Rude graduates don’t get jobs

 

Stats on graduate employment make depressing reading.  It is one of the hardest times ever to leave university and secure a graduate level job.  My trainees worked out it was taking them on average 33 applications to secure an interview.  AN INTERVIEW, not even a job offer!  These are well trained grads who write great cover letters and have sparkling CVs which experienced PR headhunters have combed through in great detail, and even they struggle.

 

Which is why I was surprised on Monday when six out of twenty graduates invited to come along, didn’t turn up for the Taylor Bennett Foundation assessment day.  Two¸I believe, had genuine reasons not to be there but the other four contacted us after 8pm on the day before to say they  wouldn’t be turning up.  One said “I’ve had a change of circumstance”.  What could possibly change on a Sunday night that they didn’t know about on the Friday?

 

None of them had the balls to call us on the phone.  Even the two with genuine reasons. They all sent vague emails.  That really grips my shit.  It’s rude, and cowardly.  Although in the past we’ve had some who haven’t turned up and haven’t bothered to contact us at all and that is unforgiveable.

 

To get an assessment invitation they had to fill in a very very long application form.  It is deliberately long to test commitment to the programme and to give me the opportunity to check out whether they write well and whether they have the right motivation to be selected.  Then they have to attend a two hour pre-assessment briefing where they are given a rundown of what the assessment day entails and a presentation topic which they have to spend several hours preparing in advance.  Finally, they have to complete a 30 minute online personality suitability test.  It’s hardcore.  It’s detailed.  It’s designed for us to get the best.  These six graduates completed all these stages and yet still didn’t show for the assessment.

 

They are told, even if they don’t secure one of the eight coveted spots on our programme we will give them very detailed and honest feedback.  This takes considerable time and effort by our assessors and our Programme Manager who has to collate all of the handwritten notes from the day.  It is feedback they are never likely to get anywhere else.  It is unique to us and it is our way of helping more than just the graduates who join us for the ten week traineeship.  Only about one in ten grads bother to reply to us to say thank you for the feedback.  Manners, it seems, are not taught at university.

 

If I were a grad in this economic climate, I would have to be on my deathbed to not to turn up to such an amazing opportunity.

 

In a way, those graduates did us a favour.  It saved us the job of weeding them out as unreliable and uncommitted during the assessment process.  However, they did not do other grads a favour.  If they had given us enough notice – say, Friday lunchtime – then we could have invited others to have taken their place and have a shot at getting a place on the TBF programme.

 

So if they apply again, their applications will automatically go in the bin.  We don’t take rude and selfish people at the Taylor Bennett Foundation, and I suspect other employers won’t either.

 

Taylor Bennett Foundation – Diversity Internship Schemes 2012

In 2012 the Taylor Bennett Foundation (for which I am the Course Director) is running four more paid PR internship and training schemes designed to address the lack of black and ethnic minorities in the PR industry.

Application deadline for the Jan – Mar scheme run with Talk PR is midday on  19th December so get applying!

For more details go to our website www.taylorbennettfoundation.org

 

Click on the image below to read our recruitment advert.

PR Graduate Recruitment Schemes

Over the past couple of years I've spent a lot of time giving job hunting advice to recent graduates.  Given that they've graduated in the worst economic climate since the '30s, they need all the help they can get I reckon. 

We recently started investigating which PR agencies have graduate recruitment schemes and what their application criteria is.  Here's what we came up with but I am pretty sure there are plenty more out there.  If your agency would like to be included in this list, let me know.

PR Graduate Recruitment Schemes

Big Bad Bosses

I have fairly recently changed jobs.  I left on good terms with my old boss but some previous bosses haven’t been quite so nice.  Anyway, whilst bemoaning this fact to some friends the following stories (kept anonymous for obvious reasons) came tumbling out….. beware bosses, be an arse and it may come back to bite you in in the, erm, arse!

"I had a psycho boss. 
Who would tell you to fuck off one day, and then be your best pal the next. He was an alcoholic freak, and very very mean.
He also used to pimp out his dog to other people’s lady dogs in our
staff room at lunch time. He was basically a grade A bastard. I was so
glad to leave."

"I once had a boss make me pick up her dog from
her house and CARRY IT on the tube to bring it to the office.  I nearly
resigned that day."

"I had one who was a lawsuit waiting to happen…
His first words to a very shy new person (me)… "it’s always the quiet
ones you need to look out for, I bet you’re a fireball in the bedroom.
Have you got your clit pierced?"

"I had one who used to take advantage that I was a hard
worker and did bugger all basically leaving me to run the department
whiel he sat around chatting to his friend."

"Erm… there was my first boss who kept hitting
on me.  He’d asked me in (my first ever interview at 19) if I was in a
relationship and if I was planning on having babies any time soon.
Every Friday after work we’d have a bbq and he’d get drunk and leery.
I used to make sure that my boyfriend picked me up (was "expected" to
attend and enjoyed everyone else’s company).  I left after a couple of
months.  He ended up shagging my replacement and his wife found out and
shot herself in the work parking lot.  He continued using that same car
for ages after.

Then my next boss asked me what I thought about sex.  I replied
"what do you mean, think about sex how?" to which he replied "with me".
I said I didn’t."

"My old boss was the reason that I left my old job.
She was awful a real bully, she’d pick on people for not getting enough
leads and therefore they wasn’t enough to converted to sales so the
branch wasn’t making money and colleagues wouldn’t get a bonus.   She would pick on people, out of 8 of us 3 were signed off with depression it was the most awful time."

"My last boss used to pay us by cheque and asked me to remind him, so i
did and whenever I reminded him he used to swear at me. And we were
also due to be paid on the last day of each month and one of us would
pop to the bank on our lunchbreak to pay everyone’s cheques into the
bank so that it would start to clear. The boss cottoned onto this so
would hand us our cheques after lunch break at about 3:15pm so it was
too late to for our cheques to clear which meant the money stayed in
his bank for longer! Needless to say I left due to his attitude with
this and many other things and i just got a load more of abuse for my
last few weeks. Since leaving I then discovered from the Inland Revenue
that he hadn’t been paying my tax or National Insurance which he then
had to cough up!!"

"I left my last job because of my old boss.  She was a complete nightmare and best mates with the overall boss, who
wouldn’t do anything when i eventually got up the courage to complain
about her.  One notable episode was giving my friend a nervous breakdown which
was eventually caused by screaming at both of us in front of the whole
office about something she had asked us to do and forgotten about, and
then assumed we had done it wrong. The final straw was her having gone to a meeting and left me a note
of some work she needed doing that i was to leave on her desk for her
to collect when she got back from the meeting.  I had done the work
exactly as she had asked (and had the note to prove it) and when I got
in the following day, got screamed at in front of the whole office
because I should have known she’d made a mistake on the note she’d left
and asked for the wrong thing. Such a cow."

"My boss regularly goes in a bad mood for no reason, its mostly just me
and him in the office and he thinks its acceptable to completely ignore
what i say on a daily basis, then thinks that he can come in and start
a conversation with me when he’s snapped out of it."

"An old boss threw a paperweight at my head – it
was a glass one about the size of a cricket ball because she could not
find some paperwork and she assumed that I had it. Which I didn’t by the way – the paperweight was thrown because I denied all knowledge!"

On the hunt for contributors

Here at unicornjobs.com we’re on the hunt for fresh journalistic talent to write for our site.  Details below.

Bloggers – we need you!

I must apologise.  I have dropped off of the blogosphere for a while as I haven’t even had time to read any, let alone write any.  I have joined a new venture, Unicornjobs.com, and as we head towards our soft launch time seems to be one of those things I just don’t have any more.  However, I feel a virtual slapped wrist coming my way and so as my teacher friends keep telling me – I must try harder.

Anyway, I don’t want to talk about my part in Unicorn Jobs for a while – there will be much to reveal but all in good time. 

In the meantime, we are on the hunt for some bloggers and where better to find bloggers than on the blogsphere?

Here’s the details…. drop me a line if you’re interested.

Unicorn Blogs

unicornjobs.com is a new graduate careers website – the one-stop guide for students and recent graduates looking for advice on how to choose, pursue and succeed in their chosen career.

With a ‘soft launch’ in November 2007, unicornjobs.com will include articles on all key job sectors, with guides on how they function and how you can get into them, plus interviews with people working in those sectors, and those who recruit for them.

In addition to news stories and articles, unicornjobs.com will also include a blogs section where readers will be able to read the opinions and about experiences of various people involved in the website, including our editor, publisher and recruiter.

We will also include blogs from people embarking on their chosen careers – either final year students currently going through the ‘milk round’, or recent graduates starting their first jobs.

We are currently looking to recruit:

•    someone who started work this year on a formal graduate recruitment programme – ie some who has started work as a graduate trainee.

•    someone who has recently started their first job after graduation, but who isn’t on a formal graduate recruitment programme.

If that sounds like you, read on…

What we require

Our bloggers will:

•    write honestly and entertainingly about their experiences of their first job after graduation.
•    identify interesting topics to write about.
•    blog at least twice a week on relevant topics, writing between 100 and 300 words each time.
•    submit coherent spell-checked copy.
•    write within unicornjobs.com style guidelines (these will be very flexible for bloggers).

You will email your blog entries to our operations manager, who will arrange for them to be uploaded to our site.

What we offer

Blogging on unicornjobs.com is a great opportunity for anyone looking to develop their journalistic skills. You will have your work published on a high profile new careers website, plus receive ongoing feedback from our experienced editorial team, and direct access to our career advisers. We pay each blogger a fee of £25 a month. Our bloggers write under a pseudonym allowing them to be honest about their experiences in working life.

How to apply

If you are interested in becoming a blogger for unicornjobs.com email your name and CV plus a first blog entry to info@unicornjobs.com, telling us which blogging spot you are applying for.

From time to time we will recruit other bloggers. If you have an idea for a blog which thing will interest our audience of graduate jobs seekers, please get in touch, ideally with a sample blog.

Internship Opportunties With Exciting New Internet Project

GraduateJobsNetwork is a new kind of careers and media company which
offers gap-year students and recent graduates a unique way to launch
their careers by working on the definitive graduate careers website. We
are currently recruiting interns who will work on the programme for 4-8
weeks between now and the end of the year and learn a variety of skills:

Editorial: researching and writing interviews and stories; sub-editing; Apple Mac skills

Web & Design: operating a content management system; search engine optimisation; image processing; desktop publishing skills

Sales & Management: running a media company; brainstorming sales leads; building a sales database

Office Management: managing a company database; chasing payments; keeping accounts

Marketing/PR: writing press releases; making and phoning PR contacts; liaising with student media

This programme would usually cost you £5,000 – however we are currently offering a few FREE internships.

You
will not be paid, but will receive a reference when you complete the
programme, and will also have careers guidance from Taylor Bennett, a
leading headhunting firm, including CV writing, job interview
techniques and networking skills. We are based in Shoreditch, on the
edge of the City of London and within easy reach of Spitalfields and
Hoxton. The office is 10 minutes away from both Liverpool Street and
Old Street stations.

To apply, fill in an application form at http://graduatejobsnetwork.com/howtoapply.html and submit it together with your CV as soon as possible.

GraduateJobsNetwork Limited, 221-222 Shoreditch High Street, London E1 6PJ

Telephone 020 7100 9120

E-mail info@graduatejobsnetwork.c

om

Job Ad – AEs/AM Financial Services

Account Executive – £18 – 23k
Our client, a leading financial PR
agency, is looking to fill two exciting Account Executive positions one
in their retail division and one in banking. You must be proactive to
take on these roles with experience of the financial services sector
(you may have had work experience or an internship in this area) and
strong writing skills. Join this growing company and have the opportunity to work on the biggest brands in financial services.  REF:  SS04/5

Account Manager – £28 – £34k
They
also need to hire an AM. For this role you may be an SAE looking for
that elusive step up the next rung of the career ladder. You will join
their banking team and you should have strong financial services
experience with sound writing skills and ambitions to lead consultancy
teams. REF: SS06

For more information drop us a line on 0203 051 1525 or alex@graduatejobsnetwork.com

Job ad – Head of PR EMEA, b2b Tech

Head of PR EMEA, b2b Tech, £70K+

Our client is looking for a real media doer to head up PR across EMEA. Managing a team of 15 across the region you must have plenty of charisma and be robust enough to hold your own against internal stakeholders. Lots of travel is on offer with this meaty role.

sarah@indigored.biz
01923 466555

CMP Vlogs their jobs!

VlogYourJob has its first customer!  Those clever cats over at Clarke Mulder Purdie have posted an illustrated job ad.  We like it!  Let’s hope it’s the start of many more to come.