English readings — Careers
300 original readings written by the FitForm team, graded B1 → C2 and sorted by topic. Reading is free and needs no account; exercises, vocabulary review and essay marking need a FitForm login.
A job that did not exist
Ask an adult what they wanted to be at fourteen and the answer is usually a job that still exists: doctor,…
The first job interview
Most advice about interviews is about what to say. The more useful advice is about what to prepare before you…
The work that did not exist
A reasonable way to think about future work is to look backwards. The jobs held by people now in their…
The number that decided a career
Ask adults how they chose their work and a surprising number describe something small: a teacher who said one…
The backlog nobody owned
A school office had a backlog of three hundred unanswered emails. Everybody knew about it. Nobody was…
The candid report
Most organisational reports are written to be survivable rather than true. This is not because the authors…
The second opinion
In several professions, an expensive decision requires a second person to look independently before it is…
The committee of one
A common piece of workplace folklore says that decisions should be made by groups because groups are wiser…
The interview with no questions
A manager hiring for a practical job stopped asking questions. Instead, candidates spent ninety minutes doing…
The thing that did not change
Lists of the skills employers want have been published for forty years. The technologies on them change…
The job description that was rewritten
An organisation rewrote one job advertisement and the number of applications from women tripled. The job did…
The promotion that removed the skill
An organisation promoted its three best engineers to management. Within a year, two had asked to go back and…
The reference that said nothing
A reference letter that says a candidate was punctual, pleasant and reliable is usually a refusal to…
The meeting that became an email
A team replaced its weekly status meeting with a written update and gained four hours a week. Six months…