Why flaunt it when you don't have it?

Why flaunt it when you don't have it?


Gabourey Sidibe might be a talented actress and she should stick to acting.

Also read for fun a couple at it under the moonlight.

Bus toys

How buses nowadays are made of plastic and also more expensive. Old buses were all metals and also had more space inside.

Have you ever noticed how modern buses are now made mostly of plastic inside? Compare a new bus and an old one, maybe from the sixties. These old buses had metal seats, frames and so on inside. They also had few furnishings, making the buses spacious.

New buses not only have turned towards plastic fittings and seating but seem much more crowded inside. Where is the world going?

Engineered myth

To stick to the thread of recruitment, this post will discuss the engineering industry, another faker.

Bosses of engineering companies are always complaining about the lack of qualified engineers in the UK. They could be right. At universities up and down the land, engineering departments are only surviving because of the influx of foreign students who pay a premium to come to these cold wet shores. Where are the natives? Certainly not in the engineering departments. They are a rare breed there. Why? Do they know something that foreign students don’t? After reading this, you might think so.

If you graduate with a good engineering degree, you should think that you will land yourself a job in that profession without too much delay. After all, engineering bosses do complain about the lack of qualified engineers, and you are now qualified. Beware, you’ll be in for a surprise.

What these bosses really mean is that they want everything ready-made brought on a plate to them. They seek experienced engineers above all. And worse, they are not prepared to take on new graduates or inexperienced but qualified engineers. Somehow, they are under the impression that anyone who graduates from university does so with a bagful of experience under their arms.

Reality check: a university is a place of learning; a workplace is where you get experience. If bosses are not prepared to provide experience, they are preposterous in asking for it! Who else will provide that? Where else?

Work placement I hear you suggest. A good solution. Except that they are over-subscribed. Employers this time prefer qualified staff instead, otherwise they will only let you make tea.

Some call it voluntary work and really pay you no penny. If you are the independent student who doesn’t want to really on mummy and daddy’s bank account, you gotta work for yourself and the summer holidays are a great time to do that. How can you pay the bills then if you are going to work for free? Are we really back to slavery with free labour? Fortunately, some are clamping down on this practice. The mighty University of London has decided a while ago to stop advertising unpaid work across all of its colleges and universities unless the employer could justify why it needed this free labour. Way to go.

The recession only intensifies this problem – preposterous bosses demanding experience or free labour. These practices were established well before the current financial crisis made many experienced professionals redundant.

Engineering graduates end up working in other sectors which appreciate their numerical and analytical skills better and also pay better – banks, like them or not, are one of them.

So engineering bosses, where are your qualified engineers? You are right, not so many here; you kicked them all away. Now you are having to rely on foreign workers who qualified and got their experience abroad.

Ready-made, once again…

This is my 2 cents to debate.

Employes who fake it

As the recession keeps its stranglehold over Britain, it’s not just customers who like a free deal. Employers want their freebies too and in a desperate attempt to get it in desperate times, their resort to dishonest tactics.

It is more and more common for employers to ask applicants to produce a short presentation during their interview. If the presentation is about the company itself, then there is nothing suspicious. But if the company is asking applicants to produce a presentation on the very work they do for a client, then maybe you should start asking who benefits more from this. Especially if the employer goes underground afterwards and never gets back to any applicants or suddenly decides that it no longer needs to hire anyone.

Is it because the so-called employer had 10 different presentations full of ideas from hopeful would-be employees and it found it had suddenly plenty of material to work with for that client?

Even before the recession, employers were in the habit of not replying to applications, unless they wanted to invite someone for an interview. But they used to get in touch with the interviewees afterwards to let them know whether they were successful or not. Times have changed.

Nowadays many don’t even bother contacting interviewees if they are not going to hire them. Bolder ones ask for a presentation and original ideas on the very work they do and for clients who pay them. If they are in a creative industry, they get free ideas; why hire someone then? Next time they don’t know how to go about their own business, they will do it again and call for a new round of presentations under the excuse of recruiting.

Watch out for those who fake it, guys!