A Career: Not Quite What It Used To Be

        I've abseiled down the front of a building in Milton Keynes that looks like a giant shoe, I've pulled a loop-de-loop in a small plane for fun, and I've even bared the uncharted territory that is a hen do, but there are few things that bring up as much trepidation as a job interview. Seriously, there are few things that make me worry more than having to find the right suit, doing some utterly pointless research on the company about their operating history and their turnover that bears no relevance to anything you're going to do there, which will probably be the guy who gets shouted at by clients every time there's a day in the week. You've then got to spend many wasted hours sitting in front of the mirror, perfecting your "interview smile". It needs to be somewhere in between Elvis-lip and psychopathic grin but not obviously fake. You also need to make sure that you don't turn up late, as this sits next to punching the interviewer in the face and suggesting that his wife was a "goer" in terms of bad interview etiquette. If I could redesign the world then I'd make sure, right after I remove wasps for being the single most useless insect ever, that I would simply be given a job based on some other medium. If they could make a brilliant cup of tea, then I see no reason not to make them the Managing Director, for example.

     

   All this nonsense is normal to me. In my time, I've been a shop assistant, and a quality assurance person. I've co-ordinated engineers to set up new computers for the terminally luddite, I've sold bathroom equipment to trade, and I secured an awesome job in the finance industry before I ended up scrawling my opinions for one of the top PR companies in the East of England, so I've been interviewed more times than Tony Blair. It's an accepted annoyance, like hay-fever, people who say "ROFL", or Justin Bieber. To my Grandad, all this is crazy! You see, he worked for the same company since he was a wee boy, designing plans for houses and building stuff. He stayed there from his first day, working through the swinging 60's, drawing through the turbulent 80's until he received his pension in the 90's. To him, an interview is something that he is only vaguely aware of, or maybe a list of questions whenever he goes for a medical, and probably thinks it's the modern equivalent of an apprenticeship. University was something that you went to if you lived in London and wanted to follow your Dad into the banking industry. 

        In fact, this is not just something that applies to those who were born in the 30's, but something that will be familiar with the baby boomer generation. Personally, I believe that there has never been a generation to date that has been as lucky as the baby boomers: they mostly came from a pretty little nuclear family, and went straight into a job where they stay until retirement. No need to worry about getting a degree (at least, for the vast majority as only about 5% of school leavers went to University) because after a few years, you could easily work your way up the ladder with some good old honest hard work. You then bought a house in a nice area. For most, this is the story with the exception of those who were charmed over to an identical job at a rival company. Your boss looked after you, and you looked after your boss. If you didn't get on with them, not a problem. Wait it out, and you might be transferred, but you both worked towards the best solution. You work hard, and they will look after you. Then you can take that retirement with a golden watch and enjoy your old age with as many trips to the garden centre as you can bear. So, you'd forgive them for being short with those who still have no set career path. Those who float from minimum-wage job to minimum-wage job, or who cannot get even that despite the best efforts. It's easy as pie to get a beautiful career, and they are the perfect case-study.

        I am in my late 20's, so therefore am part of the generation that looked up to this plan with every intention of emulating it. Yet despite our best efforts and the scorn from the baby boomers, it just doesn't happen. If we're in a job for three years, it feels like twenty! This isn't because we're too busy getting drunk at the weekend, but because the loyalty that we've been promised for decades will be reciprocated... simply isn't. Today, loyalty means nothing other than making you do two people's work for the price of one. The best you can do is to get as many achievements as possible, and after a year you use that as leverage to get into another company that might have a pool table in the break-out room. Then, simply repeat this often. There are those of us that stick it out, scoffing at the hoppers because one day, we'll climb to management, just like dear ol' Dad. However after ten years they find that they have nothing to show for it, because those same baby boomers are all occupying the senior management positions. Then, they get made redundant. Pension? Better get in touch with Scottish Widows, because you're more likely to find a company offering company saunas than company pensions. Can you imagine getting a great-paying job without a degree today? Nope, me neither. What about buying a house on a 9-5 salary? Hah! Unless you know the right people or have the right connections, expect to sweep floors or say "that'll be £14.95 please" for a long time. There's no shame in that, but it's not a career by any stretch. Progress into a high position normally happens because the tiny company became a big one. You've heard of the glass ceiling? It's now a glass box. More often than not, where you are now determines where you will be in ten years if you sit tight.

        So what's changed? Why is it so hard today to emulate what was so easy only a few decades back? Well, simply put, after the Second World War, we had a massive shortage of working people in this country since most of Europe had spent six years shooting at each other. So when they stopped, there was a massive population explosion. The baby boomers turned up! See, every generation is competing with the one that preceded it, so the boomers had a war-fatigued and reduced population to compete with jobs for, and they had sheer weight of numbers to simply plow through to the jobs they wanted. Easy as pie. Today, when this generation are trying to do the same, it's that sheer weight of numbers sitting in the top management positions that are blocking them from progressing. No room, I'm afraid, all spaces are filled. So all we can do is hop from job to job, fighting for the parts at the bottom that aren't taken up by another baby boomer. And then, when they retire and those jobs start to become available, they know that they will have to fund the pensions for a huge chunk of the population retiring at once.

        So for the baby boomers, complaining about people not getting great jobs straight out of school does nothing. Things have changed, just as they did when you all hit working age. The only difference is that it has changed for the worse at this end. Loyalty used to matter. Not any more.

        But on the plus side, having as many random jobs as I've had, I could write a small book about all the odd things that have happened in an interview, or the strange questions I've been asked. I could publish it as well.

        Maybe there's a career out of all this interview-hopping after all.


images credited to freedigitalphotos

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