Ex.1. Read the text and do the assignments that follow.

As a major industrial country Britain has a labour force with high levels of technical and commercial skill. However, in common with other industrial countries, it has suffered in recent years from high levels of unemployment.

The Government's employment strategy is to maintain an economic, financial and industrial climate in which businesses can operate successfully and create jobs. It is taking action to improve the labour market by encouraging better training, removing regulatory barriers which hinder recruitment by firms, and providing an extensive range of employment and training measures for those most affected by unemployment (particularly the long-term unemployed and the young) to help them into productive work.

Advice on manpower policy issues is provided by the Manpower Service Commission. It is a body in which employers, trade unions, local authorities and educational interests are represented. Most of its activities are financed from public funds. The main public employment services arе provided in Great Britain by the MSC which offers a comprehensive service for employers needing staff and for people seeking jobs.

Local education authorities provide a careers service, i.e. vocational guidance for people attending all educational institutions, except universities, which have their own careers service, and an employment service for those leaving them. Authorities may also provide an employment service for other people in their early post-school years.

A large number of 16 and 17 year-olds enter Youth Training programmes established by the Government as a means of helping young people to gain vocational experience through training. The Government guarantees a place on the scheme to everybody under 18 who is not in full-time education or in work. Youth Training programmes cover a wide range of vocational skills from hairdressing to engineering, and a large percentage of trainees are able to find work once they have completed a Youth Training course.

Professional and Executive Recruitment is a specialist branch of the MSC which helps employers looking for professional, managerial, scientific or technical staff and assists people seeking employment at this level. It operates nationally, through a network of offices. It offers a comprehensive recruitment service based on a weekly jobs newspaper.

Another option is to become self-employed. This requires a product or service which has a clear market, as well as good advice and motivation. It is not easy, as is testified by the high proportion of business start-ups which fail during their first year. However, a number of organisations offer grants as well as start-up advice. For example, The Prince's Youth Business Trust (a sister of The Prince's Trust organisation) helps unemployed and disadvantaged 18 to 29 year-olds set up viable businesses and provides grants and loans to both individuals and groups. Free advice is offered by the network of Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs), co-ordinate through the Department of Trade and Industry and run by professional advisers and business people. Also the Business Enterprise Programme provides training in skills needed to run small businesses.

6. What opportunities are there for school-leavers to get vocational experience?

7. Who can get employment services from the Professional and Executive Recruitment branch of the MSC?

Career Services assists students in all aspects of their career development throughout their years at university. Career planning services include career counseling, workshops on career topics, a Career Resource Library, and referrals through the Alumni Career Network.

The Cooperative Education and Internship Programme works with qualified students and employers to arrange preprofessional work experience relating to a student's major field of study. Most of the positions carry salaries, allowing students to help pay for their education.

In addition, many placement services are available to help seniors find employment after graduation. Each year, hundreds of employers are on campus to conduct interviews.

Ex.3. Use an appropriate word or phrase from the box to complete each sentence.

1) The Internet is changing the way that companies work; ______ some use their website to advertise job vacancies.

2) Some companies use newspaper advertisements in the recruitment process ______ others prefer to use consultants.

3) With the boom in hi-tech industries, well-qualified software specialists are difficult to find; ______in the automotive industry, there is a shortage of engineering graduates.

4) To get good management jobs, an MBA is now often a requirement; ______ knowledge of two foreign languages including English is increasingly demanded.

5) The Internet is being used more and more as a recruitment tool, ______ there are few statistics available yet about how successful it is.

Graduate unemployment in Britain is falling but when it comes to getting a job some courses do better than others.

While language and computer science graduates enjoy below-average rates of unemployment, those who have read creative arts and design, social studies, politics and economics suffer higher rates.

Those from the newest universities do worse than those from the established alumnae. Vocational courses have lower unemployment levels than more academic courses, such as English and history.

Typically the lowest unemployment levels are among the medical, dental and veterinary sciences, agriculture and architecture graduates.

A survey by the Association of Graduate Recruiters, representing some of the bigger and more traditional graduate employers, found that there were more than 50 graduates applying for every vacancy. On average most graduates make about 60 applications.

Although more and more graduates are finding employment there is a question mark over what kind of work they are finding and how underemployed are these new armies of highly skilled workers. The latest statistics show that, while the vast majority were getting management, professional and technical jobs worthy of a degree, something like 16pc were getting clerical and secretarial jobs and another 9pc were getting jobs in sales. All over London there are rooms full of graduates trying to sell everything from stationery to advertising space on a commission-only basis. Some of these seemingly no-graduate jobs are stop-gap positions, some are stepping stones and some, though they may have a clerical title, are in fact quite high-powered computer positions.

The main growth in graduate employment has come not through the traditional employers taking on more graduates but smaller more entrepreneurial companies also realising that they too need their share of brain power if they are to compete. So if companies of whatever size want to recruit intelligence and people they can train, they have to go to the graduate pool.

It is also true that with the labour market breaking up and moving away from the old certainties, new careers are opening up all the time and the old problem of graduates "not knowing what to do" is as acute as ever. Many have a much better idea of what they don't want to do than what they really want. Many will never know what they want to do until they have tried a few jobs and got some insight from the inside of the jobs market rather than the outside.

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