Letter: And where are all the jobs, then?

Letter: When I drive around Shrewsbury and Telford, I'm surprised at the large number of business parks both large and small. And yet there are so few jobs on offer across the two towns.

Why is this?

There are of course serious and surprising businesses operating around this region, but job opportunities are few.

Jobs are regularly advertised much further afield, like Walsall and occasionally Stafford for those who can afford the travelling costs.

And increasingly jobs on offer have anonymous locations, perhaps of dubious value locally and a very poor reflection on the employer?

Wolverhampton has one of the highest unemployment claimant counts in the country, so what chance does a job application from a Shrewsbury resident have?

Are many business units standing near-empty, or just used as storage warehouses or not expanding after the cutbacks?

Hardly the thriving business and trade communities you might assume exists.

Is it surprising that when a vacancy is advertised in Shrewsbury and Telford huge numbers of applications are received?

Given the apparent scarcity of job opportunities, where are the bulk of our school leavers finding jobs?

When did we last see Sir Richard Branson and others at the top of industry touring Shropshire schools to inspire careers awareness for ages 14 and upwards?

Why do we then enforce GCSE specialist choices at age 14 plus when we offer so little careers inspiration ?

So much is said about how to write a good CV and yet no one has sought to create a national standard CV format.

How many times does an individual CV have to be rewritten purely due to the whims of an employer who prefers a slightly different presentation of the same data? Even the mighty Shropshire Council seems to have no capacity for a central CV database for ready access for all departments.

Robert Leivers

Church Stretton