ONE IN FOUR WHO TAKE NON-GRADUATE JOBS ARE STILL THERE THREE AND A HALF YEARS LATER
Graduates who take ‘stop-gap’ jobs after finishing university because they can’t find a graduate role are being urged to move on quickly. New research shows that one in four who takes a non-graduate job – such as in retail, construction or catering – will find themselves employed in the same position in three and a half years’ time.
The figures from the New Employment Foundation, commissioned by the NUS and published yesterday, raise fresh concerns about the large number of graduates who are being forced to lower their aspirations and take any work they can get. The lesson is clear: if you do take one of these jobs, don’t get stuck. Keep looking for graduate roles and move on as soon as you can. The report said:
“Study leavers face a perfect storm. Underlying fractures in the labour market, such as pay polarisation, have surfaced.
“Even those with good graduate degrees are facing months of unemployment or free interning in order to gain access to paid work. Those with no or few qualifications are being left out in the cold.
“Study leavers face a rude awakening. Some will see low returns, at least in the short to medium term, to the personal and financial investment they have made in their education.
“Intense competition in the labour market has created a bumping-down effect where graduates are working in lower-skilled jobs and those who would have formerly taken these positions are further squeezed out of the labour market.
“While the situation seems easier for those graduating from Russell Group universities, the conditions are not ideal for anyone.”
Graduates are being badly affected by the problem of “under-employment”(where people want to work longer hours or in higher skilled jobs than they are) and an increase in “zero hour” contracts (where employees are asked to be available for work but with no guarantee that any will be available).
While prospects for entering low-paid or top-ranking jobs are improving, median paid jobs remain scarce. This would seem to fit with heated discussions on Graduate Fog about the split – and vast salary gap – between the high-paid and low-paid jobs that graduates end up doing.
But there was some good news – the reverse is true too. Researchers claimed “a strong positive relationship” between those employed in graduate jobs six months after leaving university and three years later.
*ARE YOU DOING A ‘STOP GAP’ JOB?
What is the job – and how long have you been doing it for? Are you still looking for a graduate job to move on to – or have you stopped hunting? Do you feel ‘under-employed’ – do you wish you were doing more skilled work, or longer hours? Or did you take the job as a short-term fix – and find you were happier than you expected to be in the role?
I took a stop-gap job 7 years ago. It pays the bills but isn’t my dream career – despite that I do work with a good bunch of colleagues and it is fairly stable. I am still working towards my dream career, but it does get more difficult as time goes on – I can’t afford to quit the job so internships are out of the question, so any work that I do get, is paid and ad-hoc. This makes for a patchy history as far as the dream career is concerned … catch-22.
I am now looking for ways to realise my ambition on my own in a business setting, where I have more control of my destiny; this too is challenging, but at least it keeps my mind occupied and gives me goals to work towards.
I am a freelance journalist, with most of my clients in the renewable energy industry and the odd magazine article here and there. It’s probably too late for me to move into a proper graduate job now, if there were any, especially at the age of 46, but I like being self-employed now anyway. Writing is a respectable and satisfying profession, I charge reasonable rates even if not enough clients means I still struggle and I can run my own affairs without having some egotistic and pompous middle manager pushing me around. My growing endorsements on LinkedIn I think testifies as to how much my work is appreciated by my clients and by others who read my material. Not ideal but its certainly more dignifying than pushing pallets around in Tescos.
I’d love a stop-gap job. Problem is I’m overqualified for them…that is if they don’t reject me for a lack of experience as well. I can’t remove my degree without leaving a three year CV gap. You’ve got to laugh or you would cry…
I took a stop-gap job as a bartender in 2011 and worked it for 14 months. I was forced to leave in the end as I couldn’t find affordable childcare during the summer months. I’m not interning for a great charity, where I have been for three months and expect to be until December. It’s nowhere near ideal in terms of finances but at least I don’t go home angry anymore (which was a regular feature of my working life a bartender).
Stupid article- points out a problem without providing an answer, states what everyone already knows about the graduate job market, and really serves no purpose.
That meant to read, ‘I am *now* interning…’
That’s all very well and good for them to say, but it really isn’t that easy. What choice do those of us unable to get a graduate job have? I’ve been working in bars and restaurants for the past three to four years and have ended up doing studying for a part time MA in the hopes that this will help me get a job in the industry I want.
I was recently made redundant from my “stop gap job” and had to go on job seekers, where I’m encouraged in to these types of job and told that if it comes between my MA or a 50 hours a week waitressing job, I need to give up my MA (something I’ve spent 18 months working on and over £8000 on). Luckily I’ve managed to find another part time bar job.
The young and unemployed can’t win. We’re told not to do the more menial jobs by some, forced to do them by others who seem to be against us further educating ourselves in the hopes of doing better or made to work for free if we want a certain job.
This is a real tricky one….
Given the current competition for graduate jobs many have a choice to make, remain unemployed for an unknown length of time whilst waiting for the dream job, or grab a stop-gap job to earn a bit of cash and keep themselves busy.
If your dream job is in a popular sector than the chances are it could take you much longer to find your dream job than say if you were after a job in a less attractive or more highly skills sector. If this is the case then you need to consider how long can you afford to seek your dream job before going down the stop gap job route? Staying highly motivated and driven is by far the best way to secure your dream job, but you need to fully understand the consequences of committing to this.
Conversely, taking a stop gap job could actually lead to your dream job without you realising it. A friend of mine always wanted to be a big business leader and decided that a career in banking was his preferred route. After being unable to secure a banking job he got a full-time shop floor position working for a large national supermarket chain. Although this job was a stop gap to earn himself some money and help develop some employability skills, he soon realised that he really liked the culture of the company and found the business environment quite exciting. Fast forward 20-years and he is now the CEO of the South East Asia division of this now international supermarket chain. Who would’ve thought eh?
Which route you take is always going to be a personal decision but my advice to graduates is to start taking steps to finding your dream job much earlier than you think you need to. Many students wait until April-May of their final year to start the job hunting process yet I think students need to start this process at the very beginning of their final year at the latest.
Start by researching your chosen industry and building up your career portfolio ensuring you start developing the skills required by your sector. Then start building your networks within the industry, either through LinkedIn, volunteer jobs, information interviews etc, so that when you come to look for work you already have some quality contacts to talk to. Being prepared and one step ahead of the competition i.e. your classmates, makes all the difference when looking to secure your dream job.
Most of my friends are in stop gap jobs, as am I. There are no options unless you want to sit at home all day doing nothing. Its all very well this study telling graduates to hurry up and move on but when you have bills to pay and don’t want to be on the dole, you have no choice . Competition is still fierce!
I graduated in 2010 and I have had nothing but stop gap jobs and move on as soon as I can. Pub 7 months. Supermarket 3 months. Now, I deal with PPI complaints for a large bank and have been doing that for 10 months. Boring work but I’m good at it.
I’m still applying for jobs and getting the interviews but not getting anywhere with them after that.
I think my advice to someone in this situation would be not to do the same stop gap job for too long. If you can’t get a graduate job then it’s better to do 2 or 3 different stop gap jobs in a 3 year period than to spend 3 years in the same stop gap job, especially when it’s not even the right area for you. It’s a bit of a balance between not wanting employers to think you’re a job hopper and not wanting them to think you’re a one trick pony.
Also if you’re in a job that is really draining the life out of you it will only make it harder for you to properly apply for better jobs.
One option that sometimes works is to split your working week between (1) the job you do just to live; and (2) the self-generated, self-managed activities that’ll equip you for your future career. Sadly this approach is practical only if you don’t have to work all hours God sends to pay the bills.
Assuming you have some leeway, start by assessing the skills, experience and CV deficits that currently block your path to the career you want. Do that by looking at the job ads and listing all the specifics recruiters ask for – eg influencing skills, project management and the like.
Then think how to build up the skills and experience asked for.
Can you persuade your boss that allowing you do career-enhancing work during normal hours would be to the employer’s advantage? You can often get permission to do more demanding work if you don’t insist on being paid for it!
If there’s no scope for advanced work in the day job, look around for career-enhancing paid or voluntary work in your leisure time. Become the co-ordinator of a group objecting to a planning application, for example, or create a local organisation’s much-needed database.
Keep records of all these personal achievements and of the “employer” benefits (eg costs saved)of what you did.
Worthwhile jobs are so scarce many graduates will have to be very creative in tracking down career development activities.
This is nothing new, I saw plenty of graduates working in stop gap jobs 20 years ago. They couldn’t progress in their chosen careers, liked the companies, joined the companies and progressed rapidly to management positions without the need for a graduate programme.
Move along, nothing new here.
What Peter said. Even back in the halycon days, grads often had stop-gap jobs. Hell look at any moderately successful middle aged person’s CV. Sure in heinsight it looks like it was all planned, but a lot of the time it’s just a result of what was available, what they found they enjoyed and working hard and taking the opportunities that were available at the time. Of my dad’s mates there’s an old etonion who studied sculpture, worked in marketing then started a building company, a woman who did physics or something and ended up traveling the world and a bloke who spend most of his 20s in and out of the nick before sorting things out and running a cocktail bar chain.
Of course there are plenty who didn’t end up affluent, a small but notable few who ended up outstandingly wealth and a few that really knew exactly what they wanted and pursued that relentlessly, but the point is that people in their 20s doing stop gap jobs or struggling in a poor economy to work out their place is hardly new.
The government at present isn’t helping a lot IMO but that’s a different issue.
@Peter & Jacob. This was “back in the day”. The difficulties facing today’s graduates are far more severe. The competition for a small amount of jobs is crazy. I can easily have 5 group interviews of 10 people all applying for one job that I have advertised. That is 50 people just for one job. You can be extremely picky. The most stupid things can make you reject a candidate. Just because you HAVE to whittle down the numbers somehow.
20 years ago, the fact you could even join a company at the bottom is better than what you can get now.
The article doesn’t really seem to be telling people to quit their so-called “stopgap” job (if you do a job long enough, then it is your job, it isn’t a stopgap, regardless of your hopes and ambitions) like the headline implies. But if anyone is tempted to, then unless you have a lot of savings or a trust fund I strongly suggest you don’t.
If the Job Centre gets wind of you voluntarily leaving employment without what they consider a good reason in their subjective opinion, or you were dismissed, you can be sanctioned (with temp jobs you should always say the assignment ended if asked).
Even if that doesn’t happen, you don’t to risk months of unemployment – which is a very real possibility, and regardless of how much certain jobs on your CV may be looked down on by the more snobby employers, gaps (unless filled by unpaid internships) are probably worse.
@Jamie: I’d agree. As well as the scarcity of jobs, the Internet is a major thing that influences the flood of applications for most entry-level advertised vacancies as well.
20-30 years ago, you needed to pay to post a CV (speculative or otherwise) to a company after finding out they exist and their address, phone them up, reply to a newspaper ad or ad in the window or pop into an agency office. The applications would be far more limited (I’m assuming) by these logistical, cost and geographic factors.
Now, anyone who sees the ad can apply at virtually no cost to themselves except in time – and with most postings on some jobsites it’s only the time it takes to see a covering letter.
*to write a covering letter
For any office based career (which is the majority of grad careers these days) the best stop-gap work is plain old office temping. Know how to write well and brush up on excel. Even if you’re filing and faxing all day it still looks and feels more relevant on your CV than other roles. Plus you’ll learn some of the things they don’t teach you at school – how to act in meetings, deal with office politics, etc.
That said, I’m of the view that any job is better than no job.
@ Jamie I can easily have 5 group interviews of 10 people all applying for one job that I have advertised. That is 50 people just for one job.
Disagree. “back in the day” 45 of those 50 people would have been dismissed at CV stage and not interviewed in the day set aside for interviewing. Nowadays you get seen, sure you are competing against 49 who are also seen on the day but you at least you got through the door – that never happened previously.
I have been out of work since Xmas/New Year. What on earth am I going to say if an employer says ‘what have you been doing the past couple of months?’. Saying I’ve been looking for work hardly looks great does it! I’ve never felt so hopeless.
@ Unemployed Graduate …
1. Say you’re “project managing your job search” – you’ve defined your precise goal (not any old job but one which is close to the one you’re being interviewed for!); worked out how best to achieve it (talk about your choice of strategies and the reasons why you preferred these strategies); monitored your success rate (number of applications to expressions of employer interest ratio)and refined your methods as appropriate; and worked to develop the skills (employer research, networking, CV writing etc) you need to achieve your goal.
Explain how the techniques you’ve developed in project managing your job search can be applied to the tasks you’d carry out in the job for which you’re applying.
Explained this way, project managing your job search sounds much more organised, purposeful and job relevant than the message “I’ve been looking for work”.
2. Follow up with a description of any JOB-RELEVANT other activity – paid or voluntary you’ve been undertaking for personal development reasons (eg mentoring/ teaching a struggling student, carrying out legal research ,etc).
3. Be kind to yourself. You didn’t create this economic mess, your elders did, and you shouldn’t attack yourself for something which isn’t your fault. I very much doubt that your degree is “worthless”. Good luck – I hope life improves for you soon.
I hope so . Last week a high street store refused to even consider my CV due to a lack of retail experience. Apparently the rest of my employment history and all those transferable skills do not count. A first from a top university and a five-figure student debt and I can’t even stack shelves for minimum wage. I’ve never felt so worthless in my life.
“A first from a top university and a five-figure student debt and I can’t even stack shelves for minimum wage.”
Unemployed Graduate- the ironic thing about this is that Irritable Demonic Scumbag expects graduates who are receiving JSA to stack shelves on unpaid work placements and, if they object, accuses them of being ‘job snobs’.
@A4esucks So presumably my chances of getting a job would improve if workfare graduates signed off JSA and starved to death? How on earth did we get to this stage?!
I had a “stop-gap” job after graduating and quit in search of a graduate position, there was nothing available and now I’ve been unemployed for over six months. Out of the frying pan springs to mind…
When I graduated from uni I was offered full-time hours where I was currently working during the weekends. I work for a train company in catering and my starting salary was just over £21k. Within a year I’ve managed to get a promotion and I’m now on just under £30k and I’m 23. My stop-gap position has definitely worked in my favour and I love my job!
This seems like the place to write or at the very least try and gain advice from people in the know.
I’m currently writing up my PhD thesis on a life sciences/biotechnology-related degree, having studied chemistry for my undergrad. My funding ran out (like most of my coursemates, I am submitting “later” than the Research Councils had funded us for) so I figured that Jobseekers would help keep me afloat whilst I earnestly look for a science job.
And I have earnestly applied (and been rejected) for multiple companies multiple times. However, I have only been on Jobseekers for 4 weeks, and one of the advisers (not my main one) is already pressuring me to apply for “stop-gap” or “non-graduate” jobs, and has set me up with an interview for a call centre agency somewhat known for poor treatment of employees. Which might be ok, except:
a) From speaking to various people in scientific jobs, I’ve heard that scientific employers can be EXTREMELY picky, to the point of preferring a (reasonably short) unemployment gap to a recent non-related job, under the “the longer you work out of science, the more science you forget/recent experience not scientific” mantras.
b) As mentioned before, the longer you’re in an unrelated job, the harder it is to secure a related job.
d) I’ve spent 10-odd years learning science, so the unrelated jobs I HAVE applied for (albeit mostly receptionist/administrator roles in the NHS or scientific organisations) I apparently don’t have the relevant experience for. Or I do, but there are folk much more experienced in actual receptionist and administrator roles applying than I.
c) I’m quite willing to juggle thesis writing with a scientific job – it would motivate me and my mindset would be similar, so switching focus is minimal, and if you get a good enough employer you can get some support and advice with the write-up. However, I know personally working FULL-time (I’d be ok with part-time, but the adviser’s insisting on full-time) in an non-graduate job will not only drain the ever-living hell out of me, but leave me with less time for meetings and write up time (and they will be generally less sympathetic if I have to take time off work – I was lucky that I worked in a call centre for a VERY relaxed and sympathetic employer as an undergrad student, but I realise they were the gleaming exception).
So I guess the end of this mini-rant is this: should I just swallow my “pride” and take the full-time job in a call centre for a notoriously shady big employer (which is what JS are pushing), knowing that I’ll likely be there for years, possibly lengthening my time to write up? Or refuse (and likely have my benefit cut off) and persist until I find relevant employment?
Is there something in between? Part-time work seems oddly scarce on websites. Voluntary work? Do science companies even offer voluntary or unpaid roles? I’m looking at vaguely-related volunteering opportunities so that I can feel like I’m still “helping society” (my naive reason for pursuing life sciences) and getting my foot in the door.
Er, Help?
@ Hopeless Multi-Disciplinary Science Chump
Only you can make that decision and it’s a difficult one. A lot of us are in a similar position to yours, but with different degrees. In my experience all employers question gaps in your employment history, but some are more sympathetic than others.
On the job centre, it’s important to understand that they don’t care about your career aspirations or mental health (being abused by bad employers). Their primary goal is to get you off benefits and make their statistics/targets look better. Even if they get you off benefits in the short term there is ‘flow’ which looks better than no change. At what cost? You already know the answer – hopes, dreams, ambition. I’ve gone down both paths and I was dissatisfied still.
If you have a job do your best to keep it u it works in your favour structure,experience etc. The job competition is very tough at the moment so your best bet is keep working.