A couple of weeks before graduating last June, I was offered a HEFCE-funded graduate internship at a university — the scheme was designed to bolster graduates' employability skills. Despite the pay being minimal, I took it. This turned out to be a great move because within two months of me being there, a vacancy opened up in the department I had been posted in, I applied and got the job.
So I was one of those that bucked the trend the first time round, managing to get a job fresh out of university. But it wasn't long before I found myself dusting off my CV again, because a month ago a departmental re-structure was announced and the square that my job once occupied on the organisational chart had been deleted.
Facing redundancy forced me to ask some important questions that will resonate throughout the rest of my career. I had to ask myself, "What is it about my job that makes me want to stay in it?". Trying to find the answer to that question has made a big impact on the direction I want to I want to take in my career.
Graduate redundancies seem to me to be an unreported growing trend. Stories about numerous firms cutting their graduate intake — BT being the first large company to announce the closure of its graduate scheme in August 2009 — received plenty of exposure but there is little news about those graduates who have secured employment and are now finding themselves either surrounded by fellow colleagues who are losing their jobs, or worse: at risk of redundancy themselves.
During the past month, two of my friends from the class of 2009 have gone through a similar situation; told that their departments or companies are being restructured and that their jobs are potentially at risk.
My situation wasn't like the city horror stories of being called into the director's office and asked to pack up my desk. Instead I was told that two jobs, carried out by a colleague and I, were becoming one and we would be in competition against each other for the remaining role. Whoever was unsuccessful would be offered a redundancy package. The options were to apply for the job and hope that my colleague asked for the redundancy package, or to ask for the money myself and leave.
The experience of going through a departmental re-structure and facing the prospect of redundancy as a recent graduate has been a journey that will remain with me for the rest of my career. I have experienced feelings of betrayal, denial, resistance to change, and then the eventual — albeit slow — acceptance of the situation.
Working out what it is about my job that I enjoy and how I see it fitting in to my wider career plans — indeed working out what those career plans are — was fundamentally what enabled me to turn the situation to my advantage. I realised that I had managed to get to this point without actually addressing the question that many graduates dread: "What do you want to do with your life?"
I came to realise that my job had come about by chance — I took the first internship that was offered to me and it turned into a permanent job. Admittedly, this worked out rather nicely because I ended up doing a job in the field that I was interested in, just in an unexpected environment.
Facing the prospect of redundancy, however, gave my career a wake-up call — not something I was expecting so early in my working life. Firstly I had to take stock of the situation and establish my career aims. Then making a decision of whether to "apply" for my job was a matter of working out if that job was in line with those aims. I soon realised it was.
So when the option sheets were distributed, I asked to be considered for the job and my colleague asked to be considered for the voluntary redundancy package. We made HR's job easy.
As for what my career aims now are, I have realised that I want to pursue a career in journalism, so plan to stay in my current role as an editorial assistant and take up a Master's in journalism.
Going through the experience of being at of redundancy has taught me a valuable lesson: it's time to start carving my own path rather than letting the river float me along.
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