At the very genesis of the pandemic, I lost the job that I had for nearly a year in a half. Not because of lackluster behavior, and not because I was fired. I was made redundant, by the time it really sunk in I was already knee deep in applications and was being interviewed for what I didn’t know was probably a pyramid scheme at the time (I know silly me).
In my search for a job, I began to realize a few things about the current job market, at least as it is in UK, that ‘experience’ is a buzzword thrown around. Now don’t get me wrong there are many things to do to obtain experience; placements, internships, but do these really matter at the end of the day? It seems to me that experience is literally just a way of saying, ‘we appreciate your zeal and desire to learn, but we frankly don’t have time to teach, we don’t have time to mold, so just be perfect already,’ because molding delays money making. This is nothing objective - I’m just speaking my mind.
Everyone who has progressed significantly in their career started from somewhere didn’t they? How many times within the structure of westernized employment do big CEO’s really think about investing in those less ‘experienced,’(albeit it does happen sometimes) with all the self-help rhetoric circulating, with all the coaching program’s and motivational you-tube videos that we hear that essentially say, ‘You have to work hard or you’ll die poor, ‘come to my seminar I’ll get you rich in 5 hours.’ How much of such talk really translates into helping build the quote and quote novices of the working world?
The other day I saw a Job bulletin which I felt would perfectly suit a friend of mine. I passed it over to him and he was thankful, as one should be. My question is even though this job is something that he will love, will they consider him? Even if he’s the man for the job will they look past what he maybe hasn’t done? I don’t know. It saddens me to think that the answer to this pressing question may be a NO! Life isn’t fair and this is terribly idealistic of me to write this but what would it take for the working world to be just a little bit more people oriented?