Go careful on the work experience
Andy Burnham, secretary of state for culture, media and sport, and I graduated around the same time: in the depths of the last recession.
I went to Salford and graduated to find there were no jobs for those who studied economics, sociology or politics. My contemporaries signed on or went back to their summer jobs. It really was that bad; I knew nobody with a ‘graduate job’ to go to. I suspect some became teachers.
Andy Burnham went to Cambridge, but doesn’t appear to have fared much better. He ended up walking out of his local newspaper where he’d been working for free.
Working for free was the only way to get any experience and I worked for a couple of public relations consultancies before landing my first job. Carrying a few grand in student debt (commercial debt as I missed student loans by one year), I couldn’t really afford this and rented a flea pit from a drug dealer who escaped a prison sentence because he was a boxer representing his country in competition.
Anyway. There is a huge oversupply of kids who want to work in the media, even in boom times, and employers will take advantage. Some will have no intention of providing a couple of weeks training to someone they’re not going to see again. They just want someone to make the tea.
Should you be foolish enough to be like I was and prepared to offer yourself as the agency slave, live in a flea pit et cetera, do think about what you can get out of work experience.
At entry level, you need to look at picking up craft skills and, above all else, that means being able to write in newsy style and understand what news is.
Charity work can be rewarding (and I did this too), but not all charities have communications professionals who can provide the training you need as they often don’t have the right skill set themselves. Try to find some discrete project to work on and build a portfolio of press cuttings you can hawk about.
Comments (3 comments)
Stephen,
I asked one of my friends – now a high flier at Deloittes (sic?) – did anyone get a graduate job when we graduated in the recession?
The reply was there was a rumour that someone in the geography dept did but he couldn’t verify it.
You either did a law conversion or did a menial job or went on the dole. You could only get something worthwhile if you had relatives in the right places.
There is a steep over supply of graduates for attractive careers in good times, in bad times this becomes more acute.
I think graduates need to be careful: ask many people for advice that are in the industry you want to work in. Tread carefully as you might have to disregard a lot of it. Do not rush in to a career, try through work experience careers where your ambition really lies.
There is much more I could say
Rob
I have put your on my blogroll, sorry for the oversight!
Rob Artisan / February 13th, 2009, 8:51 pm / #
A law conversion sounds quite worthwhile… many become teachers of course!
Stephen Newton / February 14th, 2009, 1:24 pm / #
Stephen,
not sure about that
The reasons are that it is something to do and you can become rich. The issue is whether you are cut out to be a lawyer. There was an oversupply of graduates wanting to be lawyers.
I think it comes down to desperation and lack of imagination. I think the same could be said of those that went and took PGCEs as one of my friends found out: he never taught and got thrown off the course right at the end.
It will require a lot of determination, resilience and work to succeed over the coming years.
Rob
Rob Artisan / February 14th, 2009, 2:31 pm / #
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