APPLICANTS INCLUDE GRADUATES, SAYS COFFEE CHAIN
A new branch of Costa has been flooded with 1,701 CVs – for just eight shop-based jobs. In a startling reminder of the tough competition for jobs in 2013, the coffee chain revealed that applicants included numerous graduates struggling to find employment after finishing university – and even a senior retail manager with 15 years’ retail experience.
A Costa spokesperson confirmed the chain was astonished by the response to their adverts for three full-time and five part-time jobs in the coffee shop in Mapperley, Nottingham, paying between £6.10 and £10 an hour. Sham Ramparia, Costa’s manager for the Midlands, said:
“Many had a background in retail and some of them were senior retail managers at the likes of Comet and HMV with about 10 to 15 years of experience. Many applicants were hugely over-qualified.
“It seems to be a barometer of two things – the current market and the strength of our brand.
“We only listed the jobs advertisement on one website and put a sign up on the building while we were renovating it but the applications just came flooding in.
“I was amazed at the level of interest. It just shows how hard times are.”
Meanwhile, new figures from the Office of National Statistics reported a jump in overall employment (the number of people in jobs) and a drop in the number of people claiming jobseeker’s allowance – results even the work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith admitted seemed “remarkable”. But there was bad news too – youth unemployment has risen by 11,000. Between September and November 2012, 957,000 people aged 16-24 were unemployed, and that was before the collapse of several chains employing young people went into administration in 2013, including HMV, Blockbuster, Jessops and Republic. Frances O’Grady, the TUC general secretary, said the figures indicated a jobs crisis that was hitting young people particularly hard:
“These figures show just how desperate people are for any kind of work. Ministers claim there are plenty of jobs out there but the reality is that there are far more people chasing those jobs.
“That’s why, rather than demonising unemployed people as scroungers, we need to get the economy growing and support them into work.”
Serious questions are now being asked about the government’s plan to help young people into paid, stable jobs – as some predict youth unemployment, which had been dropping, will top a million once again in 2013. After the collapse in confidence around the controversial Work Programme, is it time for a complete re-think on jobs for young people?
*HAVE YOU APPLIED FOR JOBS IN SHOPS AND COFFEE CHAINS?
How hard is it for graduates to find employment in 2013? How many of your friends are still hunting for work after finishing university? Do you have faith in the government’s plans to help young people into jobs – or should the politicians be doing more?
But this blog believes these types of jobs are below graduates right?
meh.
Cognitive dissonance with a vengeance … the National Statistics Office produces the UK’s best quality data BUT the picture they’re describing seems incredible. I can’t see how it squares with the number of companies going out of business and losing staff; or with the huge demand for very ordinary and barely advertised jobs. Economics journalists don’t seem to understand what’s going on either.
Hi Peter,
I can’t speak for all GF’s users… but when I write these posts it’s normally from the viewpoint that no jobs are ‘below’ anyone – and everyone needs money to survive, a day’s pay for a day’s work etc – but I do think it’s fair for graduates to feel that after they’ve invested 3+ years and around around £27,000 on their degree, that they should be able to find a job with more promising prospects than working in a cafe, shop etc (unless they want to go into hospitality or retail management etc, in which case it could be a good starting point I guess). If they can’t, then why did they bother with uni at all? The days when young people went to uni just to expand their minds are over – that may be sad but given the price tag on a degree these days, graduates have every right to be more transactional I think. If I’d just spent that kind of money I’d expect it to ‘buy’ me something too. I know that if I spent thousands of pounds on a car that didn’t go, I’d be pretty annoyed too…
You may also be interested in this post, and the comments below it: Just graduated? Congratulations, you’ll make a great cleaner
I think it’s also important to remember that a lot of people who work as cleaners etc want their kids to go to uni because they hope that they will have more fulfilling, better-paid careers than they did. Not always, but I would say that’s quite common. I think it’s unfair when people imply that graduates are being snobbish about jobs just because they are hoping to get better jobs (and indeed better paid jobs) now they have a degree than they would have done without. Of course they are – everybody (parents, teachers, politicians etc) has told them to go to uni for those reasons, so it’s reasonable to annoyed if they graduate and find that’s not the case.
But it sounds like you disagree? Which of course you’re totally free to do!
@CareersPartnerships
I’m pleased to hear you’re confused – I am too! The numbers just don’t seem to square with reality. I’m sure the the work programme must be having an impact somewhere – young people on their schemes will not be counted as ‘unemployed’ as they’re ‘in training’, isn’t that right?
Are there any economics journalists reading who can shed any light??
“that they should be able to find a job with more promising prospects”
Oh the arrogance, oh, the sense of entitlement. Oh the failure to address the economic situation. If there aint jobs, there aint jobs.
Stop blaming everyone else, develop some backbone. Develop a sense of responsibility. The world doesn’t owe graduates, or anyone else a living
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20969542
If they can’t, then why did they bother with uni at all? – For an education, if they wanted to work they’d have gone out to work. I guess they bothered because you (and perhaps others) gave them the expectation and sense of entitlement about what happens when they leave. You were misguided and ought to revise your viewpoint. Giving the thousands of examples on this site you too aren’t adjusting your view that there just aren’t the jobs available.
For one thing the unemployment statistics are national, whilst on a local level jobs are very unevenly distributed, and those on the lowest incomes are the least mobile (in terms of both commuting and relocating).
Also, apparently those on “training” schemes, workfare etc., and those on JSA who have been sanctioned aren’t counted as being unemployed, as well as – presumably – those living with partners or spouses ineligible for income-based support due to household income (and who can’t get contribution-based).
When employment is said to have increased, then if I understand correctly they actually mean those claiming JSA has gone down. They don’t necessarily know what’s happened to them: they may have got a temp job which will soon end. Equally, they may have been sanctioned (and possibly then thrown out on the street), or put into a scheme.
Also, with these 500,000 advertised vacancies on the Universal Jobsearch site, plus whatever other jobsites advertise: many come from the same agencies and are duplicates, some are fake, spurious or not advertising specific positions (e.g. agency’s CV fishing expeditions), many are part-time so some would risk rent arrears or homelessness if they took them.
And, of course, many require x years of experience of y, £40+ CRB checks (sometimes paid by an applicant), or training that would cost an applicant hundreds or thousands of pounds (e.g. knowledge of SAGE – which I see a lot), or a driving license and own car etc.
Plus, even the official stats say there are c 3 million unemployed compared to these 500,000 advertised vacancies. That would be bad if the jobs and unemployed were evenly distributed – which of course they aren’t.
Eh? To be honest I think you’re putting a position into our collective postings that isn’t there.
Also University is pretty clearly sold by schools as a passage to better job prospects so that’s why I’d say the majority of people go.
*That was in response to Career Partnerships and Tanya’s stats point, I forgot to say.
@ Alex
A very helpful post. I’m commenting on just one element of it as it’s something I noticed when trying (and failing!) to understand what’s really going on …
“When employment is said to have increased, then if I understand correctly they actually mean those claiming JSA has gone down.”
The article I saw showed separate graphs showing employment rising and JSA claims falling.
I assume if there had been a perfect correlation between the two (showing the figures had simply been repeated on the assumption reduced JSA claims meant exactly the same as rising employment), then some bright journalist would have picked that up. From memory, I think there were differences between the trend lines on both graphs.
Peter: “If they can’t, then why did they bother with uni at all? — For an education, if they wanted to work they’d have gone out to work”, oh here we go, the usual sickening diatribe against students and graduates along the lines of ‘they’re only at uni in order to avoid work’. What an idiot! This kind of thing is usually the preserve of people who are resentful of students primarily because they themselves were too dumb or too lazy to bother working hard at school, getting good marks and therefore being able to get into uni, or, not seizing the opportunities offered to mature students like myself later in life. Getting a degree is, quite rightly, an attempt to better one’s educational, intellectual and vocational prospects, and its open to everyone if you work hard enough and seize the opportunities when they’re offered. So don’t moan if you can’t be bothered!
“Getting a degree is, quite rightly, an attempt to better one’s educational, intellectual and vocational prospects, and its open to everyone if you work hard enough and seize the opportunities when they’re offered.”
Too right (although they’re not necessarily open to everyone – it’s very very difficult to make it through uni without some form of alternative financial backing).
Peter seems to be ignoring people like myself who worked in jobs while doing their degrees…
Yes, true, I was fortunate enough to get in to Bath Spa in 2005, the year before the fees jumped from £15k up to £36k or what not, and haven’t they gone up again since? I still had to carry on various self-employed gardening jobs while I was studying in order to afford my rent…
Agree with you Robin, but surely a degree allows one to see the current jobs climate and gives one the capabilities to remove the entitlement chip from ones shoulders, as you admirably demonstrate.
Better yourself by all means, but don’t EXPECT a wall paid prestigious job afterwards, its not cause and effect, its market fores.
Well it was just that one sentence that irked me to be honest, but when you mention market forces, yes I can see that, at which point we need to move on to a different discussion concerned whether the present policy of austerity is working or not. Given that President Roosevelt felt moved to try and end the Great Depression through direct investment, and given the failure of austerity to achieve any meaningful recovery, I would say time for a change, but that’s going off the subject. What is relevant is that it shows there aren’t the jobs out there that Iain Duncan Smith seems to think there is…
I always assumed that this was a fake story….there may have been 8 vacancies, but the likelihood of their being 1701 CV’s for such a lowly vacancy sounds a bit far fetched. However, the company had a bombshell.. rather than waste any money on a Marketing Campaign, simply spoon feed the story to some hacks, and the media would pick up the story.
Doesn’t seem far fetched to me – the more general the job, the higher the number of applicants. There was a vacancy my friend went for recently – quite a specialised job requiring a large amount of specific legal knowledge. Over 700 applicants. Things really are that bad at the moment…
In my opinion, based on graduates I’ve spoken to – recent graduates and long-term career graduates – there still exists an elite network of businessmen, politicians, civil servants,judges and academics who conspire to reserve the top jobs for family and friends, and deliberately discourage everyone else outside their circle.
It is extremely difficult in the UK to establish a successful career and many obstacles are placed in the way. Individuals often fail to get promoted and their finances stagnate as a result.
It is difficult to prove, but a powerful section of society did not like the idea of greater access to higher education and has closed ranks to slam shut the door of opportunity for hundreds of thousands of graduates.
@Brian
They’re called Baby Boomers. The generation holds disproportionate amounts of power and wealth in contrast to everyone else.
@Brian
There may be a bit of that, but tbh I don’t think a conspiracy is even needed half the time. In careers where there is overwhelming competition, and when laws against unpaid work are not enforced, nepotism and/or the requirement to have insane amounts of (often unpaid) experience just seems to me to be the likely outcome, and doesn’t require this outcome to be plotted by anyone.
I’ve talked to people from more well-off families, and I think a lot of them genuinely don’t understand that other people struggle to do what they do effortlessly due to financial backing. For example, people who asked if I was going to do a Masters and seemed surprised I was considering whether or not I could afford one.
When I still had my last temp job, I had a Civil Service interview and discovered the form basically had a built-in class bar in it requiring many applicants to lie. You needed a reference you actually knew (not in a professional capacity) from a list of professions like teacher, lawyer, civil servant, priest (so religiously observant people get an advantage), who you’d known for a year (I’d worked in my office for less than that, so couldn’t use the civil servants I worked with). I struggled for ages before finally remembering a friend of mine I went to school with became a teacher. And my Dad was a company director, I suspect people from many other backgrounds would struggle even more and just have to lie like I was considering (i.e. perhaps pretending I knew my dissertation supervisor in anything other than a professional capacity).
I’m not really sure if the Civil Service test is deliberately done this way (though it may be). One other Law graduate from a wealthy background knew lots of people with jobs on the list, and seemed to be affronted I didn’t. I can’t help suspecting the people who wrote the form simply can’t conceive that there are people who are not well-acquainted with those types of professionals.
And of course we’re all guilty of these kind of thoughts – most of us take for granted things those in the Third World don’t have.
“For example, people who asked if I was going to do a Masters and seemed surprised I was considering whether or not I could afford one.”
Totally!! I applied for a Masters last year at the university where I did my Undergraduate degree. I had to go for the Arts Council funding because I had no other way of paying for it. All through the application and interviewing process, the lecturer making the decision kept saying “There is a lot of competition for funded places but we hope you will be able to come on the course anyway…” Again and again and AGAIN I told him that I just couldn’t afford it but it was like he just didn’t believe me.
The final straw came when he emailed me after I was rejected for the funding, once again saying “We hope you will still be joining us etc”. I send a pretty terse message back saying “I don’t know if you think I’m lying when I say I don’t have thousands of pounds at my disposal or if you’re just selectively deaf, but no I will not be joining you on the course.”
@CostaDel no. no they’re not. tell that to my parents, or my gradnparents. sure some have done well, but those who live outside the South East have certainly not seen their asset based wealth ride the property gravy train. tell that to those who’ve retired who are renting or in care homes. frankly we should be having a little less of these intergenerational conflicts.
The government only does what business tells it to. Business lobbies politicians hard to get government to adopt policies that suit employers and leaves employees with fewer and fewer opportunities to climb the ladder. The first big post Second World War lie was that the introduction of the 11+ into the education system would provide opportunity for schoolchildren. It was a lie because it condemned millions to a life of servitude, serving in shops and factories. Millions of children were let down by an education system designed to stifle opportunity and keep the working-class in their place.
The second big lie was that the newly-created polytechnics were just as good as the universities and that a degree from a polytechnic was given equal value as a degree from a university. The lie is that graduates from universities were given preferential treatment in the private sector and the public sector.
The third and current lie is that new universities have equal status with the old universities. But how many graduates from new universities work in low-paid non-graduate jobs compared to graduates from old universities?
In my 2nd paragraph above I meant that university graduates got the top jobs over the polytechnic graduates. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule.
@Sarah
I’m glad it isn’t just me. I remember I went to a talk about one Masters I’d have been interested in (Politics/International Relations-related with a year in Lille, where some people got placements in Brussels or with French government departments).
The lecturer (one of my favourites, who always gave interesting lectures rather than just a few Powerpoint bullet points) asked if I was interested, and I said yes but didn’t think I could afford it – it seemed like he’d heard it a lot.
He asked whether my parents or part-time work couldn’t help and that in many fields related to Politics a Bachelor wasn’t enough (at least he was warning me and telling the truth there 😉 ), and I think I answered quite sensibly that you generally need full-time work to pay rent and have anything left over (luckily this was Birmingham not London, where basically all your full-time wages at NMW would go on rent), and my parent’s pockets – despite them giving some help I am grateful for (and feel guilty about) – aren’t limitless.
To be fair, I read this lecturer did a Masters in his late- to mid-20s, so maybe part-time work helped him through. And I know some people make it work through savings and working virtually every waking hour (indeed I ought to have emulated some Polish classmates who worked virtually full-time and still got good grades, but hindsight is a beautiful thing, and they didn’t get maintenance loans so had more incentive).
But given my lack of bar/restaurant experience (I had a bit of retail experience during and before uni) at that point, the recession and my overdraft I think I was correct in assessing I couldn’t afford a Masters – I certainly couldn’t be confident of getting bar/retail wok around a Masters in this climate, let alone funding a year in Lille. I think even a Career Development Loan (if accepted) would have been far too much of a gamble given the need to start paying it off almost as soon as a course is over.
if this really is true then its really important when applying to companies like this (for all cases really) to use the right key words on CV’s as most recruiters these days use management software to search for people with relevant skills.
I actually just wrote an article about it on http://bit.ly/XcPtER that has more information if anyone is interested 🙂
How do we know how many scan CVs? So many applicants use keywords on their CV, which doesn’t solve the problem. I bet they have a set number and take the first 30 emails, for instance. I’ve seen what I suspect a temp agency has done that, because they’ve advertised the same position 4 or 5 days later, sometimes saying previous applicants need not apply. Who knows one way or the other? I suspect the whole recruitment process is a black art and not as impartial and intelligently considered as many would have jobseekers believe.
People, don’t do a degree! It’s worthless! An utter waste of time. I, unfortunately did, 20 years ago, and career-wise, never made a difference! Universities are money-grabbing institutions. Academic requirements are a joke! Just take a look at institutions in Clearing for 2014, some have not even waited for A’Level results day and lowered their entry requirements to ridiculous lows! Check their websites! It’s a joke!
The government took away the cap on student numbers which means universities can recruit as many students as they want until they are physically full. That’s why so many universities are in clearing these days, including the likes of Durham and Warwick which are ‘Russell group’. Extra bums on seats = more money. The exceptions to the rule are Oxbridge, Imperial and possibly LSE, UCL etc. I’m still part way through my degree so I can’t answer to whether my degree will be useless. I chose one of the ‘hard’ physical sciences so I’m hoping it will at least be of some use when I finish.
@Neo, when I read your opening sentence I read in “universities can recruit as many students as they like until they are physically sick”. It does seem like that at times – bloated university staff devouring more and more students beyond what the local student housing market can adequately cope with or the traditional small English pubs can manage to squeeze in, or even the nightclub can fit on the dance floor. And when the university belches, the poor natives groan and suffer some more. Bums on seats and the coffers filling up. Has Tony Blair’s “Education, Education, Education” led to “Unemployment, Unemployment, Unemployment”?
It used to be the case that departments would face penalties if they recruited too many students. Now like I say the cap has been removed. The best universities can use their discretion to cherry pick the brightest. The ones lower down the league tables put pretty much every course into clearing, with the exception of vocations like social work, OT etc where there are limits because of space on placements.
Also note how universities have the most competitive courses available in clearing for international students but not home students. It’s all about money.