Jania's Story

Jania is very thin, and very beautiful. She looks more Russian than Polish and reminds me of Kitty in Dostoevsky's Anna Karenina. Her eyes are full of life, her cheekbones are high and she polishes cutlery in the back of an Italian restaurant. She is 23 years old, like me, and yet she sees her life as one filled with opportunity. Jania's optimism is striking. She loves nature, exercise and parks and she loves Hyde Park. The way she pronounces Hyde Park is delicate: Hyde becomes Hy-ed, just like the Israeli's make their country into a three syllable word.

"It's very hot in here." We're both polishing cutlery furiously. There is a constant knife shortage in the restaurant and each shift I've worked another packet of knives is circulated, and yet there is always a customer demanding the second half of his cutlery set. Jania's face gleams with sweat as we both feed cutlery into the polisher. The whole staff are in general agreement that the machine does nothing. Each knife comes out grainier than when it went in before, so our work is doubled. Company policy tells us that we must feed cutlery through the machine, and yet we must also scrub it by hand too.

"This job is so tiring" says Jania, with a smile. Every complaint she makes, she smiles, as if to soften the blow.  I ask her if she works full time.

"At the moment I work full time yes. I came here a year ago to work and I'm still here. I want to study here as well though, but it will be very expensive because I already have a first degree."

Guiltily, this revelation shocked me. In three weeks, it was the first time she had mentioned having a degree.

"Yes, it's in social work. I really want to be a social worker."

I ask her why she's here if she wants to be a social worker.

"In Poland, life is hard. A professional wage can be as low as £300 a month. With the Euro, the prices of everything are really high, and it is a struggle. The only thing that is different, are the, how do you say, apartments, rooms? The cost of those in Poland are a lot lower than here."

I explain that London can feel like a separate country to the rest of England, and if she wanted cheaper rent the whole of the UK didn't cost the same as London.

"Ok, that's good to know, but I want to be here, in London. I have a boyfriend here now. And then I can save to study. I just want to read all the time to help me get on the degree course. I think I want to study psychology on top of my first degree so I can really specialise in social work. I'm reading Freud at the moment, in English. It is a challenge, but it is so interesting."

At the risk of sounding like someone from Ukip, I asked her why she wants to pursue Social Work in England rather than Poland.

"The money, and of course, I know that England is short of social workers because is it perceived to be a difficult job. It is a challenge to come to the UK and do this."

I found it difficult to work out why, other than money, she had to come to the UK to do social work. There are plenty of people in Poland who need caring for. I wondered whether Polish immigration was motivated by something other than money.

"My mother left my sister and I when I was 17 to go to Italy to find work. My father works in plant near our town. A lot of people leave. How do I feel about it? I like the EU, as it means that I can earn more money waitressing here than I could at home. I know, the cost of living is higher, but, it's nice."

Do you send money home?

"No because my sister is an English teacher so she earns enough. And my mother is still in Italy working. It is very bad for families at the moment. We are all split up and we don't see each other. I worry that the future of Poland will not have the family at the heart, because I know in my generation, so many people are leaving to find work abroad that we don't feel we have families any more. We are all separate."

And yet people  keep leaving?

"It is seen as successful to leave and earn money abroad. There is nothing for me in Poland. My mother is not there, there is no motivation to be there."

But is this exodus sustainable? I asked her whether she would go back?

"I think it is the dream of most Polish people to work somewhere like England for 10 years in whatever job they can do, and then go back to Poland to start a family when they're like, 30 years. That is when they start doing the job that they dreamed of in High School."

I asked what the dream of most polish girls was when they left school.

"Some want to be famous, just like the whole world. But many want to be teachers, and nanny's. We have to be realistic in Poland."

So what was her plan now? Jania had been working at the restaurant for a year now and she still hadn't been promoted from back of house cutlery polisher to waitress because of her language skills. Jania who reads Freud and hopes to become a psychologist after being a social worker.

"Now, I save for my degree. I want to do here, in England. And then I will get experience for free by volunteering with social workers. And then hopefully I can get a job. My polish degree is not worth anything here because I need to translate all the papers and it's not the same as the UK. It's tiring. Sometimes I want to make myself feel happy, you know?"

And her always optimistic face momentarily creased into a frown.

It's not just me.

The word job can be read in several ways. It can mean job as in a part-time job, a Saturday job, the odd paper-boy shift, a career or a dream. I'm still job-hungry. Currently I work 45 hours a week as a waitress during the evening and weekends, and 40 hours a week during the day for Time Out as an Intern. I have been accepted onto a course to study Magazine Journalism come September, but right now, I don't feel as though I have a job yet. I have a means to pay my way, and a selection of choices that will help me attain my dream job. I'm in limbo, waiting. 

At work number two last night I was cleaning a table when I noticed a former editor of my student newspaper sitting with a friend. "I'm a news producer for Sky", he told me. We exchanged handshakes and comments about the state of our lives, and agreed to organise a Palatinate alumni get-together again at some point. I was enormously impressed with what he had a achieved, and I couldn't help but stop and look at myself, cutlery tray in hand, aching feet and a smelly dishcloth in my waitressing pouch, its wetness slowly seeping through my apron to leave a damp spot. 

I went into the back of the restaurant and slowly put some lipstick stained glasses into the machine. I had chosen to be here and I was angry that I had to be. I had a deep, flashing moment of frustration with myself for not taking my place at City immediately out of university. I could have been done by June. I would be a journalist, not an intern-come-cutlery polisher. But this is the path I chose, and the mistakes I made somewhere along the line have contributed to my current exhaustion. Last night, stacking the glasses into the dishwasher, I realised that I had lost the core of what I was even doing there, why I was there in the first place. It was to keep my dream of becoming a journalist alive, I reminded myself. This is what we all have to do. But it had become a robotic existence.

At home, my book lay unfinished, one chapter to go until the end. Three articles that I had offered to write for Time Out were unwritten, with no foreseeable time in which to write them. I don't even have time to eat a meal. A box of as high-calorie food as I can find-polenta, tofu or mushrooms-eaten quickly on the 15 minute bus journey home at 1am. And the endless days in the stuffy Time Out office where I struggle to keep my eyes open and focus on the screen. The feedback from editors, silly mistakes from not proof-reading because my eyes just won't stay open. And when they all received the Time Out card for staff members, a card that entitles you to 50% off dining out and none of the interns did, my first thought was not of exploitation, but instead realised that this would increase customers at the restaurant where I worked.

In perpetuum. 

But something shook me out of this self-pitying mess. Something that made me open up my laptop and restart this blog. Compared to other people, my life is easy. 

And the following posts, will be their stories. 

Graduate Scheme Panic

We’ve all got friends like it. Maybe you were one. Maybe I was. Who knows. 

“Fancy a drink?”

“Sorry, can’t I’ve got Amnesty/Foodwaste/Save the puppies AGM”

“Tomorrow lunchtime?”

“Lunchtimes? Are you serious? I’m interviewing local councillor/David Bowie/the Queen”

And now, post-university, they’re unemployed. They got a 2:1 (achievable), joined and ran every club under the sun (harder) and are personable. But they don’t have a job.

What went wrong?  I have several friends in this position and almost all of them have one thing in common:

They blindly applied for graduate roles.

Graduate roles are seen as the be all and end all of a university career. No graduate role? You are derided, cast aside and rejected by the university alumni people who call you up every week asking you what your leaver’s destination is.

“Seeking employment?” they sniff? “Did you not get on a graduate scheme?”

The phone line mysteriously goes dead. Your university doesn’t want you as a statistic. Seeking further employment doesn’t look great when they’re trying to attract new blood. 

“Oh him?” They’ll tell their supervisor. “No, we couldn’t get through.” And your number will be erased from the university alumni relations office contact book.

 But applying for too many roles when at uni, or post uni, is dangerous too. At some point you stop caring what the results of these applications will be. Graduate scheme at British Tobacco? Oh ok then, might as well. But you won’t get it, because you really couldn’t give a shit. The big four? KPMG? PWC? Well, are you good at  maths? No, but, well, go on, you might as well. And then you get rejected.

Because they know you didn’t wake up that morning, punching the air and saying: “Yes, one more step towards a lifelong career in audit!”

As previous posts have shown however, just because you want something like crazy, it doesn’t mean you’ll get that either. BBC graduate scheme-didn’t even get an interview. And I pretty much ticked every box going. And then some. Because graduate schemes are not the be all and end all. Focus on small production companies. Approach a small newspaper. Call up a regional auditors in your parents local town. Any architects nearby who’ll take you on for a few weeks of work experience?

Graduate schemes aren’t always glamorous. And quite often they can drag you through the hoops with you unwillingly holding the reigns with one hand. At each step you question whether you want it. But you keep getting through until the final selection day when you’re hideously rejected. And then you realised after all that work, preparation and effort, you’re still no closer to getting a job and the end of university is just 4 weeks away.

But don’t panic. Don’t apply blindly. Don’t rush yourself off your feet trying to fit mad amounts on your CV.  Relax, think about your point. What do you think you were put on this earth to do? What would you like to do? Because my guess was it wasn’t to end up working in a faceless office in front of a computer counting steel-piping imports. And if this was your dream, and you’ve achieved it: well done!

Being a fashion intern

So far it’s been less like Devil Wears Prada and more like the sofa of my kitchen on a rainy Sunday afternoon. People are constantly on a migration towards the teapot, huddled with laptops, casually typing out stories and shouting jokes around the room. In essence, it's essentially like any other office I’ve worked in, except there’s music.

Time Out is a  fantastic place to work and everybody is incredibly friendly, if a little busy.

My work so far has not been confined to coffee runs. Instead I’ve been in touch with PRs, writing out reams and reams of listings, generally getting confused with the image uploader they’ve got here. Most difficult, I've had to work out what Miu Miu means.

I am not your stereotypical Fashion Intern. For one, I don’t really care about fashion, and, as I pass the theatre/food/travel desks my head inclines wistfully towards them. But it’s a great step in the right direction and it mans that I get to shock friends and family with style advice. This comes from somebody who is happiest in leggings and oversized tee. 

I don't think it's going to turn me into some crazy Rachel Zoe lookalike (see! Fashion reference!!!), but it's making me appreciate the work that goes into producing a magazine as 'simple' as Time Out. 

 

How to get a job in London

Ok, so the job market is horrendous worldwide, apart from perhaps, Australia. Otherwise, the streets are akin to the 1930s. Even the colour has been sapped from the London streets, everything is in sepia, and for some reason, men have started wearing cloth caps and have swapped their Nikes for large shoes with gaping holes in the toes. Yes, we’re in a vast, yawning hole of depression, but there are still jobs to be had in London town, just how to go about it.

• Ensure you have friends in high places. This is easier said than done, obviously, but loitering around in coffee shops does have its advantages when it comes to making connections. I have now been offered a grand total of two jobs, just from having the fortune of sitting next to the right people at the right time. One man insisted that I come and interview for a job at his ski and snowboard company, despite the fact that I can’t ski or snowboard. Another man eyeballed my pictures that I was doctoring on my laptops and gave me a business card for freelance photography. I still earn money this way. So if you’re particularly lazy, and you prefer the idea of loafing around drinking hot beverages all day over, then waiting for the job to come to you is one way of succeeding in the London job market. I am proof that it can happen, you just a happy smile and to look job hungry.

• Go classic. Local restaurants and bars will respond to your efforts to traipse around the capital handing out promising looking CVs to all and sundry. Open the door to the establishment with a smile, extend your arm to the manager for a polite handshake and state why you’re there. Hopefully this will be enough to show the place you want employment in that you’re an excellent choice and that if nothing else, you have the stamina to be on your feet for hours on end.

• Do what my friend did and stand out from the crowd with quirky CVs. One of my friends, desperate to get a job in PR, poked his CV into a balloon, filled it with Helium and then left it at several PR firms, hoping to get their attention. He labelled it as a gift to the boss and provided a handy pin to prick the rubber. Do your research first: a small quirky surprise to a young PR manager could be a fatal shock induced heart attack to an older one. Worked for my friend though: he was offered called for five interviews in as many hours. While I don’t suggest that you copy this idea to the letter, other ideas are delivering your CV wearing fancy dress, presenting your CV in a 3D origami shape (if this is at all relevant to your job-perhaps applying to be a burger flipper in Maccy D’s won’t call for such a level of creativity) or making a hanging mobile out of your CV and sending it in a package to PR firms nationwide.

• Get in touch with a recruitment agency. Sometimes, these places can help to place you with the company of your dreams. Often, they arrange a little pre-interview with you first to make sure that you’re not going to embarrass them. Just make sure you’re clear about what type of job you’re looking for. I once went for an interview with an internet company who quizzed me about my computer coding skills and looked more and more dejected with every answer I offered. At no point had the recruitment consultancy suggested that I would need to be able to program or build websites: they’d told me that they were looking for someone to write product descriptions. Mad.

• Move out to the provinces. A growing number of graduates are opting not to move to London to find work. Despite the feeling that London is almost a primate city in the UK, more and more jobs are being found outside the capital for graduates. Jaguar Landrover recently offered a shedload of engineering roles for new engineering and physics students, while the BBC’s move to Salford has ensured that it’s no longer imperative for debt-ridden graduates to shell out more money for London accommodation. The big cities of Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds and Birmingham have a variety of jobs on offer, and, best of all, you’re less likely to be competing with EU workers who come to London tempted by the glitz, the glam and the exceptional restaurants. No-one ever went to Manchester for the glitz and the glam. 

I didn't get rejected SHOCK

Sometimes the JobHungryGrad really has to pinch herself. This often occurs when I've received rejection letters from companies I haven't even applied for or been invited to job interviews. This is such a rare occurance that sometimes JobHungryGrad's partner need to get the smelling salts out to revive her before she has the energy to blog about receiving an invite. Seeing as I don't often get job offers (it's the nature of the role of being constantly JobHungry) I rarely register shock at getting a job offer. Let's just say I'm out of practice.

So my initial reaction was this:

How do I celebrate a feeling other than rejection?

I have a job offer. Interesting new concept.

Relief: it's all over now (apart from the need to  apply for extra income part time job

But this is the anger for all the grads out there who are still wasting their wonderful young lives trying to find the elusive job of their dreams. Don't give up. Fierce determination. Pride. And lots of love from JobHungryGrad. 

When you want a job so badly but the subject matter is a little...different

Time Out are interviewing me today for a Shopping and Style position. Anyone who knows me will know that I'm interested in colours, textures, fabrics and designs, but have never spent more than £100 on a piece of clothing. Will this automatically exclude me? Most of my favourite pieces were either handmade by friends or found in the bottom of 123 Bethnal Green bargain bin basket. 

So we have a problem.

Do I spend the last few hours before my interview cramming like hell on Mount St. stores and Ledbury Street designers? Or do I just admit that I'm most interested in Food Shopping, Furniture Stores and Pop-up clothes bin shops? 

I have all the skills for this position, I just hope I can twist my interests to fit the evidently fashion oriented post style. It won't be the first time I've tried it. Hopefully, third time lucky. Wish JobHungryGrad luck!