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Reading bank

Unit 3

1 Read the article and choose the sentence which best summarises it.

1 In this article, a middle-aged consultant explains in detail why he doesn’t completely agree with Lucy Kellaway’s views on job interview questions. 2 This text is about a Financial Times journalist who gives an employer advice about what questions to ask or not to ask job applicants. 3 In this article, Lucy Kellaway explains with some humour why she thinks it is not very useful to ask an applicant about the class of degree they obtained at university. 4 In answer to a reader’s letter, Lucy Kellaway provides a list of the reasons why she thinks the most stupid question to ask a job applicant is ‘What grade did you achieve for your degree?’

2 Choose the correct option (a, b or c) to complete the sentences.

1 Lucy Kellaway believes that you can be very successful in your career a even if you don’t work hard. b even if you didn’t get a top degree at university. c only if you got a top degree and work very hard all the time.

2 She believes that even if you know your colleagues very well, a you will not easily guess how well they did at university. b you should not ask them what grades they got at university. c they will not happily tell you what kind of students they were.

3 In her opinion, a it is a good idea to ask a job applicant to describe a situation in which they showed leadership. b talking about creativity is not interesting. c ‘What class of degree did you get?’ is not the most stupid interview question.

4 Lord Winston only hired applicants with upper second-class degrees because a he couldn’t fi nd anyone who did better than that. b he himself hadn’t spent enough time at university. c he thought they were probably more interesting and curious.

5 According to the author, people who get a fi rst-class degree a do not usually keep quiet about it. b are usually happier than other people. c do not ask other people how well they did.

3 Match 1–6 with a–f to make collocations from the article.

1 application 2 consulting 3 master’s 4 career 5 paid 6 job

a success b form c employment d applicant e fi rm f degree

4 Complete the sentences with collocations from Exercise 3.

1 Could you tell us how many undergraduates have to work in during term time in order to fi nance their studies? 2 A that has relevant work experience often has a better chance of being hired. 3 If you want to achieve , it is important to build relationships and also to keep an open mind and seize all opportunities that present themselves. 4 The first stage of our admission test requires you to fi ll in a long. 5 I’d like to know how I can prepare for a in management.

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Reading bank

Should an employer ask about a candidate’s class of degree?*

Reader’s question: I was thinking of changing jobs and I went online to apply to one of the big five consulting fi rms. I really disliked the fi rst question on the application form: ‘What class of degree did you get at university?’ I have more than ten years’ experience, two master’s degrees, several professional certifi cates and enough to show professionally. I just don’t feel it should matter whether you worked hard at university when you’re mid-career – or even in your first job. Do you agree? Consultant, male, 36

Lucy Kellaway’s answer: I do. The grades a student gets at university do not really show how good they will be at their job. That is partly because the grade could be the result of one of two very diff erent things. A high mark might mean the person is very bright; a low mark might mean the person is, well, not so bright. Equally, it could mean they spent their student years working very hard (or just being lazy). But even if an employer knew why a student got a high grade or a low one, it wouldn’t be particularly useful. This is because academic intelligence doesn’t necessarily lead to career success. I’m often surprised that some of the most intelligent people I know are not very good at their jobs, and some of them even seem rather stupid professionally. Even if the grade reflected hard work (or lack of it), that still doesn’t prove that the person would continue to work really hard when they are in paid employment. Most of us work much harder at some points in our lives than at others. I know lots of people who were lazy university students but have been exceptionally hard-working ever since. A couple of years ago, I did a test of my Financial Times colleagues: I tried to guess the class of degree they had received. I know most of those colleagues very well, but I was really bad at guessing who got what grade. Besides, there was not necessarily a link between the best degrees and the fi nest journalists. Yet, despite all this, I don’t think that the question is quite as idiotic as you evidently do. Or at least I don’t think it is as idiotic as the other questions that were probably on the form. I bet they asked you to describe situations in which you showed leadership. Or maybe they asked you about ‘creativity’, so you had to talk and talk using a lot of big words but not really saying anything meaningful. At least a grade is a fact, and employers can do with it whatever they choose. It’s possible that they didn’t want to hear that you got a top degree at all. A couple of years ago the scientist Lord Winston announced that he only hired job applicants with 2.1s (upper second-class degrees). Anyone who did better than that, he reasoned, hadn’t spent enough time at university becoming the sort of interesting, curious person he was looking for. As an aside, it is obvious from your question that you didn’t get a fi rst-class degree (neither did I). In my experience, the people who did are more than happy to tell employers – or anyone at all – forever and ever, just how well they did.

*In the UK, there are usually four classes of degree, depending on academic achievement and students’ grades throughout their study time. In order from highest to lowest: fi rst-class [1st]; upper second-class [2:1]; lower second-class [2:2]; third-class [3rd].

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