Kids go straight from school with no retail experience to work in supermarkets.

This whole 'you need experience to work in menial jobs' line is wrong and only used to exploit the vulnerable.

You really are a tit, aren't you.

I have never understood how personal abuse advances any sort of argument, either on an internet forum or in real life. The irony is it actually makes the 'abuser' look like the tit.

Interesting that Mintball - I started a thread on here looking for a graduate to work full time within one of the departments I manage at work, I got two people - thats all!! One wasn't interested in the end, Barry got the job and used the experience we offered to get another job doing what he qualified at uni to do.

There is work out there sometimes I wonder if young people especially graduates are really prepared to get their hands dirty and take a chance and back themselves to make things happen.

Two points - not sure how not paying tax disenfranchises you? secondly they are not doing it for free, they are getting JSA - I think if they are required to work they should get the minimum wage but then I suppose there has to be an incentive to employers to participate.

You don't need to have a degree to give a few pointers to visitors or to be able express yourself in a coherent way. You are really stretching a point Damo. If you said she wants to a curator or restorer different matter but there is no indication anywhere that to be the case.

As has been mentioned (IIRC) there is also a terror that, if you're a graduate and take a 'lowly' job, it will actually look bad on your CV.

But I'm not going to claim that my niece's experience is the whole story. But it is a real example of what young people are facing. She certainly is frustrated that she cannot get anything more (and is looking – and has managed to get one interview in 18 months).

Interesting quotation at the end of this article: www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/ ... d-workfare "You expect to come out of uni and be employable." This is part of the problem. University graduates often feel they have some 'right' to a good job. They see low paid or menial work as beneath them. People need to realise that university is not a guaranteed ticket to well paid gainful emploment. Higher Education Statistics Agency have revealed 28% of 2006 graduates were not in full-time employment 3 years later. Of those who were, only 16% of men were earning over £20,000 with the figure being 29% for women. Bottom line is she is employable. There are not enough 'graduate' jobs to support 50% of our population going to university. The brightest and best graduates will, generally, find decent employment. I seem to recall reading that Cait had applied for around 200 jobs and been unsuccessful in each application. Read into this what you will. As with everyone else in society, she may have to spend a few years doing something she doesn't want to do before landing her dream job.

Interesting quotation at the end of this article: www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/ ... d-workfare "You expect to come out of uni and be employable." This is part of the problem. University graduates often feel they have some 'right' to a good job. They see low paid or menial work as beneath them. People need to realise that university is not a guaranteed ticket to well paid gainful emploment. Higher Education Statistics Agency have revealed 28% of 2006 graduates were not in full-time employment 3 years later. Of those who were, only 16% of men were earning over £20,000 with the figure being 29% for women. Bottom line is she is employable. There are not enough 'graduate' jobs to support 50% of our population going to university. The brightest and best graduates will, generally, find decent employment. I seem to recall reading that Cait had applied for around 200 jobs and been unsuccessful in each application. Read into this what you will. As with everyone else in society, she may have to spend a few years doing something she doesn't want to do before landing her dream job.

There's quite a bit of ground between those two statements, yes they should expect to be employable, that is the major reason they are at Uni in the first place, I'm not sure the average student feels they have a right or entitlement to a good job, I think they understand that they start quite low down on a career path and have to put the effort in to move along that path, I think the right and entitlement attitude comes from students at the better universities.



I work between two universities, not something I see to be honest, in fact I see plenty of students working in the service industries that are renown for low pay.

Is having a lowly job better than having no job?

Video Ref - you're living in Dail Wail land if you honestly believe that highly educated people believe that jobs are below them. I know a good few of the type you're describing, and without exception they've done 'menial' jobs. I work with one such now... Uni education, top level pass, now working for £7.00 and hour and applying for jobs relevant to his qualification. None of the people I know believe anything other than a job on a CV shows they are willing to work and 'get stuck in'.

Meanwhile, back in the real world....

Just noticed this. Outrageous. Are people being expected to work for nothing back home? Disgusting. Shame on whoever thought of that.

...back in the real world, I've held two positions involving recruitment - one in training & recruitment for a couple of large call centres, and another as a recruitment consultant, ranging from entry level to senior executive.

In both jobs I met, spoke to and interviewed many, many dozens of graduates and can tell you very many of them see such jobs as below them. We would offer these highly educated people a position in the knowledge they would probably be actively seeking something else, and they would turn their nose up. A permanent job with a low but acceptable wage - certainly something to live on while hunting for their career entry.

Some graduates - not all of course, and I've met and placed the hard workers too - can be extremely snobbish about their choice of work. It's understandable - they've worked for 3 years and built up a load of debt to obtain a qualification that's supposed to help them on the career ladder, and they're being offered the same role and wage as those who left school or college with few qualifications at all. Who wouldn't hold out until they 'find something better'?

I don't doubt you at all, my eldest found something similar when she left Uni with a law degree, because we gave our two kids no other option than to have to work for their money (we don't subsidise them at all other than provide me as a free taxi driver), she was writing for jobs in the legal profession before she even left Uni, she quickly realised that two years ago nobody in that profession was taking on new starters and so she lowered her sights and has been working these last two years in a legal services based position in what other "traditional" law firms would look down their noses at in a "call centre" sort of way - meanwhile she knows of at least two other fellow graduates who are still hanging on, probably being supported by gullible parents, in the hope that they will get a position as a trainee solicitor with all fees paid, with their two year old degree and no experience.

Realistic viewpoints and the young often do not mix very well.

I think it's partly down to universities and 6th forms pushing degrees in such a way that makes it appear like "do a degree here and you'll end up in a fantastic job" plus parents who often grew up in a time when people with degrees did get good jobs on the whole after leaving Uni.

... and, I think, an element of employers, in a flooded jobs market, deciding that jobs that, previously, might not have required applicants to be a graduate, deciding to insist upon that.

I mentioned it before, but the growth in tertiary education is a plank of the neo-liberal approach, as highlighted in Ha-Joon Chang's [i23 Things[/i. Switzerland, for instance, had had a low level of tertiary education, but obviously a rather successful economy. And even there, in recent years, the whole tertiary education thing has been being pushed. Still, I suppose it creates jobs in service economies ...

Hmm ... I wonder how much this is pushing university applications back up, despite the initial decline due to increased fees?

The thing is that there is no 'argument' to be had with the likes of you, as countless posts prove. You're not worth engaging with at any level above disdain and contempt.

Oh that's almost certainly a major factor in why people take degrees. My own job doesn't require degree level knowledge, but there's no way I'd have got the job without one.

Which she appears to be doing and what the court case highlighted was that these compulsory work placements are nothing more than inappropriate cheap labour.

We took on a couple of graduates last year, both mature students. I interviewed both. One had worked for the local council in a low paid job before getting his degree. The other had worked as a taxi diver while doing the same.

The idea that the fact they did that had any baring on them being employed here (an IT company) is nuts yet that seems to be the governments main justification for forcing people onto these schemes. "It will show you are employable and can get out of bed regularly ready for work" seems to be the line they take. This is absolutely crazy. If they actually think someone having been placed on a compulsory work placement scheme for Poundland would get them any further down the line for a job here they are totally out of touch with reality.

Everybody knows it's compulsory so since when was compulsion any indicator of a willingness to work?

The fact our two graduates had jobs before was to be expected given they were mature students but if they had been unemployed for several years yet went and got educated that would count for far more in my eyes than an entry on their CV which amounts to forced labour stacking shelves.

I'm betting that you could tell from the way they interviewed whether they really wanted to work or not.

These smoking, drunk, drug taking, sky watching, iphone pounding, on line, up at 3pm, bad backed, depressed baby making machine scumbags should be put in workhouses and fed in a soup kitchen. Anything else is a luxury we cannot afford.

The unemployed should have night-time curfew and restricted access to non-unemployed residential/recreational areas would be prudent, I do not want to find the unemployed going through my bins, robbing my home, or molesting my dog in the park.

Those in position should be allowed to take on, or ‘foster’ if you like, the longer term unemployed, the government sub-contracting their needs out to the privet sector. A place to sleep – a loft or out-building, food and water - leftovers from last night’s dinner party and an outside tap, and the all important work training/experience - cooking, cleaning, child care, estate/grounds/house maintenance, caddying, even further sub-contracting out to a farm or a factory for more training (all would help someone with the skills needed to get back into work).

And when back in work they can start to pay back their board and loggings to the state and/or their ‘fosterer’ along with the training cost, expenses, appropriate administration fees, etc.

Yes and we didn't just interview the two who got the jobs which might sound like stating the obvious but the decisions were made on their qualifications and other factors. One of them had done a small IT project as part of a work placement in his degree and that was discussed at length. Had he done two weeks in Poundland it wouldn't have been.

When I did my degree many moons ago I did a year in industry which was unusual from a traditional Uni (as opposed to a Poly) back then but it was the best thing I ever did. I am convinced I got a better degree as a result and while the employment marketplace was better then I was offered four different jobs and I am sure the year in industry counted toward that. I also appreciated my last year at Uni all the more having seen the real world of work!

So relevant experience is a very good thing in my book. Being compelled to stack shelves will tell a prospective employer absolutely nothing about how their prospective employee will pan out for them.

I would argue that is not a bad thing. Some of us older folks long for an unrealistic expectation every now and then.

Ah, to hedge their bets, yes?