Brummie Accent - career hinderance or asset? I've seen a convincing argument that places the Brummie Accent Epicentre on The Flat, Lodge Rd, Hockley (I can be more accurate than that, I place it at H V Smith bakery where I visited freqently when for the first 9 years of my life I dined almost exclusively on egg custard tarts) so with my parents living only a few paces from there, in terms of my accent, my fate was written before I was born.
I've lived and worked in many counties, searching for that elusive pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and in the early years I didn't really pay much heed to accents and then some years ago, when I was living and working in Dorset, when I was between jobs and on a government sponsored bridging course I was stopped in my tracks when following a session of video role playing one of the menbers asked Do you think your accent has gone against you? I was floored, it had never occurred to me. So all those jobs I applied for and didn't get was there another dynamic in foce in addition to the obvious ones? I'll never know.
I suppose if you have only applied for jobs in and around Birmingham the accent thing has never arisen, I think there was one instance when it did go in my favour when I applied for a post at Motor Panels (Coventry, became Mayflower Vehicles System, now long gone with part of my pension) the assistant manager, a cute little brunnette, was from Harborne and we hit it off straightaway.
I live in Hampshire now and I need a new front door, the saleseman that came to quote was Czechoslovakian, I greeted him, asked him in and invited him to site down, first thing he said was Which part of Birmingham are you from?
Ah Well, that's life!
Peg.