The Ugly Side of Employment

A job seeker told me about a recent conversation they’d had with a recruitment agency. The recruitment agency had told the job seeker to rip out any reference to their three (yes, THREE) degrees, professional qualifications and (by association) the seniority of previous positions. Why? Because it was the recruiter’s opinion that the jobseeker had a better chance of getting a job if they DIDN’T tell prospective employers about their academic and professional achievements.

So if someone with a couple of DECADES of working experience, three degrees and buckets of professional qualifications is asked to dump all that in the hope of getting a job you have to ask the question, “What’s the point of getting a degree?”

The bad news seems to be piling up even more. The Telegraph had a piece that said, based on data from the Office for National Statistics, a 21 year old graduate had the same chances of employment as a 16 year old with a single GCSE. What kind of message does that send out to those about to graduate after three years of slog? “Hi kids, you’ve just blown three years of your life, and a pile of cash, for something that might get you a job flipping burgers.” I’m in the same boat and I can say, gentle reader, that this doesn’t exactly make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

This situation reminds me of a piece I read many years ago about new immigrants to Israel. The piece was based around the menial jobs that incomers had to take no matter their backgrounds. It spoke of taxi drivers with PhDs, cleaners with MBAs and doctors forced to work as nurses. Are we about to see a similar situation in the UK? Or has it already arrived? Perhaps the UK will soon have the highest qualified shelf stackers in the world? We’ll have to see.