THE INAUGURAL FINITO EMPLOYABILITY SPECIAL REPORT

FINITO WORLD PRESENTS THE FINDINGS OF ITS FIRST EMPLOYABILITY SURVEY, AND THERE ARE SILVER LININGS AMID THE CLOUDS

It’salmost a commonplace to say that this year represents an inflection point in world history.

If someone only with experience of life pre-Covid-19 were plucked somehow out of the slipstream of time and deposited in our virusstricken era they might not immediately notice that the world had changed utterly.

But changed it has – it’s just that the scale change hasn’t yet filtered through to our collective sense of ourselves. This matters when seeking a job; how do we know how to present ourselves unless we know what employers are looking for? It also matters when running a business: amid the helter-skelter of familiarising ourselves with the furlough scheme, we might miss the wider strategic picture.

The enormity of the ructions creates difficulty for government. The tendency – surely a correct one – is to respond to immediate crises and tensions, but the necessity of doing so will inevitably leave others to simmer.

Happily, help is on the way. As we compiled our second issue, Finito World asked its respondents to pause and consider some questions about the state of play as Britain heads into the autumn. The response was exceptional – and fascinating.

It is said in economics that one of the best ways to tell a downturn is by looking at the private aviation sector. When the superrich start selling private jets, you know the economy is heading south, as your private plane is usually the first asset to get rid of.

The Finito World employability survey seeks to do something similar: we spoke to the crème de la crème - those charged with making decisions - with the goal of providing students, job-seekers and business-owners an early indicator as to what trends we’re seeing in the world of employment. In the future we shall look at issues such as productivity, salary expectations, hiring processes, AI trends, and crisis response mechanisms in granular detail, though we have also provided initial reaction in these pages from industry experts and well-informed insiders on some of these key topics.

It is worth noting the rarefied nature of the recipients of the questionnaire: our respondents included former Cabinet ministers – from both parties – as well as FTSE 100 CEOs, and people at the summit of their professions, from banking to law, from marketing to IT and sports administration.

What follows is an image of a shell-shocked society – one which has been groping for answers in these last months. It is a world where the young do not know what to expect from their careers – and where employers do not yet know what they will be able to provide.

Everything is in flux: the question of business travel continues to play on people’s minds; new technologies are being grappled with and tested; and office life has been replaced by the necessity of working from home (see also our office architecture features on page 122).

All this has created a different set of requirements for employers, and this in turn has seismic ramifications for students who will need to think differently in order to prosper in this new world.

Finally, when we caught up with David Attenborough earlier (see our exclusive interview on page 32) in the summer he couldn’t have been clearer about the need for urgent action on the climate problem. It only felt right that our first survey should recognise that this crisis, as dramatic as it has been, takes place in the shadow of another.

Throughout this report, we have asked industry insiders to comment on our findings, and would like to register our gratitude to those who took part.