Great soundbite, but hoodies need to fix up before you can hire them

By Lindsay Johns for the Daily Mail

Published: 12:22 GMT, 19 April 2012 | Updated: 16:04 GMT, 19 April 2012

Employment Minister Chris Grayling’s plea yesterday in a speech to the Policy Exchange think tank for British companies to “hire a hoodie” is laudable but misguided.

The problem being, of course - as anyone who has worked with the hoodie brigade knows only too well - that many hoodies have rendered themselves quite frankly unemployable by any right-minded, intelligent mainstream employer because of their lack of grammatically correct spoken English, inappropriate choice of apparel, surly demeanour and faux-macho, “street tough” attitude.

As a volunteer mentor to young people in South London over the last decade, I have been well positioned to observe the emergence of the hoodie demographic and its subsequent rise to prominence and infamy.

www.inulpoker.com | Agen Poker Terpercaya | Poker dan Domino Online Indonesia Terpercaya | Poker dan Domino Terbaik |

Menacing or pitiable? Many hoodies have a very limited grasp of the normal social etiquette which would help them progress through life

For the most part grossly inarticulate, speaking a street patois full of vacuous words like “innit” and tedious double negatives, it is often hard to understand what they are actually saying (let alone the language they are saying it in, which is even more depressing when the language turns out to be English).

And don’t even get me started on their abuse of “like” and “basically”! It’s as if these hoodies have Tourette’s when it comes to the frequency with which they pepper their discourse with these inane filler words which make them sound stupid, when that is often not the case at all.

What these "Yu get mi, bluds" fail to realise is that by actively choosing to speak in such a way, they sound utterly moronic, and as if they have had a frontal lobotomy. Why would anyone wish to employ somebody who speaks like that? I wouldn’t, that’s for sure.

With their “game face” firmly fixed on like a mask – the “screwface” which they choose to adopt, as they perceive it, in order to survive life “on the streets” (acting as if the streets of first-world London are akin to real war zones like Beirut or Mogadishu) - they do not inspire or engender positivity, but only exude menace and negativity. It is a harsh truth that people are more disposed to be friendly to someone who is smiling, not scowling at them.

With their pimp roll walks, bopping along the high street or into the job interview as if they have dislocated their pelvis and chronically need to pee, they look ridiculous. How can you contemplate giving a job to someone if they can’t even walk properly? Whatever happened to standing tall, with your shoulders back, looking the world in the face and walking upright with pride?

With their baggy jeans hanging low down their backsides, thus showing the world (which does not want to see) the colour of their boxer shorts, they look risible, an object of pity rather than scorn.

With their Stevie Wonder-esque tilts of the head (Stevie had an excuse: he was blind; they are not), persistent lack of eye contact and chronic inability to look you in the face when talking to you (which hints at deep insecurity, a lack of confidence and which also implies boredom, disrespect or dishonesty), let alone their inability to shake hands properly (fist bumps don’t work so well in job interviews, I think you’ll find), many hoodies have a very limited grasp of normal social etiquette and the dictates of social interaction which will help them progress through life.

With their blithely recalcitrant, “the world owes me a living” attitude and lack of a hard work ethos, they have imbibed and been corroded by the materialistic hedonism of short-term bling culture and its penchant for easy money and fast living, heedless of the consequences. Often, they they are neither industrious nor motivated.

All told, these “surly young men” are, in the words of the conscious rapper Jeru The Damaga, merely “playing themselves” if they think their outlook and accoutrements are the keys to success in mainstream society. Far from it! Such accessories of the bling culture lead only to a life of disenfranchisement, marginalization and ultimately the dole queue - or worse still, the morgue.

Sound advice: British rap maestro Dizzee Rascal, shown here at the Brit Awards, advised young men to 'fix up, look sharp!'

Before any sane, rational employer gives a hoodie a job, the hoodies in question urgently need, in the words of Dizzee Rascal (the only British rap maestro I know to possess such a wonderfully Dickensian soubriquet) to “fix up, look sharp!”

It is of course possible, as Minister Grayling correctly suggests, for “surly young men to be turned into excited and motivated employees”, but companies should not be made to suffer for it, nor have to be the laboratory where these Ovidian metamorphoses take place. The schools which have spectacularly failed these young people, not to mention the homes, where positive values, attitudes and mindsets should be taught and inculcated, are where these hoodies should be having their finishing school classes in social decorum, deportment and elocution, not on the job on someone else’s time, or in the workplace at someone else's expense.

Back in 2006, David Cameron beseeched us to “hug a hoodie.” Given that the overwhelming majority of teenage hoodies are rampantly homophobic, in thrall to a mindless, uber-macho culture based in part on pernicious social mores gleaned from the tenets of gangster rap music, those seeking out of love and compassion to reach out to disaffected yoof and hug the aforementioned hoodie would probably have been met with a punch in the face and vociferous shouts of “Bun up de batty man!” in recompense for their efforts. But hey, it’s the thought that counts.

Now “hire a hoodie” is perhaps poised to become the feel-good, political soundbite de nos jours. Were I an employer, I would unashamedly wish to hire people who were industrious, enthusiastic, passionate, well groomed, possessed an ability to communicate well and had highly-developed social skills to interact with clients and their fellow workers, regardless of their provenance, colour, creed or background. Logical business acumen dictates that the person best suited to the job at hand (and thus the person most able to help my business succeed) will be given it.

Sadly, schools and parents are failing too many of our young people. We don’t bother to correct them when they make grammatical mistakes and walk, talk or dress in ways which make them look and sound ridiculous in the wider world, outside the narrow, limiting and debilitating confines of MTV Base rap music videos or illegal street commerce.

'Hire a hoodie': Employment Minister Chris Grayling (left) called on firms to hire local youths instead of Eastern Europeans. His comments echoed David Cameron's 2007 'hug a hoodie' initiative - but for them to have any impact, the hoodies need to start taking themselves seriously.

For the hoodie demographic to be taken seriously in the world of employment, they need to start by taking themselves seriously. They need to be made to see by adults who care enough to invest their time in young people why their adolescent posturing makes them come across badly and thus renders them practically unemployable.

By learning how to walk, talk and dress correctly, hoodies will be actively helping their employability and also will be consciously aiding employers to want to give them a job, as they will be far more inclined to take them seriously sans swagger, sans attitude and sans hoodie.

Minister Grayling clearly means well by wishing to provide jobs for our young people. But before such “hire a hoodie” initiatives can be successfully implemented, hoodies themselves need to fix up. Otherwise British companies will be severely handicapped by an extra burden of dead weight – something we can little afford in these increasingly cut-throat, economically straightened times.

var rcShoutCache = '{}'; window._taboola = window._taboola || []; _taboola.push({flush:true});

www.inulpoker.com | Agen Poker Terpercaya | Poker dan Domino Online Indonesia Terpercaya | Poker dan Domino Terbaik |