Think you have to move to London to get hired? So do thousands and thousands of other people. According to new research, London has the most graduates in employment than anywhere else, with 53 per cent of the workforce holding a degree – but that doesn’t mean you have to be in the capital. What they left out is the happiness rating of those 800,000 graduates who flocked to London just this year – because happiness is impossible to quantify.
With the most expensive rent in the UK by a mile, the fierce job competition and gay abandon with which employers will underpay those who are young and hungry (both metaphorically and literally), you can bet that quite a few of those grads moving to London are going to spend a fair few years looking tired and a bit shellshocked.
So why bother, when there are so many other places in the UK?
‘Moving to London hasn’t crossed my mind – the opportunity to go is always there, but it’s a case of getting your foot in the door. You have to go where the job is,’ says Lauren, 21, who bagged a place on an IT sales grad scheme at Hewlett Packard in Glasgow. ‘With any of the corporate companies, the competition is fierce wherever you are, and a lot of the companies I wanted to work with had offices outside of London. Dell and Microsoft aren’t in London, either. It just depends which industry you want to go into.’
Ellie is 22 and moved to Liverpool to go to uni, before staying to train in marketing. ‘For me personally, there are so many jobs here – the marketing and advertising and creative industries are strong in Liverpool, as there’s a place called the Baltic Triangle full of up-and-coming little creative busineses,’ she told us. ‘I think if more people didn’t presume London is the only place for all jobs, it wouldn’t be true, but the fact everyone thinks it is, actually makes everyone keep their businesses there rather than looking elsewhere.’
It certainly wasn’t the only option for Jessica, a journalist who studied at Bournemouth. ‘After I qualified, it was the London roles that I steered clear of as journalism doesn’t pay well (especially as a trainee in newspapers) and London isn’t cheap by any standards,’ she says. ‘Birmingham turned out to be a happy medium. There’s a lot to be said for mastering your trade outside of London.’
It’d be short sighted to ignore the other cities in the UK – the BBC is in Manchester, Liverpool is full of creative start-ups, Bristol is strong for journalism. You just need to broaden your view, and not get caught up in people telling you how important it is to be in the capital. ‘I think it’s really important to research other cities,’ says Ellie. ‘Do research and visit them if you can.’
Evan, who is a manager at NHS Highland and lives in the, y’know, Highlands (Inverness, specifically) makes the good point that there are more jobs in the rest of the UK than there are in London: ‘Anything you can do in London, jobwise, you can do elsewhere and have a little more independence. I’ve just set up a social enterprise with friends up here, which I couldn’t do in London because everyone’s already done it,’ he says.
Which Jessica agrees with: ‘My second job brought me to the capital when I moved into fashion journalism around five years ago, but I’ve watched my colleagues in Birmingham climb the career ladder a lot quicker since then. They landed editor roles and started their own media companies while I was organising fashion cupboards and debating tea rounds.’
If the end goal is a job in the capital, then you can build yourself up elsewhere before moving to London with a CV that’s essentially on fire it’s so goddamn hot. Without the whole having-to-go-without-food-to-pay-for-your-rent-during-your-unpaid-internship thing that a lot of London grads have to cope with.
Obviously, there are huge plus sides to living in London, but if you’re a bit reticent, then do consider the plus sides of NOT doing south of the Watford Gap. ‘We live in the West End, which is amazing, in a really great flat. It’s massive!’ says Lauren, currently in Glasgow. ‘We pay £500 a month each, there are three massive bedrooms, a huge lounge, big kitchen and I know wouldn’t get this flat if we were in London. Or, it’d be too expensive for us to afford.’
On top of the expense thing, you also won’t have to spend your commute crying. ‘There’s loads going on in Liverpool. It’s a lot like London is some aspects, but it’s not as vast – I can walk everywhere I need to get to. I don’t have to rely on public transport,' Ellie says - and she's got a point. Public transport is, we’d like to point out, upsettingly expensive in the capital.
Basically, there’s a strong case for chilling out when you graduate, and really thinking if London is indeed the only option for you. Maybe all your mates are there, maybe you’ve done your research and you can’t resist the pull of the bright lights and pollution – in which case, go ahead! Otherwise, don’t leap to the conclusion that it’s the only way to get hired. There are countless examples from people across the UK that would strongly disagree.
In Lauren’s words: ‘While it depends where the offices are, and what you want to do, you’ve got to consider the price of living there. London’s fantastic, but it’s not like you have to be there to have a good job.’
Well said.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.