The Job-Seeker

Georgia Heneage Left University In 2020 With The Plan To Become A Journalist But Is Already Widening Her Horizons

Sustainable learning is a must have in a world battered by COVID19, where uncertainties are the norm; technology drives exponential change; society and the economy have become increasingly atomised in nature; and, international relationships are, increasingly, tense and mercantile.

“Sustainable” is a much-used word, sometimes with values implied or attached, but longevity, durability and resilience all included. For education, it is all about laying foundations, learning to learn, “making wellconsidered choices”, proactive learning, combining knowledge with skills and being responsive to new situations. In short, sustainable learning is a linear process, starting from as early as possible and morphing into lifelong learning with embedded and evolving skills always being at the individual’s disposal.

Sustainable learning today must reflect the new world - even if parts of it are inclined to go backwards - because nations are interconnected. Of course, an interconnected world does not mean everybody is connected; in England, the levels of social deprivation in some regions and within many cities are shocking and usually reflect poor economic productivity. True sustainable learning would help to tackle poverty and many of its causes.

Another facet of today’s world is the twin need for individuals to be “work ready” and, by extension, adaptable. Business and professional organisations occasionally complain about the lack of work readiness of candidates for employment, often citing the absence of communication skills, limited ability to be creative and low levels of motivation as causes for concern.

There is a combination of underlying causes of the disconnect between students leaving education and the job market. The narrowness of the curriculum is often debated within this context with the funnelling down to three or four often comparable A-Levels being a common source of concern, often exacerbated by the impact of “unintended consequences” as schools, fighting for position in league tables, might encourage the university route rather than vocational and training courses.

The lack of work experience or even familiarity with the options available hamper the student when making subject selections. The scarcity of consistent and properly resourced careers advice is notorious and, so far, not adequately addressed. This is where business must step in.

This author has visited the Porsche car factory in Lower Saxony. It occupies a site once used for producing huge pump engines for the Soviet Union but today there is an air of efficiency, productivity and modernity. One of the keys to the success of this factory and, indeed, the business, is the relentless focus on the importance of the employee; so much so, schools, colleges and universities are part of the supply chain. This is an example to emulate because it demonstrates the role employers must take in delivering sustainable learning.

Sustainable learning helps to provide the individual with the tools to develop his or her career. Knowledge is necessary but it is not sufficient; being able to apply knowledge depends on skills and these are honed both in formal learning settings but also by practice and example. We must do all we can to create the framework for young people to climb towards their goals.

Leaving school or university and stepping into the category of the unemployed is daunting at best, terrifying at worst. As a generation born into a consumerist, perhaps even individualist society, we have been engineered to believe that our identities are irrevocably tied up in our career prospects: simply, we are led to believe that what we “do” with our lives is central.

To some extent, that’s true. Jenni Russell recently wrote in a Times article: “Work is how society allocates so much of what we seek: money, status, social networks, mental challenges, companionship, prospects, marriageability, hope.” It’s hard to argue with that.

But placing our work life on a pedestal can be damaging to the process of finding a job in the first place. There is overwhelming pressure on young people to achieve great things early on in their career and to hit upon the “perfect” job straight away. This pressure can be stultifying, and creates an atmosphere of dog-eat-dog competitiveness which can hit hard as you enter the jobs market.

This has certainly been my experience as a postgraduate seeking an entry-level job in journalism: even at higher levels, it’s a ruthless and merciless industry, as seasoned journalists remind me all too often. As a graduate, that’s especially so.

Journalism - and print journalism, in particular - was a volatile and constantly shifting industry even before the pandemic. Now, newspapers are hardly hiring at all, and the few roles advertised are fiercely competitive.

That means that more and more journalists are forced to go freelance and accept a paycheck that is reliant on the next available commission. Much of the advice that I’ve been given has focused on freelancing, a process which can be demoralising and difficult for a little- known journalist finding her feet in the Grub Street world of the press. The direction of my career has altered slightly as a result, and I am now seeking the safety of a stable job and income. Having taken a moment of self-reflection, I realised that my knack for writing and researching and my interest in the big ideas shaping our world could land me a job which had similar characteristics to journalism, but which didn’t have to be confined to the industry.

I have now pooled my skills, values and motivations, and decided to broaden my job search to include the media as a whole and the publishing industry, which has resulted in my first interview with the How To Academy, an organisation which hosts talks and debates from some of the most influential speakers in the world.

The best advice that I have received so far has been to relax and remember that most careers are not a linear path to success, and that the concept of a “job ladder” is a myth. Careers are twisting, fickle journeys, with unexpected bumps along the way which, once you’ve traversed them, come to look necessary in retrospect. Imagining my future in this way is liberating. It loosens societal expectations to dive head-first into the ideal job, and opens up the possibility of finding jobs which may not have been immediately appealing.

If I look at the data, I realise the scale of my challenge. The Office for Budget Responsibility reckons that unemployment more than doubled in 2020, and that 3.5 million are now affected. For young people entering the jobs market, this is disastrous. High levels of redundancy continue to mean that graduate-level or school-level jobseekers are now competing with a pool of skilled workers with years of experience and expertise under their belts.

It’s true that there are silver linings. For instance, the global transition to a remote-working culture and the development of the “gig economy” may be what the future of whitecollar working in a post-pandemic world looks like, and may provide more opportunities for those without work. Research has tended to find that working from home can have a significant positive impact on workers’ mental health and well-being, which in itself can improve productivity. A paper published in 2017 in the American Economic Review found that workers were even willing to take an 8 per cent pay cut to work from home. But frankly, I find that cold consolation. The prospect of not going into an office every day strikes me as unnerving. The routine of commuting and mixing regularly with colleagues is attractive to me, and I don’t want to miss out through no fault of my own.

It has also been argued that the pandemic, for all its setbacks, presents an opportunity to rewire the world of work. Though this may be true for seasoned white-collar workers, at what cost does this come for those uneasy newcomers entering the workplace for the first time?