#shareacoke with Oxfam

Play the Graduate field – you’re worth it.


You are a strong, confident, beautiful young (wo)man. You’ll soon have extra letters after your name. You’re social secretary of Underwater Tiddlywinks Soc and spent a valuable summer doing menial tasks at a company which is vaguely related to your career path. You once got a 17.5 in an essay about Canadian foreign policy… and you’re in so much debt that the Greeks have offered to write off your humus bills.

All this, however, means nothing when you’re faced with a Graduate scheme numeracy test and you can’t remember how to do long multiplication, or when a PWC interviewer fails to ask you about the Montreal Protocol. In a year or two’s time you’ll be weeping into your Fur Real Friends duvet cover, the happy memories of your childhood bedroom replaced with rejection letters and regret.

Well actually – no. You are highly employable. All that debt paid for a fairly decent education at a well respected University. And even though you still sleep with a bear called Fred and an elephant called Elephant, you’re a fairly well rounded human being capable of minimally acceptable social interaction. The economy is growing, businesses are hiring. You are in demand.

We don’t need to objectify ourselves for the first graduate employer who shows an interest. It’s a seller’s market, play the field. Why not enquire into the company’s ethical practices? That’s what Oxfam did at one recent Careers fair in our very own Town Hall.

Cut a long story short: Coca Cola and a few other companies (PepsiCo, Associated British Foods) buy a lot of sugar. A lot of sugar is grown on land in the developing world. In the past 10 years, much new land in the global south has been acquired by big companies trying to meet the booming global sugar demand, but the problem is that this “new land” is actually old land for all the people who depend on it for subsistence. The lack of official legal ownership rights means that big companies can “buy” this land and evict the local community without consent or compensation. This is a Land Grab and Oxfam wants companies like Coke to make their supply lines transparent so that when we #shareacoke, we don’t kick a family off the land upon which their minimal subsistence depends.

Makes sense right?

That’s why, at our Fair (and other Graduate Careers Fairs across the country), Oxfam supporters confronted the folk from Coke and challenged them to help stop Land Grabs. They listened and took the issue seriously: the ethical practices of the company are important to Coke’s potential graduate employees, thus quality of their human resources and ultimately, their profit margins. And that’s how we can make issues like Land Grabs matter to Coke.

As a highly employable, well educated future graduate, you are in a position of power. These companies want you and will listen to what you say. Why not use this power to influence these employers for the better? Next time you feel intimidated by a self-important interviewer or feel the need to ass-kiss some graduate careers rep, ask them about their company’s position on Land Grabs, or other ethical issues which affect larger corporations.

Click here to find out more about Land Grabs or Oxfam’s Behind the Brands Campaign visit.

image courtesy of wikimedia commons and webrecruit.com