Life’s Full of Thatsh – Do I Have ‘Slave’ Stamped Somewhere?

During the course of the week, I attended a meeting to hear about IBEC’s EOP graduate programme, the first graduate programme I’d heard about that seemed interesting in the most remotest of senses to me, since I am unfortunately drawing to a close my college days (which in fairness, have now lasted 5 years for what will amount to a simple honours degree). And, while I know it’s seriously likely I incur the wrath of any number of students/graduates on here who’ve done these things and had a cracking time, I have to say, graduate programs come across as the greatest load of rubbish I’ve had pedalled at me since I was in Vietnam and people were forcing me to buy postcards. Our careers service in DIT, a man from which actually told us quite modestly and in all seriousness that they were an ‘excellent’ bunch, seem to have a borderline fetish for these programs. It actually got so bad as you’ll see from the picture on the left, that I began to have near-hallucinations whenever I’d see a new e-mail from ‘Laurence’, thinking he was really implying what’s inside the speech bubble in the second picture. Listen, I’m not stupid, I know the jobs situation is absolutely dire at the moment – I read newspapers, watch the news (when it isn’t full of rubbish like Michael O’Leary and the Tánaiste arguing over some scrap metal composition out in North Dublin) and listen to radio – The Venntertainment Show, on 2XM that is. Plug, plug.

But seriously, some of these graduate schemes are more like graduate scams. Common answers to some of the most common questions seem to go a bit like this;
‘Can I decide what area I can work in?’ – Unbeknownst seemingly to the majority of companies, most people coming towards graduate level have copped onto what they’re interested in and would like to do, therefore the area they’re most likely to be sufficiently motivated enough to bring about any sort of productivity. The answer however, without fail, goes like…
‘Of course you can, after you complete your initial [at least] 12 month induction, which won’t be paid of course, you can decide where you want to work, subject to our approval naturally’, which of course means there’s not a hope in hell you’ll ever see so much as the name plaque of the department you want to go to.

In another case, another question I’ve regularly heard companies being economical with the truth is;
‘Will I get paid while I’m on the scheme?’ – The answers to this question range from an immediate pre-scripted answer to a disgruntled face followed by obvious freestyling. Taking the average of all the answers I’ve heard though, it goes something like…
‘Well obviously this is more of a launching platform for your future career (this by the way, I speak with a degree of confidence, is merely a way for Company X’s spokesperson to buy some time to formulate a semi-decent sounding answer), so we don’t generally see wages as a vital part of the scheme although of course you’ll receive a competitive package, you won’t be hard done by anyway, that’s for sure’. Anyone that says ‘competitive package’ (unless they’re willing to state precisely what’s so competitive about it) is talking through their bums and another thing, I’ve never met anyone on a graduate scheme who’s honestly been able to tell me they’re happy with what they’re getting and don’t feel hard done by.

The whole thing is a complete thinly-veiled scam. As if it wasn’t bad enough that students have to spend a minimum 3 years studying in college towards something they may not originally have wanted to do in the first place, companies seem to think students then want to go and continue ‘learning’ for an additional year or two for more or less no money, as if all we want to do is prolong the student life for as long as possible. Hello; I’m getting to the stage where if I was to go to 21 Club in town, they’d actually think I was going to pick my kids up. What’s worse is that colleges across the country seem to have really bought into this whole ‘education is a lifelong journey’ thing. Of course it is, but it doesn’t have to be a lifelong poorly-paid journey being scammed by companies getting work for nearly free. And students aren’t complete dopes either – the benefits of getting a load of hardly-paid graduates for little to no money, while being also able to keep them off the proper payroll or package scheme for at least a year are obvious to even the slowest of people, so it’s pretty obvious in many cases companies are getting more than enough in return. For now though, I better get the CV ready…

Tagged as: careers service, companies, graduate, IBEC, jobs, questions, scam, youlovethatsh