Forgetting My Degree....Or Not

So today I got told whilst on a "Work Placement" (with the highly incompetent HMRC) that today I would be looking for jobs. Something I could do and do do at home at my desk in my room. This was told to me (and two others) with no further warning. It almost seemed insulting at the beginning like I had no knowledge of applying for jobs but I guess it is better than taping bloody grids onto white boards, something I never thought I'd be doing almost a year after giving in my dissertation at University. Mind you I guess Andrea Dossena didn't think he'd be shoplifting at Harrod's when he lobbed Casillas in 2009.)

Furthermore from this I was told that for applications I should consider removing my degree from my Curriculum Vitae (albeit I couldn't exactly show my CV considering with no warning and no access to cloud computing I couldn't exactly magic it along). 

This isn't what you want to hear, especially when someone else being "advised" is told they need to say what they did with their last 12 months on theirs. Why wipe out three years of mine that saw me get my highest qualification then?! I was pretty furious on this. 

I'll admit when I went into do my degree, I was hopeful there would be jobs going, obviously that hasn't happened. Apparently the London Riots (oh and Birmingham and Manchester) showed that we could have less police for instance (don't ask me how the Government came to this conclusion). And if the Conservative Party win the election it appears this will still be the same given that in the televised "debate" between the two possible prime ministers this happened:

“I know that you put your lives on the line very day to keep us safe and I have huge respect for what the police do for us.

David Cameron

Mr Cameron added: “Police budgets came down by some 20 per cent but at the same time, police have done such a good job, crime has come down by almost 20 per cent.”

When asked for his response Mr Malik answered “no comment” to sniggers from the audience.

Reported by the Coventry Telegraph (see article here)

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So does this mean that whilst this sort of service isn't going to be generally recuiting from outside, or training in many ways that I should forget the three years I spent at University and forget my degree on my CV. I must admit I find this utterly insulting. The people who have studied degrees have generally worked hard for degrees. Yes we had some fun along the way,

And then we see Conservative voters like the pretty useless Apprentice contestant, who it seems ironically spends more time on a beach than working said a stereotype on students on BBC Free Speech : Ask A Tory ‘I would rather employ someone with life experience, than someone who fannied about getting drunk at uni.’.


Surely students deserve more respect and more help and support from services to find jobs in the sector they worked in. Even if it starts with work experience, rather than making young people particularly work in places they have no interest of working in in the future, who don't have a plan on what you will be doing the next day and so on. 

Surely this should be beneficial? Surely the next Government needs to change this. I'm pretty sure they'll get more out of me in a positive ambitious mood than a disillusioned mood. and I'm sure this would be the same with many more,

Remember you have until April 20th to register to vote, click here to find the registration page. Let's change this country for the better!

Modern Day Job Searching, The Multiple Choice Test

When I talk to my parents, they do express that getting a job was not the easiest thing in the world, however they also explain memories of their interviews of sometimes a panel interviewing one person to see if they came across as the right person for the job. To get to this stage they would send a CV and a cover letter that would be read and a shortlist decided. They’d hear back from these people soon afterwards to hear about whether they were accepted or rejected based on the interview.

Nowadays applying for a job has changed. From ASDA to agencies of the British Government we are subjected to tests on our computers, worse than just being a test these are multiple choice examinations asking a person what they would do in a certain situation. From here the most common thing to get back is an automated response, not even telling you where you have gone wrong or any advice to make your search for work any more successful but merely that your attempt for a job has not been successful and often that they will not accept another application for twelve months. This email can be as quick at coming through as a minute and the tests can take as long as an hour.

Obviously my issue with this is clear, I regard myself, as a hardworking, determined individual who can be trained to do a job fairly easily, regardless of what boxes I tick in a job application. I regard my achievements in my education, where I have just completed the final year of my degree in Criminology and the Criminal Justice System with Law and activities I have taken part in like the Ten Tors, various rowing races, the Crimsoc society at university and being a Youth Councillor in Bideford to say more than any multiple choice test can. Maybe I’m not the person for the job, there is a chance of that and I am aware of that chance, but this test doesn’t really prove it either way. In fact as far as I see it this test proves next to nothing.

One group I applied for a job for this summer, was a government agency. I applied for this more as a stab in the dark, not really expecting to hear anything back from it. I was actually  surprised as not once in my application for this job did it ask for my Curriculum Vitae, something I have spent a fair bit of time on improving. I did, I heard they wished me to do these tests, the first of these was a very simple mathematics exam I would say. In fact it was simple enough that I could probably have done that test when I left Primary School (admittedly I was fairly gifted at Maths), the second was a multiple choice test about situations and so on. Together I would say these tests took nearly an hour as the multiple choice test was very long with many similar scenarios and to be honest the answers were all very similar too. Within a minute of finishing this and having my brain fried by the boredom these tests put on you when they’re too easy I got an email. I opened this email to find that I had not got the job and an excuse to why they could not provide reasons to my job application being unsuccessful.

Left feeling insulted by the fact my job application had failed due to a multiple choice quiz being answered in a way their computer did not like and therefore not being asked on the reasoning’s to my answers, I decided I would reply, despite imagining the scenario other companies have done when I have emailed them in this instance, where they have refused my email and bounced it straight back at me telling me the email address is just for automated messages as this has happened with businesses including ASDA and Orange and since then the company they have become, EE.

This time I did get a reply answering telling me it was not in the groups interest to advise me where I went wrong and if I wanted to apply again, not to do so for at least twelve months. They also talked about experience which I could have believed to be a valid reason if it wasn’t for the fact they had talked about experience not being required on the jobs advertisement and not once had they mentioned experience in their process, they had based this on a few answers where the options were not too far apart in a quiz. Answers that could change with only a couple of days of training and with no means to explain an answer with a text box meant they could not see a persons reasoning, which may show them to be the appropriate person for the job with the couple of days training.

I am not saying face to face or over the phone or even a test where you actually write your answers out would change the fact I did not get the job in this case, but I am sure I would have been able to show off why I should have been considered for such a job in a far better way, through presentation, answers, passion and showing the fact that as mentioned before I am a hardworking, determind individual who would not mind being trained to do a particular job. I want to be challenged in the work place and prove myself to be a good employee, not a bad participant in a multiple choice quiz and that at the moment is more what is going on.

I am sure I am not the only person with this at mind when it comes to the process of trying to get employment, I believe myself to be one of thousands who is left frustrated by these tests. I am also sure that many times the best possible employee for a job does a test like this and is refused whilst many employees that won’t reach the same level, that lack the same drive, the same passion, the same dedication to be a success in a job pass these tests.

I am somebody who has just come out of university, I have the ambition of the sky being the limit, I have the determination to be the best I can be, the drive to make sure I can prove myself to be the ideal employee and to make an effort to make any opportunity that is made to improve my status in a job, I have developed a mind that can come to reasonable and sometimes important judgements quickly. I want to be the best person I can be in the working world and I am not the only one but the current way the job system works is negative for many people who are like this as well as myself.