Sophie has a clearer path in front of her. After she had taken her degree she decided that she wanted to teach in a school. So she took a Post-Graduate Certificate in Education - that is, a course which trained her to teach, because unlike the situation in Russia, students do not study the skills of teaching until after they have taken a degree. (It is possible to do a degree in Education where students learn the skills of teaching small children. Secondary school teachers must already have a degree, normally in the subject they teach.) Now Sophie has to find a post in a school.
Many students who study English literature decide to become teachers, so there are not so many vacancies. She begins by applying to schools in her own home area, but although she is called for interview on three occasions, she is, each time, turned down. So she applies for posts in less attractive areas. Eventually she gets two more interviews, one in an industrial city where unemployment is high and where many of the pupils suffer from personal and social problems (poverty, parents in prison or who no longer live with the family, families with alcohol and drug problems, and so on.). The buildings are excellent and many of the teachers are obviously devoted and lovely, but Sophie does not think that she would be able to cope with such big problems in her first teaching job. The other job is in a village school which is small and remote with a weary headmaster and an elderly group of teachers on whom she will be very dependent for intellectual and emotional companionship. Will she be happy with them? Both interviews are friendly, and Sophie expects to be offered each job. Instead she receives two more rejections, which is quite upsetting, even though she had not really wanted either job.
Now she must start applying for more posts, and not allow herself to get depressed. She wonders what she did wrong at the interview. Does she seem stupid - or shy - or not quick enough at 'thinking on her feet' when they suddenly shoot questions at her? Or is it almost chance that some other student was selected instead of her? She doesn't know, but she will spend hours speculating on possible answers. Because this is a common predicament, failed applicants sometimes ask for feedback on their interview. Sophie does so and gets a brief report that she did not seem 'positive enough'. Such experiences are completely typical for students who have just graduated in contemporary Britain. There are a few, brilliant young men and women who have no problems, and a few unfortunate ones who slip into the 'permanently unemployed' category. Most of them are much like Richard and Sophie.
When the national economy is flourishing, most graduates find it fairly easy to get a job, even if it is not exactly the job they want. In times of recession, graduates can expect to make dozens of applications for jobs and get short-listed for interviews ten or twelve times before they find satisfactory work. A few people know exactly what career they intend to follow and focus on finding the right job first time, but more often graduates are vague about what they want to do... (What do people actually do? What jobs actually exist? ) As a result, they can spend months searching for suitable work, meanwhile earning enough to pay the rent by short-term part-time work wherever they can find it.
Chapter 2. Work Culture In Britain
I have described in some detail the formal way of finding a job. Of course, in Britain as elsewhere, there is a great deal of 'asking around' and 'networking with friends'. If the job is unskilled or casual labour, that is obviously a quick and effective route to finding paid work. It is also a useful way of finding good jobs for people who are already in employment and who are thinking about change.
Most graduates do not expect to work for their new employers for more than a few years. In times of recession when jobs are difficult to find, younger people often find themselves on short-term contracts at the end of which they will have to look for another job however satisfactory their work has been. This has become a regular practice in universities for example. So strong is the competition that brilliant young men and women apply anxiously for posts that last for one or two years. Thereafter they will no longer be employed by that university, and will have to search for jobs in other universities - or decide to look for other kinds of work.
Employment is not static; the nature of work is changing so quickly that many workers with special skills find that these are no longer needed and that they must re-train for new jobs. Political and economic changes create new jobs, and cause others to be abolished. New technology requires employees who understand it. Even workers with deeply traditional skills like school teachers are dependent on the constant efforts of government and educationalists to restructure education. All this dynamic movement within the working environment means that millions of people are either forced to change jobs or choose to do so.
People also assume that if they want promotion and more responsibility they may have to move. A significant increase in salary enables people think about changes in their lives. For example they might decide to start a family; most future parents think of having at least two children so this is a big step. Or they might decide that with an increase in salary they can afford to put down a deposit on a house. With this promotion they are on their way to a different kind of life. So in a world where work is always changing and job locations are not stable, people expect to change both their job and their home, perhaps several times in their working life.
As I explained in the chapter on Towns and Cities, Britain is no longer a great industrial country. Whereas in the nineteenth century and up to the time of the Second World War Britain's factories and mills produced iron and steel, heavy engineering projects, ships, textiles, cars, and mass domestic ware, almost all of that world of industrial activity has disappeared. As world trade became more globalised people in poorer parts of the world worked for lower wages to produce these essentials. Britain, with its increasing standard of living and changing expectations of what a decent life meant, could no longer compete in producing these goods. As we know, China has, in many ways, become the equivalent of nineteenth-century Britain.
Consequently, millions of our manual workers have lost their traditional jobs and had to find new ones over the past forty years or so. Their children have never worked in big, labour-intensive factories. Instead we have turned to high-quality technological industries requiring specialised and highly trained labour; for example, in the pharmaceuticals industry, in food processing, and in specialised engineering (including arms). Our car factories have been sold to foreign firms although British workers still make the cars - but again, much of the work is being done by computers. Our ingenuity has gone into small inventions requiring skilled workmen rather than large material resources. Computers have taken over from manual labour; buildings are no longer vast but are often inconspicuous two-storey 'workshops'.
The Trade Unions which used to organise labour so that workers were able to stand up to exploitative employers have long lost the power which they had thirty years ago. They were most effective in the productive industries that required thousands of employees - such as the old car industry. Now that factories require far fewer workers who, in any case, are mostly skilled and adaptable, the Unions are caught in an impossible position. People in hotels and restaurants, for example, are often badly paid and treated, but they are non-unionised and include illegal immigrants who do not dare to complain. Workers in the big service industries such as postmen and railway operatives inspire little sympathy if they want to go on strike, since they are attacking the public not the employers. Hence much of the work of Trade Unions is now about defending the rights of individual workers who have been mistreated by 'management'. That is along way from 'workers versus bosses' and illustrates the consequences of a post-industrial society.