The struggle for career satisfaction after your degree

Jul 20 2010 By Liz Green

Birmingham graduate Liz Green is one of thousands finding it tough to establish a career seven years after leaving university.

This is the month of ecstasy, hope and the dawn of a new life. Pomp and ceremony. Tired out hands from endless applause. Black mortarboards thrown to the sky. Thousands will pick up their well-deserved degrees, smile for the cameras and celebrate with friends and family.

Everyone’s talking about it – not the ecstasy but how tough the job market is for current graduates. But what about those who graduated one, two, five years ago?

They might tell you that the job market has always been tough. I graduated seven years ago with a 2:1 in Ancient History. Now I write a cautionary tale for graduates fresh and old as well as those considering university.

This is not just my story, but that of thousands who left university a few years ago and have still not found their vocation, their “niche”, and now face even greater challenges to finding that ‘‘dream job’’ or even any skilled job at all.

Here I am, sitting at my office desk doing admin and I ask myself ‘how did I get here? How did this happen? It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this.’

I was once a bright young thing. I had a stack of great grades and high hopes. Lots of opportunities and experiences that ought to set me on the path of success. I was told that I could be whatever I wanted to be. Apparently, the world was my oyster.

The reality was – and is – somewhat different. For graduates, the path to ‘‘success’’ is lined with rocky crevices, hidden cliff drops and endless road-blocks.

The puzzling cross-road. If you don’t know what direction you want to go in, it can be difficult looking for your first job. You have your “interests”, possibly even “experience”, but these don’t necessarily match up to any particular job.

The path that comes to an abrupt end. The proliferation of short-term contracts and a lack of funding is a problem that is likely to get worse in future.

Finding yourself unemployed and getting nowhere with your job applications is tough. It hits your confidence, your self-belief.

You might end up having to escape by getting whatever work you can – perhaps in administration or hospitality – or signing up with a temp agency. You’re tempted to start again, but are running low on resources. And what chance will there be of getting a job in the field afterwards? It’s a gamble, though it may pay off in the long run.

For those who want to be accountants, teachers or social workers there will always be jobs. But other career choices are fraught with competition and a lack of finance.

My interests lie in heritage, media/creative/publishing but these are all notoriously popular and difficult areas to get into.

Most require re-training, lots of unpaid work experience and good connections. Add to those obstacles, public sector cuts and resource pressures for small businesses and charities. The future’s not looking bright. It’s looking muddy grey-brown.

For me, although I started out in a job that matched my interests, I was on a short-term contract that funding couldn’t sustain.

Since then I’ve been unable to get a job in a similar area and have faced months of unemployment.

Looking at my CV now, each consecutive job has become less skilled and less creative. So I sit at my desk, entering data into databases, tallying up figures, photocopying, and inside I’m screaming: “I can do more than this.’’

Perhaps I also think that I deserve more than this. The feeling of “not making it” is extreme. My dream has not materialised; yet I was happy when I was offered my current job in higher education administration. Because any job is better than no job. And for that I have come to be thankful.

I have to keep reminding myself that work does not define who I am. Someone once said “life does not exist in the abundance of our possessions”. Nor does it exist in the richness of our vocational opportunities.

For most people in the world, a job is a means of survival. It is for us too. Those who love their jobs are the fortunate few. It cannot be our expectation – or demanded as the right of the well-educated.

Education opens doors and opportunities but it is not a golden ticket to pursuing a labour of love. The world was never my oyster.

And yet, despite trying, I am completely unable to let go of my dream.

So, perhaps we have to persevere, have to keep hoping, but hold it in balance with the realities of the opportunity that is out there.

We should widen our horizons, take small steps on the dream road but be realistic, take each day as it comes and above all else be thankful for everything.