If you’ve come to this page, you’ll go far. There’s a lot of shonky careers advice out there, penned by people with shady agendas. So before you take any of it, it’s smart to ask questions about where it comes from.
As an experienced journalist, Tanya isn’t offended by your nosiness. In fact, she’s impressed. So what would you like to ask?
Er, who are you?
“I’m a journalist and the author of Dude, Where’s my Career? The Guide for Baffled Graduates. I also created the hit blog DudeWheresMyBlog.com, which has now been swallowed up into this new website, Graduate Fog. I’m 32 and I live in London.”
Why did you write the book?
“Because someone had to. Dude? is the book I needed when I graduated (in 2000, with a 2:1 in psychology from Durham University) – and readers tell me it’s just as needed today. Back then, I was shocked by how uninspiring, limiting and – let’s just say it – boring graduate careers advice was. I also found it was geared towards the people who needed it the least. You needed to know what you wanted to do for the next 40 years before a careers adviser could help. To me, this seemed nuts. What about the rest of us, who had no idea and felt completely overwhelmed?”
If there’s already a book on this subject, why start Graduate Fog?
“Dude? came on sale in June 2008 and I’m thrilled to hear from graduates that it’s just as relevant – and even more needed – now than it was then. In fact, I’m getting more emails than ever from graduates saying it’s the only careers book out there that’s actually helped them get a job. However, when the recession hit, graduates started asking me a new wave of questions that I wasn’t able to cover in Dude – and you need answers, now. There’s no time to write another book so I thought I’d use the internet to reach you directly.”
What do you know that other careers people don’t?
“That tuition fees have changed the very essence of what it means – and feels like – to be a job-seeking graduate. This realisation slapped me round the face during my time working as the Guardian’s resident graduate expert on their jobs forum. I realised that this is no longer just about you having an ‘Okay, I’ve graduated – now what?’ moment, like I did back in 2000 (I started the year before fees were introduced). The challenge graduates face now is enormously complex and the debt you are in is unprecedented. When the stakes are this high, giving you crusty old careers advice simply isn’t good enough.”
Why do you care so much about a subject as boring as careers advice?
“Because I don’t think it has to be boring! I think that’s just the way that it’s been done so far. It bugs me that there is a more modern, inspiring, engaging way of presenting the whole subject of careers – but that most universities are still doing such a bad job of it. I also feel strongly that the universities should be accountable in this department – especially now they are charging huge fees. Some of their advice is old-fashioned but relatively harmless (like the idea of needing to ‘choose your career’ aged 21 – eventually you’d figure out that’s rubbish, even without me). But some of it is dangerously misleading – and could push you even deeper into debt – without improving your job prospects at all – and I have a big problem with that. Basic messages are clearly not getting through to you. For example, if you’re considering to do an expensive postgraduate course, you need to know exactly what you’re going to do with it afterwards – and make sure that employers in your field value it more than a year of experience. If you don’t know either of these things, don’t do the course. Why is nobody telling you this? I also think they have a duty to inform you about your rights as interns – and too many universities are not doing this. In fact, many are advertising internships which they know are likely to be illegal.”
Is bad career advice really leading graduates to make big mistakes?
“Yes – and it’s costing some of you thousands of pounds. When graduates cheerfully tell me you’re heading off to do an expensive postgraduate qualification simply to ‘avoid the recession,’ that you’re not sure what you’ll do with it but it’s ‘the best course in the country,’ I’m chilled to the core. Who has told you this is a good investment? And, when I realise you have no understanding of how digital technology has turned the media industry on its head and you’re merrily hoping to start a long and lucrative career in print journalism, I want to grab you and shake you. Has nobody told you that several national newspapers are on the brink of closing because the industry is in such serious trouble now that consumers expect news content for free, online? Graduate Fog is not just about giving graduates practical advice on job-hunting. I also want to show you why it’s vital to see your job hunt in the wider context of the changing world of work around us. Spending thousands on a pointless MA or trying to start a career in a declining industry is not ‘following your dream’ – it’s a bad plan. So let’s make a new one that’s better.”
Are you planning to work with universities to spread the Dude / Graduate Fog word nationwide?
“It doesn’t look likely – at least, not any time soon. I’ve been banging on about the need for better graduate careers advice for two years – but the universities refuse to even acknowledge there’s a problem with what they’re doing at the moment. I know, it’s bonkers. Instead, I receive ranty emails from them asking how I could even suggest that they could be doing a better job. So, for the moment, that road is going nowhere. But hopefully once they see with their own eyes how popular Graduate Fog has become, they might start to understand what I mean. We can but dream.”
Is ‘graduate careers guru’ your only job? And does it pay?
“No, it’s not my only job. I’ve been a freelance features writer (magazine journalist) since 2002 and have written for GLAMOUR, Cosmopolitan, Grazia, Stylist and You (Mail on Sunday). For the moment, that’s how I pay my rent. Oh, and in case you’re interested – or thinking of becoming an author – for every copy of Dude? that sells at full price I make…50p. Ouch. On Amazon, the book is about half price, so I make 25p per book. So all this careers stuff is hardly making me rich. I’m hoping to get sponsorship for this website soon – but so far I’ve funded this entire site myself. All the time I spend on it is unpaid.”
Did become a journalist straight after you graduated?
“No, I didn’t know what I wanted to do – but was (mistakenly) sure it would ‘come to me’ if I waited long enough. It didn’t. I went home to live with my parents, where my confidence evaporated and my self-esteem nose-dived. That summer I worked as a very grumpy ‘Office Angel,’ de-stapling (yes, literally removing the staples from pieces of paper). It was, in a word, crap. When autumn arrived and I still had no direction, I took a job as a ‘front of house manager’ (receptionist) at a small recruitment firm in central London. It sounds boring but it really wasn’t. It was the perfect first job for me, at a time when I didn’t have a clue where I was going. Since then, I’ve figured out everything else as I’ve gone along.”
*Anything else you’d like to know about Tanya?
Drop her a line here and she’ll add some extra content to this page.
I know exactly what you mean about the moving home and being totally uninspired – that’s what I did after uni. I’ve finally escaped, but sadly I can’t escape into a receptionist or front of house job because even for the tiny firms, there’s 100 competitors. Ah tough times…
*uninspiring. D’oh. See, all this interning has killed my brain.
Hello,
My name is Megan and I run http://www.thegraduateguru.com. I would love the opportunity to interview you for the website and to connect our projects. Please email me if you are interested!
It’s a pity you clearly had a bad experience of careers advice, especially that it gave you the completely incorrect impression that “you needed to know what you wanted to do for the next 40 years before a careers adviser could help”.
I know of no careers adviser or department (including Russell Group universities) where this view would be intentionally advocated, but certainly it’s a myth widely held by students and society at large that careers centres spend a lot of time and energy trying to dispel. It’s probably down to the huge level of advertising corporate graduate employers spend promoting a relatively narrow range of occupations to the 10% of the graduate workforce they eventually employ.
The fact is university careers centres are highly tuned to help students in the awkward process of reflecting on their strengths and weaknesses before launching into a career. Indeed, we recognise the very term ‘career’ is something of a misnomer, since for most folk it amounts to a related string of jobs, rather than a planned lifetime in one occupation. There’s even a theoretical term to describe the alternative: planned happenstance, which basically amounts to empowering graduates to making their own luck.
Whilst I hope you do well with your publcations, I also hope graduates and students aren’t put off consulting their respective careers centres for information, advice and guidance, especially if they haven’t got a clue what they want to do with their lives. This is the very bread and butter of the careers professional, even if something has unintentionally led you to believe otherwise.
It says something about the present graduate climate that I’d gladly snap up the Office Angels de-stapling job in a heartbeat (I’ve just had enough of retail, and almost everything else seems to want x months/years’ experience working in an office now). Did temp agencies used to actually talk to people in the olden days, rather than directing to upload a CV to their website?
Keep up the good work! You know you’re hitting a nerve when career advisors post on your site. He sounds a bit defensive, I think.
I hope more people look carefully at the costs and benefits of university education *before* committing to it. Don’t wait until you’ve spent all that time and money — career advisors are only there to try to help you after you’ve made the mistake, not before.
Higher education has been turned into an industry pretty much like any other. Students are suckered into taking on huge debts to keep the industry ticking over. Wouldn’t want them to realise that most degrees have a very small return on investment — if not a negative one.
I’m trying to ensure both students and graduates know their university careers service is there for them, provided they make the effort at the right time and don’t expect miracles.
University careers advisors are trained specifically to help students identify suitable career steps before graduating. We can help for a short period afterwards, but our resources are best used early. It’s also worth noting that most university careers centres can and do provide impartial advice to prospective students.
The graduate premium was recently recalculated to be an average lifetime salary some 85% above non-graduates. Whilst some degree programmes may have graduates with lower average incomes, it’s vital to contextualise that against lifestyle ambitions and personal choice. Some also have considerably higher averages.
I don’t think your typical archaeology graduate is expecting massive financial remuneration for doing the work they studied for, but if they want money there’s nothing preventing them using their degrees to get into merchant banking or many other well-paid sectors – employers want interesting and interested employees, not drones.