The graduate job market is broken – thanks to HR
Eye-watering student loans and a lack of graduate jobs are hurting young people. The way that companies hire – or not – is an insult. No wonder so many of them are angry.
The dire consequences of the student loan – or graduate tax racket – are no longer a secret, becoming a major talking point in recent weeks. Contrary to the claim by the chancellor of the exchequer, Rachel Reeves, the system is anything but ‘fair and reasonable’. Equally unfair is the graduate job crisis; as the Telegraph reported earlier this week, youth unemployment in London has now reached 18 per cent. To complete the trifecta, there’s the less tangible – but equally pressing – manner of how graduates are treated while navigating the job market.
Ironically, those tasked with graduate employment – HR departments – preach inclusivity, respectful workplace behaviour and ‘people-centricity’. To test whether these values exist in practice, I’ll walk through a typical graduate recruitment ‘process’, although calling it a process is generous, as it lacks structure, purpose and an eventual conclusion.
First, you submit your application. For many of these jobs, you see the ominous phrase ‘minority groups encouraged to apply’, which seems to be a heavy hint that if you’re white, straight and male you probably shouldn’t bother. Regardless, you are asked various questions about your ethnicity, sexual orientation and religion. I’ve known people to lie about their sexuality, and even their ethnicity, with a friend from the Mediterranean claiming to be mixed race.
If they pass this racial screening, graduates are invited to submit CVs and cover letters, frequently written by AI. This is hardly a moral failing, given that they are read by AI and ultimately rejected by AI. ‘Human Resources’ have engineered a system that is, in practice, the least human process imaginable.
The lucky few are then instructed to complete ‘assessments’. Of course, as companies use the same assessment providers, you have likely completed them before. Maths graduates from top universities must do maths assessments; everyone is made to complete personality tests; and occasionally, you play games involving stopping stopwatches at designated times – literally. The value of your academic record, even for those with strong academic records, is zero.
A tiny percentage will then reach the interview stage – but no, this is not an interview in the traditional sense. Instead, you answer five questions into your laptop while eyeing up the recording of yourself, which are then submitted to be ‘reviewed’ (usually by AI again). If you do speak to a real person, it will rarely be in person, but online.
Now you are firmly ‘in the process’. You have submitted a CV, a cover letter, your family and sexual history, a nervy, stuttering video of yourself, and still – perhaps three months in – you may even have spoken to a real person. But it is still not finished. Your application may disappear entirely; one, two or three months later you might hear you have reached another stage, but more likely you will either never hear from the company again or receive a letter devoid of information informing you of your rejection. I still receive the occasional rejection email, despite having not submitted a job application since September.
One friend woke up on the day of his final-round interview to be told the position no longer existed. The same friend reached an assessment centre, only to find every slot booked the next day – he was informed that no more would be added. Another graduate told me he reached the final interview stage, only to be ghosted; two months later, he received an email explaining that the role had been cancelled. These stories are common. Out-of-work graduates all have many. The market is the market, but how a society treats its young people is a choice.
Senior management has handed too much power to HR departments, which have created processes that serve their own interests: automated, outsourced and designed to minimise difficult decision-making.
HR is the fastest-growing industry in the UK, and much of that growth resides in what David Graeber called ‘bullshit jobs’. If HR ‘executives’ create month-long processes with eight different stages, they can justify hiring more HR ‘executives’ to help run them. Inefficiency is self-rewarding. The victims, once again, are the youth of today.
This experience, compounded by a regressive student loan system and a failing graduate job market, is having tangible consequences for contemporary politics. While Labour refuses to address these concerns, young people are abandoning traditional parties in favour of both Reform and the Greens.
Jake Weston works on comms and press at the Academy of Ideas.
To discuss these issues, and more, join us at Battle of Ideas North on Saturday 7 March in Manchester, where we’ll discuss Disaffected Youth: are young people becoming more extreme? with Maeve Halligan, Sebastian Moore and others.
Read on:
Graduates were sold a lie on debt - now we have a duty to help
Paul Wiltshire, The Times, Thursday 5 February
The Peter Mandelson scandal just took a more sinister turn
Quite Right by the Spectator, Tuesday 3 February
(second half discusses these issues)
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