In Your Opinion
Page 82
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lobs mystery
VHERE DO all the good transport jobs go—or perhaps not so iuch where but HOW do they go? My husband, a transport and istribution manager with many years' experience over a wide ange of vehicles, decided to change his job while he was still the right side" of 45. For weeks we have carefully scrutinized the ational and trade Press—to find transport manager vacancies virtally non-existent.
When one thinks of the thousands of firms undoubtedly emloying such men it makes one wonder—do they never retire, or if ley do is some bright driver, or office boy who "knows a bit about ars", trained to carry on the good work? Do they never become tildly ambitious and seek pastures new, or have they found, as we aye, that there are no new pastures to seek? Did the post-war ziod perhaps produce a glut of transport-minded men who are nv in the 45-plus age group and condemned (or maybe even ippy) to remain where they are until retirement? Certainly at the nious transport conferences I have attended with my husband e delegates have been mainly older men.
Where do firms advertise if not in the national and trade Press? o the smaller firms confine themselves to the local papers and if do they get the best man for the job? Admittedly one sees a w public transport vacancies but these usually require relevant :perience. Is there an "old boys' network" where vacancies cirdate of which we know nothing?
The very few advertisers who make use of the trade Press are variably overwhelmed with the response—my husband was tosen from a "short list" of 40 for his present job and there were any more applicants. Does this mean that transport management an overcrowded profession?
My husband is intelligent, experienced and hardworking (he's autiful too!) and prepared to go anywhere for a suitable posiin. He is completely bound up in transport and has been all his Acing life. Yet his chances of getting even a letter of acknowigment, let alone an interview, for any of the very few jobs advered is extremely remote, so great invariably is the competition. iere must obviously be many others in the same position.
He has only a year to go before the "rot" sets in—we all know at in this pension-scheme-bound life any attempt to get a job er the age of 45 may as well not be made. So depressed is he at stagnation of the situation that I can see us washing eggs on a icken farm or weighing up dolly mixtures in a sweetshop for the at 20 years if something doesn't happen soon. So can you give the expert's view, please: Where do all the good jobs go—and w does one get to hear of them?
TRANSPORT MAN'S WIFE, Buckinghamshire.