It’s been a while since I wrote a proper Weeknote. To be honest, I am struggling with them a bit – I’m working at an actual company four days a week, which means what I can talk about is a bit more limited than when I was just mostly home-working freelance.
The job is at a small business to business publisher and events company, working in the pharmaceuticals and transport spaces. Although I have touched on working with transport before, pharma is totally new to me. That’s not a big deal though: my role is to work with their content team, who don’t have a lot of experience, and get them working in new and exciting ways.
Experience is a strange thing. By any solid metric, I have a lot of it. I’ve worked many different roles in editorial, content creation, video, podcasting – if it’s a medium, I’ve probably done it. I’ve worked on print, digital, done audience development, SEO, social, and more. And I’ve run teams that varied in size from a handful of people to close to fifty.
Yet sometimes I feel like I don’t know what to do with that experience. Or rather: it feels hard to demonstrate to people just how valuable that experience is.
I have skills and knowledge that are timeless, but a lot of companies out there seem to overlook them. I have witnessed the evolution and transformation of many industries and markets over the past thirty years, but – perhaps because I have spent the last few years buried deep inside a big corporation – it’s sometimes hard to have much to show for it.
I have a wealth of stories and insights to share, and when I share them people value the insight, but getting the opportunity is sometimes more difficult.
But then I looked at Reddit posts from recent graduates, who all seemed to discover that the assurances of high salaries and good jobs they were given if they just graduated were, in fact, not bearing out. And I realise (again) how easy I had – and have – it.
Nearly 40% of 18-year-olds go to university. When I went, in 1986, that percentage was much lower – only 15% in 1980. Likewise, on my year only three out of 110 students in the cohort got first class honours – 2%. Now the average is 36%. When that many people are graduating, and that large a number are getting top marks, it’s not difficult to see how being a graduate isn’t the guarantee of a better job that it once was.
If someone with my experience and advantages doesn’t feel like he’s being heard, what chance do people just starting out have?
