CAREERS GUIDANCE

As unemployment officially hits its highest rate in four years, millennial Helen Coffey, who graduated smack-bang into the 2008 crash, shares how to apply for work without going mad

- 

Solidarity: that is what I wish to offer our beleaguered Gen Zs in this, their time of need. The culture wars often seek to divide my kind (millennials) from yours (genuine young people), but we shall be divided no longer. For now, finally, we really do have common ground that binds us: getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop when it comes to finding gainful employment.

In 2008, I proudly graduated from university with a first-class degree - admittedly in drama - and big dreams, ready to take my bite out of the big, wide world. Finding a job would be child’s play, I assumed; I had an exemplary academic record, a “can-do” attitude and a CV filled with real-world work experience thanks to an assortment of term-time and holiday jobs. I was young, I was hungry, I was an asset. Wasn’t I?

Alas, 2008, if you remember that fateful year, coincided with the global financial crash. It was not a good time to be an unskilled 21-year-old looking for a job, to put it mildly. Between 2008 and 2009, UK unemployment skyrocketed by the steepest jump in any 12-month period of the last 30 years, leaping from 5.71 to 7.63 per cent. The rate rose for the following two years, reaching a high of just over 8 per cent in 2011.

This was borne out by my futile job hunt, during which I was forced to move home with my mother, sign on to jobseeker’s allowance and spend every tedious, drudge of a day for the next four months submitting my CV for entry-level roles that had already attracted thousands of applications. It was like the Hunger Games of job seeking — and the odds were never in my favour.