How can students best prepare for the world of work?

The average person stays in each permanent job he/she gets for four years.  If we include the temporary and part time jobs that a person might take during a time of recession (of the type we have been experiencing), then the average person will stay in each job for an average of two years.

This is a staggering turn around in the job market when compared with the past, and is due to three factors:

1. The ease with which employers can remove employees in the first year of employment.
2. The years of recession which has caused many employers to take on staff on short-term and zero hours contracts.
3. A growth in the, “I don’t have to put up with this”. attitude from some young people who expect work to be, well, more like a social event than work, and who sometimes also lack the ability to handle the basic courtesies that employers who have been in the job for 30 years will demand and expect. 

Whether our society will now return to the previous norm of four years per job is hard to say.  But even if we do, there is still the fact that the average employee will change jobs 12 or more times during a career.

So, getting used to the experience of moving into a new work environment is no bad thing – and the sooner young people have that experience the better.