By Haider Ali
There aren’t many reasons for the recently qualified graduate to get out of bed. The economy is looking gloomy, job prospects are scarce and cuts are biting us all thanks to the mindlessness of the current government. But one should not digress from how bad things are for graduates whom have stellar degrees from the past two years.
The day hardly begins in exhilarating fashion as I turn out of my bed in the morning with a face on me like a wet fish. Staring into my mother’s disappointed face hardly adds to the overall “excitement” of the mundane day I have in store for me but I try and draw the positives. After breakfast, dashing the dishes into the sink helps draw my mother’s hawkish gaze, so I depart abruptly upstairs to avoid a tongue lashing to job hunt.
On with today’s applications and the first port of call is the official job centre website and a whole host of job affiliated websites. What do I find? A host of jobs requiring a certain amount of experience, rendering my degree useless.
An hour of mind numbingly boring applications and my eyes feel as if they have been feasted on by parasites, such is the soreness. But I soldier on irrespective of the fact that jobs in the media industry seem to be dwindling. Such is my hopeless plight I apply for medial work in the form of being a warehouse operative, something I would have scoffed at prior to my graduation.
A flurry of replies has come from the previous weeks rounds of applications. The tone is all too familiar as is the wording. Each employer conjuring “heartfelt” retorts thanking me for my application but I wasn’t “experienced” enough or “didn’t meet the job criteria.”
As I break away and find time for myself analysing the entire situation I don’t take much heart from it. Here we are today with youth unemployment at an all time high and a Conservative government pulling out all the stops to help make life unbearable.
Figures released by the Office for National Statistics made for desolate reading among the current generation of youth. Youth unemployment was up 15000 to 973000 among 16-24 year olds. That doesn’t include me anymore because I’m 25!
The day wears on in much the same fashion. I eat dinner and slump into my bed turning on the tube hopelessly passing time until my eyes fade dreading the next day having to wake up as an unemployed graduate. 572 job applications, 342 phone calls and 23 interviews later here I am. Still trying and hoping perhaps there’s an elusive job waiting for me.
