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Courtesy of the Spectator Coffee House highlighting an article by Andrew Neill in The Sunday Mail:-
In my recent BBC2 documentary, Posh & Posher, I explained how networking and contacts played a crucial role in giving those with the right connections an early leg up in their careers.
Internships and work experience are proving increasingly crucial to opening doors and opportunities in later life. Many have expressed the view that the best intern and work experience opportunities in fields like politics, finance and the media are going disproportionately to those who are already privileged and well-connected. From what I’ve seen myself in recent years I suspect that to be true.
The Mail on Sunday gives a classic example (and a potentially embarrassing one for the Tories) of how it can work. At the Conservative Black & White Party (they don’t call it a ball anymore) last week they had an auction to raise party funds. Fair enough. All parties do that.
But a number of the lots for auction included internships and work experience at some of the country’s top financial institutions. The well-heeled Tory faithful bid around £3,000 each for their offspring to spend a couple of weeks at various prestigious hedge funds, City PR companies, trading houses and finance houses.
The experience and contacts made there will no doubt be invaluable to the youngsters lucky enough to have parents who won the bidding. But note how those from already privileged backgrounds — attending the party cost a minimum of £400 per head — are able to skew matters to their further advantage, not just in terms of the schools they can afford or the top universities they can get into but in something so basic as work experience.
In today’s incredibly competitive labour markets work experience matters more than ever when it comes to securing that first rung on the ladder. Companies might like to think how they make their internships open to as wide a selection of the talented from all backgrounds as they can. I suggest that internships granted on the basis of parents who can afford £400 a head for dinner then £3,000 per internship cannot be regarded as entirely fair or meritocratic.
This blog was originally published at Andrew Neil’s BBC Daily Politics blog.I don’t see any problem with the behaviour portrayed by this article. My only issue is with the title; it should be “How to get lots of money, instead of having a life”.
The poor b…..ds who get their mummy or daddy to buy some influence for them will probably end up as merchant bankers or hedgefund managers. They will have to spend all their time with others of their ilk. They will see their £5m home a few times a week only to sleep in one of the spare rooms, since they got home from New York at the knackering hour of 3:00 AM. They will have children they will hardly ever see. They will have wives who get all the fun of spending their money, apart from the single choice of top-notch car. They will have no friends, only colleagues or business acquaintances who will all eventually, at some time, stab them in the back. They will only ever see a football or rugby match from the confines of a private box, where they will not be allowed to cheer, swear, or shout. They will never again be able to hold an interesting conversation. The fact that their mummy or daddy still has to help them at their age marks them out as second best. They will always be aware of their inadequacies, and although we all have those, this bunch of people will be mortified by the fact. In fact, by the laws of Nature, most of these people will be poor at what they do, because the pathway has been cleared for them, and because left to their own devices they would rather be doing something else. They have had almost no choice in the matter of what sort of life they will lead. They have never had to strive enough to be tough enough.
Are you starting to feel sorry for them now?
Nepotism is rife in every social class – people help out and recommend their own for jobs, therefore networking and who you know will always be important.
They can put as many measures in place as they like to prevent ‘who you know’ being the deciding factor in getting work/intership, but let’s face it, there is no way to prevent it totally.
Take hope in that there are people who have managed to pull themselves up by the boot straps and get on in life without mummy and daddy having the money and right connections to give them that leg up.
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