As my children approach the end of another academic year -Tash, Yr2 at University and Sam starting his A Level exams at 6th Form College - and as Mandy has recently started another new job with a Law Firm in London, I've been reflecting on what getting, having, doing and keeping a job really feels like nowadays.
I've been with my current employer for 7½ years now, was with my previous employer for
8½ years, and the one before that for 2½ years. Previously, Mandy and I were in business with another couple, running our own moderately successful IT Training company.
But neither of us ever intended to be doing those things. We met at Christmas 1982, doing panto in Stafford. We were actors. That's what we had trained for, had been doing for years (but see below) and intended (hoped) to be doing for the rest of our lives.
If you have read any of my social media bios, you will no doubt have noticed the number of jobs I have had. This was not from choice, but rather from the choice I made to be an actor. In a professional career of some 12 years, I probably worked as an actor for about 4. The rest of the time, I was 'resting', as they say (a crappier euphemism I have yet to see - I wasn't resting, I was bloody surviving!). These other jobs were fill-in roles, just part of the deal when not acting, to ensure the rent was paid and that I could eat.
But that's where my previous education, personal & learned capabilities and professional experience paid off. I could type (SCE 'O' Grade in Audio Typing), so I temped in offices; I could drive (passed my driving test when I was 17), so I drove delivery vans and lorries; I could read and deliver a script, so I did some telesales work (lasted two weeks - hated it!). Bottom line, I managed to keep the wolf from the door because I had some life skills and had learned some stuff along the way to enable me to develop further. I took this to be the norm and it was at a time when jobs like that were many and available.
However, when Mandy and I (still actors) became a couple and later married, this situation was no longer tenable. We both took on more structured, permanent roles, found ourselves working with what we now call 'information and learning technologies', but back then we called 'computers', 'word-processors', 'spreadsheets' and 'computer-based training' - and the rest, as they say, is history...
But the landscape's changed now. I've been lucky to keep my jobs until I was ready to move on (except being made redundant once, 16 years ago), but in the last two years Mandy's been made redundant once, had to leave her next position due to a clash of understanding about organisational culture and, most recently, her last contract was unexpectedly terminated early and at very short notice. This is not a reflection on her skills or abilities, but the knife-edge, short-termist economics stalking the business world today. Many of our friends and colleagues have found themselves in the same situation and not always been lucky enough to find other work!
I'd suggest that NO-ONE can rely on a job for life any more. It seems to me that no long-term career planning is possible - that we are ALL actors, moving from one job to another, having to prove ourselves time and again to yet another numpty (I had another word lined up here, but good taste prevailed) and starting afresh with new colleagues, work practices, rules, values etc. In itself, this is no bad thing - much learning and growing to be had and done - but it's the longueurs in between, often of several months or even years, while the coffers slowly empty and the debts begin to mount that really take their toll.
So, as the children (young adults) start to look at further education and career-wards beyond that, what lessons have we learned from this that we can share with them? What challenges have they got ahead that are the same as - or are very different from - our challenges? What does the world of work look like for Graduates and young people today?
The UK Guardian newspaper reported only last week that a UN Agency, The International Labour Office
International Labour Organisation said that young people across the world continue to be almost three times more likely than adults to be unemployed. There are 979,000 unemployed 16 to 24-year-olds in the UK, after a 20,000 rise in the three months to February
The Guardian
How can we help prepare our young people to survive in this environment?
I'd suggest that there are some essential 'life' skills required nowadays, over and above the academic. When I needed them, I relied on my communication skills, my typing skills and the fact that I could drive to keep me in work. Today, I would add to/change those skills, thus: articulacy and good verbal/conversational skills (a key differentiator in my opinion), good written and digital communication skills, driving, curiosity, flexibility, tenacity - and patience. All these to underpin any other skills they may have or develop.
I'd love to grow that list to pass it on to our young people, maybe with some resource links to assist them. What other essential skills would you suggest to enable them to enter the world of work with the best fighting chance?
