Maria Pedrosa, union secretary, SSP union, health sector

When she finished her studies, Maria didn't have a job. With her degree in hand, she registered for unemployment and looked for a job in migration or development, targeting associations and NGOs. She suggested to her ORP advisor that she should be registered for a subsidised temporary job (an integration measure that no longer exists). She soon received offers from associations and NGOs interested in her profile and was taken on by Entraide Protestante Suisse (EPER). HEKS is active in two areas: international development and integration. Maria has been recruited to work specifically with the legal aid service for asylum seekers, but is also involved in other projects relating to migration in Switzerland. Her role is to put asylum seekers in contact with lawyers. She is also involved in two HEKS projects: firstly, she is responsible for evaluating an initiative to prevent sexually transmitted diseases among migrant women (these are group courses given by a psychologist and a social worker). Then she compiled statistics for the Chèques-emploi administrative service (a service aimed at people working in the domestic economy and designed to give them easier access to social security cover). She finds that her studies in political science help her enormously with these two activities because, as with her dissertation work, she has to define objectives, determine the criteria to be evaluated and the methods of evaluation, compile statistics, write reports, and so on. Her work with HEKS has given Maria the opportunity to meet people whose varied professional experiences have given her ideas for the next stage of her own career: through Chèques-emploi, she met a lawyer who had worked in the trade unions. Maria went on to find out more about trade unions in Switzerland. She replaced her trainee supervisor, who had fallen ill, for a further two months. In the meantime, her legal colleague heard that a vacancy was opening up at the Syndicat des services publics (SSP) and she told Maria about it.

Union secretaries are hired only if they are unanimously elected by the committee. The committee is made up of activists and workers from the sectors covered by the union, all of whom are likely to ask the candidate questions. This type of job interview therefore requires a great deal of preparation. During the interview, Maria can point out all the odd jobs she had while studying, the fact that she worked in a shop for four years, and that she had contacts with workers in a variety of sectors. The committee noted that she had been able to juggle different activities during her studies, and that she was therefore able to demonstrate organisational skills, flexibility and resistance to stress, all of which are assets for working for a trade union. Finally, during the job interview, she asked a lot of questions, showing that she had researched the union's activities and was genuinely interested in them, an attitude that was much appreciated by the committee members.

Maria has been working as a union secretary for the SSP since November 2009. She works in the health and children's sectors. She has had to familiarise herself with labour legislation, the Code of Obligations, private and public law, and so on. Her activities involve both individual and collective defence. While individual defence requires very good assessment skills, collective defence requires collective organisation and negotiation skills. As a trade union secretary, Maria is also very exposed to the public, as she has to write press releases and take part in press conferences, as well as organising mobilisation actions.

Maria realised that employers don't always know what a university education in the humanities is all about. So you have to be prepared to talk about the content of your studies, to explain what you know how to do, how the job and your training are related, and what you can bring to the job. Although she had to work to earn a living as a student, Maria also prioritised voluntary activities during her studies. She kept in touch with the people she had met and was able to benefit from their advice and their own networks at important moments in her career.