London Careers Career News
400 articlesMaster the credit gap
As business schools up and down the land will testify, recession can be great for business. Many people - the newly redundant, the employed-but-insecure, and anxious career-changers - tend to seek the reassurance of a postgraduate qualification to help them gain an edge in a competitive job market, ...
Published: Fri, 19 Jun 2009
Invest in yourself
In the final of The Apprentice earlier this month, the eventual winner Yasmina Siadatan had to explain to an audience of confectionery professionals why she had twinned strawberry with basil in her upmarket range of chocolates. In this case, her business nouse proved less important than her lack of ...
Published: Fri, 19 Jun 2009
Calm amid the storm: MBA courses have never had it so good
"We're like The Apprentice, only nicer," says Terry Kendrick, MBA director at Norwich Business School. During the course, students find themselves pitched in competition with each other in a way that resembles the popular television series: in teams, they create an event to make money for charity. "...
Published: Fri, 19 Jun 2009
The joy of studying without moving
What should a business do in a recession: make people redundant or invest money in training staff? According to training provider MOL, British businesses are choosing the latter option, while students are attracted by newer, more flexible ways of learning.
Published: Fri, 19 Jun 2009
Passed/Failed: An education in the life of Will Hutton, author and former newspaper editor
Will Hutton, 59, was the chief executive of the Work Foundation (formerly the Industrial Society) and is now its executive vice-chairman. He was the economics editor on Newsnight and recently presented two Dispatches programmes on the credit crunch. His third book, The Writing on the Wall, was publi...
Published: Fri, 19 Jun 2009
Passed/Failed: An education in the life of Lucy Hawking, science writer
Lucy Hawking, 38, is a journalist and novelist, and the daughter of theoretical physicist Professor Stephen Hawking. They are the co-authors of a children's book, 'George's Cosmic Treasure Hunt', out this month.
Published: Wed, 13 May 2009
Passed/Failed: An education in the life of Alternative Miss World organiser Andrew Logan
Andrew Logan, 63, has been the "host and hostess" of his Alternative Miss World competition since 1972. This year's event will be held on May 2 at London's Roundhouse. His exhibitions are showing at the Harley Gallery, Nottingham, and City Inn Hotel, London SW1. His book, An Artistic Adventure, was ...
Published: Wed, 29 Apr 2009
One strong teachers' union is a bad idea
The teacher union conferences were a lot more businesslike this year. No longer were they in cut-throat competition to fill our Easter newspapers with outrageous behaviour. Who can forget David Blunkett and his guide dog, Lucy, being ushered into a cupboard?
Published: Tue, 21 Apr 2009
Secret of success in St Ives
When Sue Smith took over the reins of a junior school in Cornwall six years ago, it was performing poorly and had behavioural problems. Now Ofsted is praising it to the skies. Francis Beckett finds out how it was turned round
Published: Tue, 21 Apr 2009
Take heart, graduate jobs are out there
There is a lot of misinformation circulating about the prospects for graduates seeking jobs this summer. The market will be tough, but the reduction in graduate jobs in 2009 is expected to be around 5 per cent - a far cry from the "30,000 jobs for 300,000 graduates" trumpeted by the BBC last weekend...
Published: Tue, 21 Apr 2009
Passed/Failed: An education in the life of Roger Highfield, New Scientist editor
Roger Highfield, 50, was science editor of the Daily Telegraph before moving to the world's best-selling scientific weekly. His books include The Science of Harry Potter and After Dolly. He is on the judging panel for NESTA FameLab 2009, The Times Cheltenham Science Festival and a Channel 4 competit...
Published: Wed, 15 Apr 2009
The Ten Commandments of Job Hunting Success
Recruitment Juice survey provides the inside track for jobseekers
24th February 2009, London UK: What should people do if the worst happens and they find themselves looking for a job in the current climate? Recruitment Juice has canvassed 100 recruitment experts to provide some useful advice to peo...
Published: Tue, 10 Mar 2009
The oldest skills are coming back again
Matthew Hodgkinson realised that he'd carved himself out a worthwhile niche the day he was asked to design his first gargoyle. Less than six months into his job as a stonemason on York Minster, he was handed the task of sculpting two agonised "grotesques" to replace weathered originals salvaged fro...
Published: Thu, 10 Jul 2008
Agency jobs fall at fastest rate in 5 years
The number of people being placed in permanent jobs by recruitment agencies fell at its fastest rate for more than five years in June - yet further evidence of the severity of the slowdown in the UK economy. According to the latest KPMG/ REC monthly employment survey, to be published on Wednesday,...
Published: Mon, 7 Jul 2008
Danny Wallace
Danny Wallace, 31, is an author and comedian, a television presenter for BBC and Sky, a radio presenter for Xfm and a columnist for Shortlist magazine. He was writing reviews for video game magazines at 13 and became a BBC producer at 22, and is known for writing a book about starting his own cult....
Published: Mon, 7 Jul 2008
A McJob on the side, please
UBIQUITOUS burger joint McDonald's has seen a spike in job applications from Irish people for the first time in nearly a decade. Saddled with the "McJob" image of dead-end and low-paid work, entry-level positions at McDonald's were shunned by young Irish people in recent years. Many of the positio...
Published: Sun, 6 Jul 2008
THE STARS IN THEIR LIVES
It was surprisingly straightforward to gatecrash the summer drinks party of the Association of Celebrity Personal Assistants. This secretive group had arranged to meet at The Farmer's Daughter, a fashionable but far-from-exclusive hotel on the outskirts of Beverly Hills. By arriving early and baggi...
Published: Wed, 2 Jul 2008
Ben Shephard
Ben Shephard, 33, is a television presenter who is best known for his work with GMTV. He can also be seen, alongside Denise van Outen, fronting ITV1's primetime series Who Dares Sings. A staunch West Ham supporter and gym fanatic, Shephard is a father of two and has been married to his wife Annie f...
Published: Mon, 30 Jun 2008
It's not always who you know that counts
"Where I'm from, we had never even heard of the word designer," recalls Wayne Hemingway. "If you said that you wanted to be a designer then you'd have got a clip round the ear and told to get a proper job." Hemingway understands better than most how difficult it can be to break into the closed circ...
Published: Mon, 30 Jun 2008
Ever been dumped? Why not make a career out of it
Pity poor British film-maker Chris Waitt. Over the years, girlfriends have dumped him by email, in answerphone and text messages, even killed him off as a character in a novel. Hence Waitt's debut feature A Complete History Of My Sexual Failures: a comic documentary in which he reviews his life of ...
Published: Sun, 29 Jun 2008
Six simple steps to guide you through redundancy
More than half a million people every year face the prospect of being made redundant, and for the vast majority this would mean being plunged into a financial crisis. According to research by Birmingham Midshires, a staggering 73 per cent of the population couldn't support their families if they su...
Published: Sat, 28 Jun 2008
Detectives of the music business
Free gigs, the hottest new bands as your best mates, and the chance to discover the next Arctic Monkeys: the life of a record-label scout appears terribly desirable. But is the reality as glam as the dream? Marc Jones, 25, is a scout for Columbia Records, one of the world's most famous labels, whe...
Published: Thu, 15 May 2008
How to crack the office dress code
The thing about getting dressed for work - the thing that makes it so very difficult - is that work is definitely not about clothes. On the contrary: in the world of earnest employment, such frivolities are almost frowned upon. At the very least, they should appear secondary to one's commitment to ...
Published: Thu, 1 May 2008
The gifts of sense and sensitivity
Most little girls dream of being Darcey Bussell or the next Mariah Carey. But while her friends were singing into makeshift microphones, the 12-year-old Vicki Fraser was dreaming of coffins and caskets. Now 27, Fraser works for the Highlands-based funeral service John Fraser & Son, founded in 1884...
Published: Thu, 1 May 2008
Madrid this year, China next...
Colette Walsh, 25, giggles when I ask whether she worked part-time during her Tefl course in Brighton. "I barely had time to eat!" she says. "That course was the hardest thing I've ever done. The learning curve was incredibly steep. It was much harder than A-levels or the degree I'm doing now." Te...
Published: Thu, 1 May 2008
