Why for a first job, the market is difficult, and what you can do

This is the script for a podcast I wanted to record for ages, after talking to a lot of candidates who had recently graduated.

First of all no market has ever been easy or perfect but if you are under 25 you'll see things in here that resonate with you. The verbal version (if you can stand the sound of my voice for 40 minutes) is recorded and available via this link.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2XzEmOqrDV13sdN2b1u2Li?si=cc2455ae11064461

As with all my output the idea is to just be helpful and apply my experience working in recruitment and the market to helpful, actionable advice. I often mention these points on an individual basis but my podcast has been a useful vehicle to help more people. I hope you will soon be one of them! Here's the script below:

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I’ve wanted to record this podcast for some time now. We are seeing massive shifts in the job market, and I feel I can offer a perspective that others can’t mainly because, well, I’m middle-aged now.

I’m one of a few consultants in this market who has worked in recruitment for over 20 years. That means I’ve seen a lot of changes. I’ve seen good practices come and go, and I’ve seen highly effective, proven methods completely forgotten. Part of my purpose today is to give some guidance to those of you who look at the current market and just feel… lost.

Who is this for?

Like most of my content, this is aimed at people seeking their first role in the industry. I’m going to aim at this entry level stage.

If you’ve already been through the job hunt a few times, please bear with me if I mention things you already know but I genuinely hope there is something in this for everyone.

My own work is always in science, specifically chemistry, but the principles today apply to the broader scientific market, if not any recruitment market out there.

What we’re covering today:

1. Why the market feels the way it does right now.

2. What caused this, and why it’s a tough place to be looking for a first role.

3. What you can actually do about it.

4. Advice from the past on how we used to tackle the "first job" issue.

5. Proactive, "you-centric" activities that YOU control to help you take back charge of your search.

This is going to be as much about the mental side of things as it is about the practical activity, because I appreciate how being "in-between" jobs is a really difficult place to be.

Personally, I fell into recruitment 23 years ago because I didn’t know what I wanted to do. My brilliant plan was to get to know different jobs through recruiting, and then apply for one myself. Obviously, I never left.

Over more than two decades, I’ve found my greatest joy in helping people be "work happy." When you’re happy at work, life is brilliant. When you aren't, it’s sub-optimal—and we all only get one job at a time.

A Quick History Lesson (Recruitment isn't an "Online" Industry)

So, why does the market feel so difficult to engage with for a first job? To answer that, I need to give you a quick legal and history lesson.

People look at recruitment today and think it’s a purely "online" phenomenon. It isn't.

Recruitment agencies are old.

We began back in 1873 when a man named John Gabbitas and his business partner, Mr. Thuring, set up Gabbitas Educational Consultants to provide teachers. As far as we know, 1873 is the first recorded recruitment agency.

That means our industry is over 150 years old. It pre-dates the Wright Brothers' first flight.

Over the decades, other agencies sprang up in response to major world events—like the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and the aftermath of World Wars I and II.

Because of this long history, especially in the UK where this podcast is aimed, there is a strict legal scaffolding around what we do. We are actually covered by our own Act of Parliament: The Employment Agencies Act of 1973.

There is a vital seed I want to plant in your mind from this Act:

Under UK law, a recruitment agency cannot charge you, the candidate, any money to find you work.

Unless we are a casting or modelling agency, charging candidates is strictly illegal.

Therefore, 100% of our revenue must come from clients (the employers). There is a follow-up law the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003 which modernised things, but these two laws govern everything we do.

Part 2: The Multi-Dollar Illusion

Now, let’s look at the modern landscape. Most people today assume job seeking means logging onto LinkedIn and Indeed. And why wouldn’t they?

· LinkedIn is a massive £14 billion ($17.8B) revenue business.

· Recruit Holdings, who own Indeed, are worth around £75 billion ($94B).

·       To put that in perspective, the entire UK recruitment sector is worth about £40 billion. We are sitting right in the middle of these giants.

But remember the timeline: recruitment as an industry is 150 years old. LinkedIn is only 23 years old. Indeed is 22 years old. They are relative babies compared to the traditional recruitment market.

Societally, these platforms have only recently entered the modern psyche as the way to find a job. For the 130 years prior, you used an agency, applied to a physical advert in the newspaper, or dropped off your CV in person all the things your parents probably tell you to do.

Because these main websites are so new, chances are your parents haven't actually used them much. They remember the days of driving around with a stack of CVs in their passenger seat, plastering the local market.

And this brings us to Reasons Job Seeking Feels So Tough Right Now:

The current expectation is that finding work means "applying to a business," but our learned behaviour of what that means has been reduced to: "Go on LinkedIn, go on Indeed."

The Problem with "Pay-Per-Click"

Let's look at the business model of these platforms. The charges for job adverts are paid by the employer or an agency like me. But we no longer just pay a flat fee for "an advert" like we did in the old days, where you spent a few hundred pounds and awaited a response from New Scientist or The Guardian or another advertising partner.

No. Advertising now is Pay-Per-Click. And this is aspect Number Two.

The biggest job websites on the planet are under this model better financially rewarded if they get more people to click that button. It’s a great idea in principle, but inlike a retail shop where you want thousands of customers through the door, or clicking things, a job advert only needs one right person at the end to take it up, that's the point of it.

Is the pay-per-click model effective? Yes, that’s why the above billions are flowing. Is it always nice to be a candidate caught in the middle of it? That's for you to say (you do get exposed many more adverts as a result of these websites) but this is a recent major change. The major impact is you get to see how many people apply for adverts.

Now, lots of people have always applied to adverts you just now see this number as a candidate. There isn't in my view a material increase as a result of pay-per-click. It's just life that if you put an advert out there, people will apply and have a go, even if it's not likely to pan out. Don't let this number count of applications put you off!

The authors of the 1973 Employment Agencies Act couldn't foresee this. The internet wouldn’t be invented for two decades and even when it was, the British public famously voted the Guinness Widget as a more important invention than the internet in an "Invention of the Year" poll!

But the 1973 Act still governs our expectations. We don’t expect to be in a monetised situation as candidates. For 50 years, we (and your parents and anyone 'old' like me) had a market where there was zero financial interest in candidate volume. The major shift today is, now there is.

What We Used to Do (And What You Can Do Now)

Now for the positive news: the things we used to do before LinkedIn and Indeed are still completely open to you. You can still do things outside of working with these tech giants.

Here is your proactive checklist of things YOU control:

· Going direct: Visit the website of the specific companies you actually want to work for.

· Get out on the ground: Drive or walk around your local Science Parks. Physically see who is operating there.

· Monitor openings: Follow the careers pages of interesting employers. Use a free online page-monitor tool to alert you the second the page changes. These were initially invented to keep track of the sales, but are great for small companies job pages and allow you to monitor hundreds of websites at once. If you get a plugin for your browser, there is one called "Page Monitor" but there are others.

· Network : Find people who already work for these businesses on social media and ask them directly: "How would you recommend someone approach your company for a role?" or maybe go light "I'm considering applying to your company what is it like to work there"

· Phone: Call companies and ask for the name and contact details of the person you should send your CV to.

· Drop off a CV: Physically hand in a CV at reception. It won't work in every case due to modern security, but do not be put off by the blanket idea that you "can't" do it either.

· Build a market map: Open up Excel or Google Sheets. Map out interesting companies and incrementally build your knowledge of them. Adding just one piece of data every few days compounds amazingly over a month.

· Use industry directories: The old physical directories are gone, but they’ve been replaced with industry-specific online databases like Where to Buy Chemicals, Chemicals Northwest, or BioNow. All available online Google those 4 and you'll have hundreds of companies to look into.

· Go to trade shows: There are regularly massive, free-to-attend conferences at places like the NEC in Birmingham or the Coventry Arena focused on the science and engineering sectors. Hundreds of businesses exhibit there. They are free, you are welcome to walk the floor, and frankly, it's a free country—go talk to them! Can't go? If they are free, register anyway, go to the attendee list, print it out (or otherwise keep it), and you're away. I couldn't make it to one last week, I had an urgent project on my desk, and did exactly this the attendee's are printed out on my desk and I'm sure all looking forward to my phone call! Some events have an app where you can connect to companies, they also advertise jobs on the event page.

· Write a letter: If digital avenues fail, send an old-fashioned, well-written letter to someone you are keen to network with. It has impact and lasts.

Here is a secret: not every company likes the modern situation either. They are not all the same.

If you consider your situation, employers are often facing the exact same frustrations in reverse. They feel like they can’t get to relevant, targeted outcomes because they are drowning in thousands of automated, irrelevant clicks.

So why, when we are more "connected" than ever before, can nobody talk to each other?

Again, it comes down to modern learned behaviours. There is nothing in principle preventing internal HR teams from reading every CV and responding. There is nothing preventing them from attending your University careers day. There is nothing preventing them from being available for the one or two "walk-ins" that arrive every month.

It's a choice not to if we're being fair, but also nobody expects different as there has been this cultural-online-shift. I booked a haircut the other day and couldn't talk to the hairdresser totally online and all down an app so if a business which is as 'in person' as it gets are like this then I think it's just how society has gone!

Before I founded my own business (12 years back now) I always struggled to understand recruitment colleagues that didn't tell their front desk reception to call them if a keen walk-in arrived, or who refused to go to career fairs. However I think this is becoming the norm and a shift to online has been championed to the extreme in terms of attraction and recruitment behaviours. This being said if I worked in a business and was responsible for recruitment, I would do the above and I know lots who are the same (but lots who aren't) it's worth taking a chance.

Combined with everything moving behind an automated online portal, this is exactly why the market feels so difficult if you are under 25 and looking into it.

In terms of advice you'll be getting, in your parents' time, if you walked into a business, someone would always come down to the front desk. Someone was responsible for answering company correspondence, even if it was just the company secretary. You could write a letter to anyone and get a reply. These days, it’s seen as acceptable in business to not. However, again, not everyone is the same.

I’m in a way sorry that your first impression of the job market is in many aspects what we old-timers would regard as ignorance in some quarters, but like with my recent haircut, this is the reality of things but the expectations and advice of your parents and older people in your life will be that the Old World still exists. In some ways it does you just need to look under the right rocks and find that engagement. So lets finish on a positive!

Conclusion: Take Back Control

So, what is the ultimate "you-centric" takeaway here?

First of all, be prepared for the reality of the numbers. Be prepared to kiss a lot of frogs. If I were in your situation today, I would give myself a 5% shot per application. That means you need to try at least 20 targeted companies using the methods I listed above. If you are trying fewer than that, you simply aren't giving yourself strong enough odds.

Scroll back and look at that checklist of bullet points above and there will be new ideas in there to get in control of my search, rather than the search in control of me.

By taking these proactive steps, you will be in control and feel much better. You’ll be able to look at a tangible list of activities that you drove, which is the absolute best thing you can do for your own headspace around the search.

I hope this has been helpful. If you want to connect or need specific help in the chemical and science sectors, you can find me over at www.licasci.com