Many of us have a very difficult time making sense of our careers and the wider job market. Often this starts with applying to hundreds of jobs, getting a handful of interviews to finally landing that role, which quickly turns out to be a dead-end. Why are our experiences of the workplace so much worse than what we expect?
Here are four realities about your career that you were never told.
University education is only an entry ticket to apply to white-collar jobs.
Unless you have a clear route such as training to be a doctor, university degrees are pretty much seen as solely an entry requirement to apply. Many of us when applying for jobs aimed for the most elite universities with the most prestigious subjects, hoping our specializations or thesis will give us an extra edge. In reality, 95% of the time this will make little difference to your future; what and where you studied doesn’t really matter much for recruiters. As of 2017 42% of the workforce in the UK is a graduate, so it is no longer seen as valuable as it did for previous generations, instead it has become the new criterion to sift people out who don’t have one.
Some firms are now even removing the requirement of needing a University degree to apply for their talent entry schemes, as they recognize that this is such an arbitrary requirement that all it serves to do is reduce social mobility. Whilst this is a positive move more broadly, it does short-change many of us who were told that university would give us a leg-up in the job market.
Doing extra-curricular activities help, but less than you would hope
We were encouraged to get involved with our university societies and organisations with the oft-used phrase of it being ‘great on our CV’. This is only partially true – and few even use CVs for job applications anymore.
Extra-curricular activities are a great way to find what you enjoy and understand what your strengths are outside of formal studies. This can certainly help guide you to new experiences and what you ultimately want to do. It is indeed possible to use this evidence in job applications and interviews as well. Nonetheless, most organisations mostly have little interest in how good you were in leading your university knitting committee if it is not directly relevant to the data admin job you are applying for.
Whilst we hope that Employers will look at us as three-dimensional humans with thoughts and feelings, due to the sheer amount of people applying, this is often boiled down to whoever ticks the (subjective) box best. Which brings me to my next point..
Job applications are often a game of Russian roulette, and interviews are about practice, not actually about your talent.
Most of us broadly got an idea that job interviews would be coming down the track. If anything, younger generations are likely far more experienced with interviews in relative terms – I balked when I was tutoring a sixteen year old who spoke about preparing for her multiple interviews at different colleges (who of us knew how to interview at sixteen!!).
What we weren’t told though was that job applications would become a horrible process of sending individualized cover letters or statements to hundreds of companies each looking at slightly different things, nor that the assessment process would include completely arbitrary verbal and non-verbal assessments, group assessments and additional interviews. We certainly weren’t told that 95% of companies will not even bother to acknowledge or reply to us.
In reality, getting through this is as much a game of luck and persistence than any real skill. this is partly due to the sheer amount of people applying to each job meaning the bar has been set unreasonably high, and employers have no incentive to do anything other than quick-and-easy selection (e.g. statement scanners looking for the correct buzzwords). I’ve seen first hand how this has played havoc on people’s confidence, sense of self-worth and wider mental well being.
More prestigious firms have recognised this issue, and have reacted by setting a long-drawn out process to try and make it fairer. Unfortunately, these processes then turn into a game of passing each cookie-cutter assessment round, where the task is to give the best answer to what they are looking for. It is no wonder there is a whole industry of prepping graduates for interviews with prestigious firms, often at exorbitant prices.
The age of working hard and staying loyal in a job/firm and progressing slowly up is dead.
We understand that people move around jobs more, and that it’s okay to move from company to rival company. Nonetheless, we still are left with the impression that hard work will allow us further opportunities to prove ourselves, and eventually move up in the workplace. Now that we’ve finally got our foot in the door, try to work hard and impress our employer as much as possible, taking any task we can find to demonstrate our value.
Unfortunately, this enthusiasm quickly dissipates when we realise that the person next to us does half as much work for twice as much salary (and that person isn’t going anywhere anytime soon!). We figure out that we are quickly expected to do the additional tasks we volunteered for without any recognition or reward. Worse yet, if we’re unlucky some colleagues may feel threatened by our additional efforts and ambitions, preferring to keep their peaceful ecosystem of mediocrity. You quickly find yourself isolated and being left unhappy.
Your employer will likely be ambivalent to your sense of feeling fulfilled from your job, as well as whether you are really achieving what you want to.
Why am I telling you this? Because the sooner you come to terms with these facts, the sooner you can look to take your future into your own hands. The next step for you is to work out how to be truly valued and fulfilled in the world without relying on your employer.
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