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:

You can say that someone is:

You can also say that someone is:

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?