Yesterday, the Financial Times published news stating an apparent shortage of skills in the UK. I, a postgraduate at the university of warwick, sitting unemployed (technically), am reading this and wondering why me and all the very many other fresh graduates are invisible to the job market. It is understandable of course in a away that we are unemployed, considering we just decided to graduate at what is clearly a hard time world wide, but this still appears as a paradox- we have skilled unemployed and a shortage of skilled workers coexisting. So where does the problem lie? The problem, from my (student) point of view lies with the fact that employers would rather keep a vacancy unfilled than hire someone without or with minimal full time work experience. And to be fair, why should they- training costs, and its preposterous if a 'rival' firm benefits from your investment. And for the fresh graduates, they are just stepping into the labour markets, and would obviously like to get to their pareto optimal place, which would mean job hopping, discovering themselves, and developing their skills , for them. But in this, the expectation of the employer that the vacancy shall soon become vacant again, leads to them not hiring out of the available pool of workers and thereby keeping the vacancy unfilled.
This is part of the story. The other part pertains specifiaclly to international students, who unfortunatley, not only have the recession to deal with, but also their lack of English nationality an 'student' visa status. Invariably, the first thoughts in an employer's mind are- OK, so this guy/ girl does not have full time work ex, and to top it Im not even sure if they can work here on their visa status. Some of them choose to cut out on the uncertainty and simply hire someone with a proper work permit. While the fresh international graduate waits on to get a job, so that he/ she can afford to pay the Post study work permit fees (out of their expected income). It almost seems that if life full of ironies, most of them happen to be in the labour market.
I've been here for eleven months now, and the next 15 days is a black uncertain box for me.