirely fictional characters that we are supposed to aspire to be, particularly if you buy the products or subscribe to the courses that are conveniently advertised right next to the article.

These magazines are not going to tell the truth and feature real people, no gullible twunt is going to buy it and read it, and no advertiser will place pages. Ignore them.

 

[Dan B]

Oh my, how things seem to have changed! The magazines are full of impossibly beautiful, stylish, go-getting, hard-hitting, bmw-driving, executive young Wunderkinder who all stepped straight out of university into jobs as "management consultants" and who, in their interviews, seem to wax lyrical about how their jobs are so totally dynamic and challenging [ six impossible things before breakfast ]

It's not a recent change: it was exactly like for me that back in the mid-90s when I (barely) graduated