Interview with Emmanuelle Marchal

Docteurs&Co: How do people usually find jobs in Great Britain ?
According to the Labor Force Survey published in late 2004, job announcements are the leading recruitment channel. This is already a considerable difference with France where job offers come only in 5th position. The second source of recruitment in Great Britain is contacts with people working in a given company. Together, job announcements and contacts are responsible for 59% of hires. Spontaneous applications come in third: they give rise to 17 percent of hires, which is considerably less than in France where it's the first source of new employment. Next comes the not insignificant role of public agencies (Job Centres) and private agencies, then that of other intermediaries such as trade unions, career offices and «Jobclubs» which are statistically more marginal.

Docteurs&Co: Are there specific considerations for people who hold a PhD ?
On the whole, educational level has an important influence on hiring methods. It is mainly through job announcements that people with advanced degrees are recruited, women in particular: over 40 percent of them find their jobs through job ads. That doesn't mean that educational criteria are always formulated in these announcements: out of 400 job offers sampled on British Internet sites, a quarter of them asked for special training and only four offers explicitly addressed PhD holders. That means educational requirements remain implicit, contrary to what can be observed in France. The other recruitment channels play a lesser role than average among advanced degree holders, except for private agencies, which do most of the recruiting for this population.

Source : Christian Bessy, François Emard-Duvernay, Guillemette de Larquier, Emmanuelle Marchal (eds.), Des marchés du travail équitables ? Approche comparative France/Royaume-Uni, Peter Lang, 2001.