Discussion Focus

1 Work in small groups and discuss these questions with your

partners:

1) What do you do/plan to do for a living? 2) What do the other members of your family do for a living? 3) Out of all the people you know, who has the job you’d most like to have? Why? 4) If you could choose any job in the world to do, what would it be? Why?

2 What do you like and dislike most about doing a job? When

speaking, try to use the following conversational formulas:

I enjoy ............................. I like ................................ I don’t mind ................... I hate / I can’t stand ......

getting up early working indoors working outdoors having a routine working long hours working overtime working with your hands working on my own sitting all day at the desk, etc.

3 What are the most important things for you in your work?

Arrange these aspects in order of importance and add some more things which you think are important:

job satisfaction earning plenty of money

working for yourself earning enough money

meeting people security

having pleasant colleagues being part of a large company

promotion success

a How important are the following to you in giving you job

satisfaction? Sort out the phrases below under the four

headings.

Very important important not important not relevant

being popular with colleagues / being praised by your superiors /

being part of a team / being promoted / being successful /

exercising power / giving advice / security / helping others /

increased responsibility / influencing people / making money /

learning new things / personal freedom / respect of colleagues /

seeing the results of setting up a new system / working conditions /

starting a project / being asked for advice / status / solving problems / completing a project

Which of the features exist in your present job (or the job you’re

planning to do one day)?

b How important are the following characteristics in helping

someone to be successful in their career?

Very important important not important not relevant

a practical mind / ability to delegate / ability to express yourself /

ability to think on your own / ability to work fast / good education /

ability to write well / being good at giving orders / concentration /

being good at flattery / accepting responsibility / ambition /

being good with figures / being good with people / experience /

good ‘connections’ / popularity with colleagues / ruthlessness /

physical and mental toughness / good social background / patience /

willingness to take risks

Which of these characteristics do you have yourself?

4 Education and training are important stages in preparing

someone for a particular job.

a Read the conversation below and say which ideas you share

and which you don’t. Pay attention to the phrases in bold.

Margareta: The trouble with graduates, people who’ve just left university, is that their paper qualifications are good, but they have no work experience. They just don’t know how business works.

Nils: I disagree. Education should teach people how to think, not prepare them for a particular job. One of last year’s recruits had graduated from Oxford in philosophy and she’s doing very well!

Margareta: Philosophy’s an interesting subject, but for our company, it’s more useful if you train as a scientist and qualify as a biologist or chemist - training for a specific job is better.

Nils: Yes, but we don’t just need scientists. We also need good managers, which we can achieve through in-house training courses within the company. You know we have put a lot of money into management development and management training because they are very important. You need to have some management experience for that. It’s not the sort of thing you can learn when you’re 20!

NB: In AmE, you also say that someone graduates from high school (the school that people usually leave when they are 18).

b A skill is the ability to do something well, especially because

you have learned how to do it and practised it.

Jobs, and the people who do them, can be described as:

highly skilled (e.g. car designer) semi-skilled (e.g. taxi driver)

skilled (e.g. car production manager) unskilled (e.g. car cleaner)

You can say that someone is:

skilled at or skilled in..	+ noun customer care electronics computer software
	+ ~ing communicating using PCs working with large groups

You can also say that someone is:

good with...

computers figures people

c Are these jobs generally considered to be

a) highly skilled, b) skilled, c) semi-skilled, or d) unskilled?

1) teacher 7) office cleaner

2) brain surgeon 8) labourer

3) car worker on a production line 9) bus driver

4) airline pilot 10) office manager

5) stuntman 11) ticket collector

6) dressmaker 12) scriptwriter

5 Have you ever wanted to try someone else’s job?

The writer, Danny Danziger, recently spent a week working in each of four different jobs to see what they were like. Below are short extracts from the four articles he wrote about his experiences.

a Read the four extracts and try to guess what job he is describing

in each one. Discuss your ideas with another student.

1) Alan never seemed to get bored by the same old questions. But he did confide to me, ‘No one should do this job more than three years, because after a while you look at the people, and they’re not people, they’re the broken tap in room 23 or the lost wallet in room 7 or the couple who want to fly home because they’re not having fun.’

2) The third gallery was the Time Measurement exhibit. Water clocks, sundials, sand glasses, watches and chronometers. I saw my life ticking by, second by micro-second.

Working in a more popular gallery you might be approached more frequently, but the range of questions is unvarying. People only want to know the same thing. ‘Where’s the nearest toilet/lift/cup of tea?’

3) During the week I went to bed early so I would not appear too awful in the morning light, and each day started with an agony of indecision as I wondered what to wear. I never lost my embarrassment at meeting people whose prime interest was in my physical appearance.

4) The pace starts off leisurely enough. With my crisp white apron and valet’s jacket I would feel cool and confident. It’s quiet enough at 12.15 to notice the famous faces who are lunching. By one o’clock, the place is jumping. As fast as tables are vacated new faces are slipping in. No time to enjoy the thrill of a film star lighting a big cigar ... the sous-chef is screaming that the food for table 166 is getting cold.

b These are the four places where he was working. Can you

match the place with the extract, and add the name of the job?

Place Extract Job

Photographic studio ............. .....

Museum ............. .....

Restaurant ............. .....

Holiday resort .............. .....

c Choose from the four extracts (1-4) to answer these questions.

1) In which job did Danny have to wear special clothes?

2) In which job did he have to work the fastest?

3) Which job made him feel most anxious?

4) Which jobs involved dealing with people’s problems?

5) Which job did the writer seem to find most boring?

6) In which job did Danny find the customers especially

interesting?

7) Which job did he discuss with an experienced worker?

6 Recruitment and selection

a Read the text below and explain the meaning of the words and

phrases in bold.

The process of finding people for particular jobs is recruitment or, especially in American English, hiring. Someone who has been recruited is a recruit or, in American English, a hire. The company employs or hires them; they join the company. A company may recruit employees directly or use outside recruiters, recruitment agencies or employment agencies. Outside specialists called headhunters may be called on to headhunt people for very important jobs, persuading them to leave the organizations they already work for. This process is called headhunting.

b Read the following texts and find the equivalents for the

Russian phrases: 1) заявление о приеме на работу,

2) объявления о рабочих вакансиях, 3) биографические

данные, 4) сопроводительное письмо.

Fred is a van driver, but he was fed up with long trips. He looked in the situations vacant pages of his local newspaper, where a local supermarket was advertising for van drivers for a new delivery service. He applied for the job by completing an application form and sending it in.

Harry is a building engineer. He saw a job in the appointments pages of one of the national papers. He made an application, sending in his CV (curriculum vitae - the ‘story’ of his working life) and a covering letter explaining why he wanted the job and why he was the right person for it.

NB: Situation, post and position are formal words often

used in job advertisements and applications.

BrE: CV; AmE: résumé or resume;

BrE: covering letter; AmE: cover letter

c Read the text about the selection procedures and speak on

the stages of the process. Pay attention to the words in bold.

Dagmar Schmidt is the head of recruitment at a German telecommunications company. She talks about the selection process, the methods that the company uses to recruit people:

‘We advertise in national newspapers. We look at the backgrounds of applicants: their experience of different jobs and their educational qualifications. We don’t ask for handwritten letters of application as people usually apply by e-mail; handwriting analysis belongs to the 19th century.

We invite the most interesting candidates to a group discussion. Then we have individual interviews with each candidate. We also ask the candidates to do written psychometric tests to assess their intelligence and personality.

After this, we shortlist three or four candidates. We check their references by writing to their referees: previous employers or teachers that candidates have named in their applications. If the references are OK, we ask the candidates to come back for more interviews. Finally, we offer the job to someone, and if they turn it down we have to think again. If they accept it, we hire them. We only appoint someone if we find the right person.’

d Replace the underlined phrases with correct forms of

words and expressions from a, b, and c.

Fred had already (1) refused two job offers when he went for (2) a discussion to see if he was suitable for the job. They looked at his driving licence and contacted (3) previous employers Fred had mentioned in his application. A few days later, the supermarket (4) asked him if he would like the job and Fred (5) said yes.

Harry didn’t hear anything for six weeks, so he phoned the company. They told him that they had received a lot of (6) requests for the job. After looking at the (7) life stories of the (8) people asking for the job and looking at (9) what exams they had passed during their education, the company (10) had chosen six people to interview, done tests on their personality and intelligence and they had then given someone the job.

7 Look at this advertisement and say what attractions and

drawbacks of this job might be?