Bright, brainy, keen – and unemployed

Louise Carpenter talks to the gilded graduates who just can’t find work
Orlando Barley, whose placard-holding stunt won him job offers
Orlando Barley, whose placard-holding stunt won him job offers
GREG MOSS

“I am an exceptionally friendly, enthusiastic and focused young woman with the ability to learn new skills with ease and rapidity, driven by a perfectionism that is reflected in all areas of my life.”

What would you think if you read this on a CV? Would you sigh wearily and think: “Yeah, yeah, they all say that?” (If The Apprentice has done nothing else, it has inoculated us against the self-puff needed to get a job.) Would it make any difference to know that the young woman had just graduated from Cambridge University with a 2:1 in modern languages? And then what if we threw into the mix that, as one of five children, she had got herself there from a ropey old Worcestershire comp