This Is The End, Beautiful Friend

I have a job!!!! Ha ha, never did I think I would utter those sweet, sweet words of glory. I am now a Production Assistant at the very prestigious Bloomsbury Publishing in their Academic Department. If you don't know Bloomsbury, you should - they were the clever people who published Harry Potter. I will however, be working less with Muggles, Witches and Wizards and more with revolutions, wars and philosophies. This is certainly the end of monotonous job searches and cover letters and CVs and bitter bitter rejection. Hooray! It has taken me around 8 months of searching, over 40 jobs applied to, less than half of those replied to, over 100 tiring waitressing shifts, 5 nerve-racking interviews and 4 work experience placements with great companies.

Reactions to my news varied from people streaming tears down their face and jumping up and down on the spot for about five minutes to a simple 'wow that's great....but what about the blog?' Aah the selfish human mind - always looking to get something for itself out of a situation. I am, of course, joking and never fret, this is not the end of our beautiful relationship dear readers (even if some of you were dying to get rid of me!).

I did contemplate ending it all here, signing off in a dramatic statement of typed words flooding the internet with their poignancy. After all, I can't write anything bad about the new job (not that I think I'll need to) for fear of being fired before I've even taken off, and let's face it... who really wants to read about how well someone is doing and how happy they are? People want to to see how miserable and stressed everyone else is so that they don't feel like a total failure themselves. I know I do. It seems however, that there is still a lot to be written about the graduate experience and the terrible job market we are in at the moment.

I don't claim to be a bearer of all knowledge on the subject but I do think that if I can offer up some advice or just a little bit of courage to anyone about to graduate or looking for a job, then this blog still has a semblance of a life. I still feel angry about the way many of my job applications were handled. I still believe that universities don't offer up enough practical advice about entering into a weak labour market. And I still believe that we need to shift the blame from jobless graduates who are labelled lazy or stuck-up and take a deeper look at what is really holding them back.

In September of 2011, I was one of thousands of graduates unable to find a job that used the skills I gained at university. With the 2012 graduates about the join us, it looks set to get even more difficult. Here's my message of hope however - If I can do it so can you. And until that point, we shall both keep fighting the objects that stand in the way. I'm on your side - job or no job.  

  

The Luck of the Draw

I don't know whether I was green with envy or just plain sick but the number of high end designer coats I handled yesterday was insane. It was Dolce & Gabanna after Prada after Burberry, and so much fur; god knows how many dead animals I hung on a coat hanger. What did I expect when I was the coat check girl for a very very expensive jewellery shop on New Bond Street? When I say expensive, I mean some of those jewels would have bought several houses.

While a few of the clientèle were almost ridiculous - botoxed faces that looked like masks and 40 year old bodies pushed into see-through black dresses - the owner of the shop was actually quite normal. Once they had discovered I was more than just a waitress (actually we are all always, more than just waitresses) they told me about how their son had just graduated from Manchester (ha...Nottingham is better!) and was going to be in the same situation as me soon.

Well, this got me thinking... is he actually going to have to face the same obstacles as me? His parents own a spectacular diamond shop and they know countless extremely wealthy and connected people. A reader of this humble little blog recently stressed to me how much luck comes into the equation. They wrote

'Even the work ethic required to complete a law or medical degree is established by a certain amount of luck. Lucky to have nurturing parents, lucky to have wealth (for most), lucky to have the correct set of genes to use a certain side of the brain, lucky to be taught from an early age how to manage time. With 7 billion people on earth, there's more pressure than ever to be perfect' 


Well it seems that my luck has dried up, or at least it's in drought. I was lucky enough to have parents who gave me decent enough genes to do well at my education, pushed me to take on lots of extra curricular activities and who taught me how to communicate well. Certainly there are people born into far unluckier circumstances than myself.

I'm not the kind of person however, who wishes to leave it all up to luck. While several factors are playing in my favour in the 'rat race' I also believe that most of my good fortune has come about through sheer hard work. The luckiest person in the world wouldn't get the job of their dreams without at least trying.

Well here's a test for you life... I recently had a very exciting interview at Bloomsbury publishing for my ideal role in their academic division. It went really well - the interviewer seemed to like me, I answered the questions naturally and comprehensively. I left feeling good about it but I was only the second interviewee and they had several other candidates to see after me. I'll know if I got the job by tomorrow.  Come on luck, open the flood barriers again and pour your glorious water all over me because this drought is starting to slowly suck the life out of me.

Parallel Universes

It appears that my graduate limbo has split into two parallel universes, both of which I simultaneously inhabit and neither of which are alike in any way. Universe number one consists of me generally running round with a heavy tray (which has already increased the size of my biceps), polishing plates and glasses in a steamy kitchen and smiling graciously at very very drunk middle-aged men who insist on breathing their Veuve-Cliquot champagne breath right up my nose. While this job is earning me a wage, it is so minimal it might as well be a minus wage. For my shift at Claridges (one day I will walk through the FRONT door!) I had to buy a pencil skirt, tie, shirt and heeled shoes. They may well have been from Matalan but they also accumulated to £30, almost the exact amount I earned for the five hour shift.

Even the people hiring me think that I'm mental to do this job. Sergei, the suave Russian head of the waiting staff at Claridges was both overly pleased and astounded to have met a real English person working there, at one of the most English establishments in London! Now, I had a great time meeting all my fellow waiters and waitresses, but it did leave me wondering why on earth I was the only English person working there? Why are   foreigners having to take these low-paid jobs in hotels and what are all the other English people of my age and situation doing instead?

Perhaps they are simply settling for one universe? My parallel existence number two is very different.Today I completed my first day at the Daily Mail with the Weekend Magazine. The description my supervisor gave me was that basically I would be 'doing all the shopping for the magazine'... yipee! What girl wouldn't want to shop for a job? And, I got to walk in through the front door, well, the visitors section of the front door but let's not dwell on that. My day consisted of reading through every big British newspaper available (by the way there's a lot of them) in order to try and suss out what exactly was hot and what exactly was not for the barometer column and then internet shopping for quirky corkscrews. I never dreamt that a corkscrew would take up an entire evening of my life but it did, and the result was surprisingly satisfying. Plus I got shown round the store room where they keep all the products they have been sent from PR companies:- Hotel Chocolat choccies, Laura Ashley Wallpaper, expensive wines and so much more.

I think if I had to sum up my two parallel universes it would be by their respective cupboards. A treasure trove of freebies in comparison to a kitchen clearing room which is full of cold food, broken glass and tiredness.