A Day Out in London

Good afternoon friends, its been a while.

After a good six months out of the game, I've decided to come back to my blog. I'm not entirely sure what caused me to stop in the first place, perhaps a general summer malaise and a bad case of writer's block, but I return. I would like to say triumphant, however that is unfortunately not exactly the case. Not to say that Autumn 2012 through Winter 2013 has been an unmitigated disaster but the fact remains I'm still searching for a graduate job.

To give you a brief update of my circumstances and general activities these past months: I'm still working at a nearby theme park for close to minimum wage; I've recently started as an education volunteer at a local charitable organisation and I also ventured to London for a rare interview in December. I'll begin my return to the blogosphere by discussing the latter, which turned out to be a particularly surreal experience.

It was an interview for a role as a trainee researcher with a TV production company. I'd applied for the job in March on a whim, without having any experience in television or having shown any previous inclination to work in the media. I'd long since given up on hearing anything back when, out of the blue, I received an email informing me I'd been shortlisted. It was in fact so much of a surprise that I had to go back and double check precisely what I had been shortlisted for. But without further ado, I accepted their offer of an interview and set about preparing. I researched the company, their programmes and the role of a TV researcher in general, and when it was time to journey to London I felt thoroughly prepared.

I arrived on a cold, crisp December morning and made my way to the production company's trendy central London offices. Feeling a little awkward, apparently being the only person in the building wearing a suit (probably should have anticipated that), I introduced myself at reception and was given a pop culture questionnaire and a newspaper exercise to complete prior to the main event. Easy peasy - weekly attendance at my local pub quiz had prepared me well and I knew all but one of the answers (knowledge of the US X-Factor let me down!). The newspaper exercise required me to select two items from the papers to form the basis of discussion on a morning panel show; again, not too tough so I set about sourcing one serious and one light-hearted story. So far, so good. Then came the interview...

Feeling a little nervous, I made my best attempt at striding confidently into the interview room, remembering to maintain eye contact and give a firm handshake. I didn't trip over, so this felt like an early success. The questions started innocuously enough: 'Why did you apply? What can you bring to the role? What do you know of the company?' Earlier prepared facts at the ready, I set about responding and gave some fairly decent answers. Then things took a turn for the worse: 'What do you like watching on TV? What's the first thing you turn to when you put the tele on?' Now, it's safe to say that my television viewing habits are fairly mundane: I like the news; I like documentaries; I like panel shows and awkward comedy. Knowing full well that said company produced almost solely light entertainment programming, I felt I was in a pickle. I decided the truth was the best option, hoping to steer discussion away from my viewing habits and back to my skills and experience. This was wishful thinking. I was grilled further: 'What do you watch on a Thursday night?' I was beginning to feel a little sheepish as I foolishly revealed my love of Question Time. By the time I was eventually released, I was flustered but felt sure that they wouldn't base the decision solely on my TV viewing habits. I always had my excellent pop culture quiz scores to fall back on!

As it turns out, I didn't get the job - or at least I don't think I have. They said I'd hear back by the end of the year; I'm still waiting. Then again, seeing as it took them 6 months to respond to my application, maybe I'll be in for a nice surprise come August. Frustrating as it is not to hear back (particularly considering the hefty rail fare!), the experience has clarified one thing for me: I really don't think I'm suited to working in television. In turn, this has made me focus more clearly on what I do want. Since New Year I've been focusing more on applying solely for political research jobs.

This brings me neatly on to my next subject - that of  the political internship, a topic on which I have previously poured scorn. I'm beginning to think I might need to sell my soul...

More to come.

Testing Testing

I assumed that after 17 years in full time education I'd had my fair share of tests, exams and assessments. It all began back in Year 2 with SATs - I can't remember them in the slightest but I'm going to assume I passed. Fast forward a decade and there were GCSEs and A-Levels, which at the time felt like they were the be all and end all. They were not; as with many things in life, it soon became apparent that they were merely stepping stones towards a far more diffuse aim, that of beginning that elusive thing known as 'a career'. After a further four years at university and the accordant exams, essays and dissertations, I was thoroughly tested out; but at least I had numerous certificates to prove my academic credentials and (I hoped) my intelligence.

Needless to say, when it comes to applying for graduate jobs this is not enough. During applications I have been subjected to a variety of tests and assessments, all of which are designed as a convenient method of unearthing the perfect candidate. Putting the practicalities of filtering through hundreds of applicants aside, it is more than a little frustrating to have my 17 years of education dismissed on the basis of a 15 minute online test. In my opinion, there are many different forms of intelligence, not all of which are tailored to answering logic puzzles or verbal reasoning questions. It is a means of selection that ensures successful candidates come from a very particular mould with a very generic skill set. This may be what businesses and other recruiters want, but I know they are dismissing very talented people on what appears to be an arbitrary basis; there is no room to prove creativity or demonstrate any strength of character. It seems like a lazy method of recruitment.

These tests take a variety of forms, some of which have come as a shock after four years studying humanities. Firstly, the verbal reasoning test: these questions comprise a short paragraph followed by a series of statements which the candidate must state as 'true', 'false' or 'cannot tell' based on the information given. Its not that these tests are phenomenally difficult (they perhaps suit my skills as a historian), but the time limits are tight - you must work quickly if you are to assess the text and answer 40 statements in 15 minutes. Secondly, there is the numeracy test which, having given up Maths after GCSE, certainly has proved challenging. In some spectacularly poor time management, on my first attempt at this type of assessment, I managed to answer 10 out of 20 questions in the allocated time - of the questions answered I managed to get 9 correct but this was largely irrelevant considering how long it was taking me to work through each conundrum. It seems I need to brush up on my skills.

Finally, we come to my most detested of all the tests used by employers, psychometric analysis. Tests where there is no right or wrong answer, merely scenarios designed to find out what kind of person you are - whether you are an introvert or an extrovert, to discover your work ethic, your attitudes and your weaknesses. I can only presume that recruiters associate particular traits with particular roles - again this seems arbitrary and unfair. Give me an interview and you would discover what type of person I am within five minutes.

I may be able to give you a detailed analysis of Rousseau's 'Social Contract' or Montesquieu's 'Spirit of the Laws'; ask me about the popular reaction to the French Revolution in Britain and I will talk to you for an hour - but none of this matters in the real world. Because I am not an extrovert and because I prefer to work independently, this is translated by some to mean 'boring' and not a 'team player'. I am no expert on psychology but I fear the likes of Jung and Freud would be turning in their graves if they saw the way their theories were manipulated and erroneously applied by some employers...