So...have you got a job lined up yet?

Since graduating merely last week the same question keeps on rearing its ugly little head. Repeatedly many of my seniors keep on asking me and my other recent graduates whether or not we have secured work. Permanent, life-changing work that could be the start of long and successful careers. Although I luckily avoided that bullet on receipt of my hearty “well done you are a graduate handshake”, others didn’t prove to be as fortunate.

You could see the question being asked sporadically throughout our graduation ceremony and for each boy or girl their poor faces fell when confronted with the harsh reality put in front of them. There should have been a banner draped across the hall with the words “You are on your own now” emblazoned in red letters across it. As each one smiled politely back and eeked out the familiar words on all recent graduates lips of “No, not yet”, the next step in our lives seemed to be increasingly difficult to take.

All we need now is an index published online with our likelihood of securing employment marked out of one hundred.

The reality of the graduate job market is currently bleak, although the media desperately want to add fuel to the fire. With every article and report pushed at us through television and newspapers, it creates a damaging merry-go round of uncertainty where employers, although perhaps looking to hire, are reluctant to do so because of they feel that others aren’t doing so. Even keen, intelligent and hard working graduates are being overlooked because of the culture of fear that is surging throughout society. Indeed, why hire if you are being told that redundancies are soaring and recent young graduates are not up to scratch?

Although many are looking for jobs straight out of university, there is also a bulk of many young people (my contemporaries) who aren’t keen on thrusting themselves into a profession or workplace that is not really what they want to be doing. There are several other options that people are looking at. Graduates are looking elsewhere and realise that the working life doesn’t have to begin at the tender young ages of 21 or 22 but instead would rather take some time to figure out what their preferred job is before diving head first into interviews.

Why go straight into a career that isn’t necessarily your metier only to change later on the down line or, indeed, never change and wait expectantly for that ever likely mid-life crisis. Each situation isn’t different for every single one of us. People need to understand that pushing graduates into jobs just for the sake of it will not work in the long term.

If I was an employer I would rather some young buck go and find him or herself up a mountain on a skiing season or in South America for a year before applying to work for business. Hiring someone who two months down the line realises that this isn’t the sector for them is not particularly productive on any levels. It is a waste of time and effort to put yourselves out there for brand new graduate Tim for him to turn around and give you the thanks but no thanks.

Stop asking us all if we have a job yet. We are in a recession no-one is hiring and it only compounds the awkward conversation that ensues. If there is a job on the cards, we will let you know pretty soon into any chat, don’t you worry about that.

This generation of graduates needs to crack the code to what we want to do first and then as soon as we have done so, we will happily wax lyrical about it.