CAREERS During the term parties of boys paid three careers visits. The first was to The Yorkshire Insurance Company, mainly to see their new computer and data processing equipment. This company, along with many others, offers extremely interesting careers in programming such equipment. This work should attract boys interested in dealing with problems—it seems to be a cross between advanced mathematics and chess. The work would appeal to a quieter type of person who is perhaps less interested in meeting a wide range of people. In the case of an insurance company, some knowledge of insurance would have to be gained first, and it might be that the candidate would find that one of the many good openings in insurance might appeal to him more. During our visit we saw machines calculating premiums from information supplied on punched cards. Perhaps as laymen we were most impressed by receiving copies of the silhouette of York Minster, the trade mark of the "Yorkshire", "drawn" as a result of a programme fed into the machine. The second visit was to M. Harland and Son Ltd., Specialising Printers, of Hull. This company is looking for lively candidates to train particularly for the sales side, and this would be a fine opportunity for those with drive, but perhaps not very strong academic qualifications. The third visit was to the Ford Motor Company. This was a most interesting and exhausting visit, particularly as we had spent a somewhat short night in sleepers, in order to be at Dagenham early in the morning. The whole party was very impressed by the wide variety of careers, both technical and non-technical, offered by the company. One of the most impressive features was that we found that many men were working in spheres other than those for which they had been trained, and this particularly applied to the non-technical men. This emphasised the fact that a professional qualification, or a degree, or a combination of the two, provides a very wide variety of choice to the candidate for an industrial career. This case of working in some other field than that for which the man has been trained is more common in industry than is probably generally believed. Full reports of the visits to Harland's and Ford's appear later. During the holidays I was privileged to be invited to attend a Unilever Final Selection Board as an observer. This gave me some idea of the care with which large industrial organisations select their potential managers. The Board I attended was to select for the Unilever Junior Trainee scheme and all six candidates are still at school. These candidates had already survived two hurdles. The first hurdle is a pre-selection stage when a short list is drawn up from a very large number of applicants, according to their paper qualifications and the statements they have made on the very comprehensive application form. The second hurdle is the Preliminary Selection Board which follows a similar pattern to the Final Board.
The Final Selection Board consists of two selectors, who are Managers in constituent companies of the organisation, and they are advised by two psychologists from an independent institute. The chair is taken by the Director of personnel services, who is assisted by a member of the personnel department. During the day the candidates are subjected to a series of group tests followed by personal interviews with the advisers
