The Class of 2008, one year on

national | education | opinion/analysis Tuesday October 27, 2009 22:08 by Emily Smith emilysmith at eircom dot net

In the Summer of 2008 it was confirmed that Ireland's economy was in recession. At the same time thousands of people received the results of their degrees. This article looks at how the recession has affected the graduates of 2008, a group whose struggles have been under-reported in the media and some of those graduates relate their experiences, within the last year, of jobseeking, social welfare and further education.

In June 2008 we received the news that Ireland was officially in recession at the same time as we received the results of our degrees. Since our final year of college many of us have gone through almost a year and a half of job-hunting or financial difficulty. But the graduates of 2008 seem to have been forgotten about by the media. One graduate, Jill, feels that last year’s graduates are not seen to be affected by the downturn in the same way that the class of 2009 are, “though I guess we left college at the start of the recession when the negative consequences for college leavers didn’t seem so apparent and maybe nobody thought it would get as bad as it did. Really we were probably amongst the first groups of people to realise just how bad things were!”

Over the past year the process of applying for jobs has changed. While there have always been employers who ignore job applications, at the beginning of the summer of 2008 jobseekers could expect their initial application to be acknowledged and to receive a rejection letter in the post. Now the few employers who still contact applicants send an automatic email telling them that if they don’t hear anything else they should assume they have been unsuccessful. Even those who get an interview cannot always expect to be contacted afterwards.
Some advertised jobs have already been filled before the specified closing date. Others are continually advertised on sites such as Jobs.ie. One recruitment company has been renewing at least two badly punctuated postings every day since June 2008. I began a lengthy application process and was interviewed by a recruitment consultant only to be told later on that the position would probably never be filled- the employers couldn’t afford the extra staff they needed.
Internships are a popular option for graduates wishing to further their skills and experience but many companies are looking for people who already have so much qualifications and experience that they could effectively run the company (for free). One advertisement seeking an intern for a PR company stated that candidates should already hold a postgraduate diploma in Public Relations as well as having relevant experience.

Without the years of experience that employers want many graduates have signed on. But some have found this to be a complicated process. One Science graduate suggested an information package for graduates which tells them what documents to bring on their first visit to the social welfare office as she felt that nothing was explained sufficiently. She was dissatisfied with the limited availability of the means test inspector and the long wait for payment. It is also worth noting that some of those signing on do not actually receive any payment.

One graduate of my acquaintance began an internship with a publishing house in May, doing unpaid work from Monday to Friday. She was told that this would not affect her jobseekers’ benefit (eighty-three Euros per week) and submitted a letter from her employer to the Social Welfare office stating that she was doing an unpaid internship until September and was still seeking work. In spite of this her jobseekers’ benefit was stopped in June and a review of why this happened was not completed until she has finished her internship. One reason she was given was that she was not legitimately seeking employment. She followed up this accusation with a number of phone calls to the supervisor of her local social welfare- the “rudest and most uninterested man” she had ever spoken to- and in July was told to reapply for benefits. After this she was unable to reach either the head office or local social welfare office by phone and this remained the case for over a month.

She had previously become a member of FAS but has described them as being unhelpful and uninterested in helping her find work or courses. This seems to be the general consensus. Jill said that when FAS announced a graduate work placement programme this summer she registered immediately but “the office I spoke to was incredibly pessimistic about the programme ever getting off the ground as only employers who hadn’t let staff go were eligible and none were coming forward.”

It has been reported that many are opting for further education because of the recession. What isn’t being considered is the difficulty met by those seeking funding. Jill says that for her “the crux is that (post-graduate courses) cost money so without a job post-grads are ruled out for me.”
However, I know from speaking to the 2008 graduates who took the further education route that a Masters is not always a solution to unemployment. One graduate who has just finished an MA at NUIG says that while she is glad she did the course she is finding life difficult at the moment and is disheartened by the lack of jobs. “I don’t know if doing the MA was the best thing career wise…I don’t really think that further education is the answer to all our problems”. She had applied to do a PhD but was turned down due to funding. She has also been applying for jobs through Fas but hasn’t had any luck with them.

A lot of people talk about the concept of a career-ladder these days. However it seems that in an age when graduates are receiving rejection letters from supermarkets that nobody is getting a chance to get on the bottom rung.