The view from the other side

Continuing this theme of recruitment consultant hatred here is a view from an acquaintance from the other side:

It was the worst job I have ever had in my life.

Not only do you have to be professionally two-faced, lie on a daily basis to both clients and candidates but you also have to be completely cold-blooded and uncaring.
I worked in quite a small market placing people into Social Housing positions. The jobs weren't particularly well paid in the first place, and then you had to take a cut of it - so a £10 an hour placement quickly became a £6 an hour job for the candidate.

I went home thoroughly demotivated every day. The culture is competative and the majority of recruitment consultants only cared about how big a margin they could negotiate and how much money they earned. Very, very few actually had anything interesting about them.

Apprentices to be paid £2.5/h

From here

So apprentices are to be paid £2.5/h erm apprentices are already paid £95 a week so what is the difference then?

When NMW isn't cheap enough

Mc'ds want you for free work

Precis work for Mc'ds for 10 days and get a GCSE B grade. Which seems a bit iffy to me, but this is early days.

On the flip side Mc'ds might not be exactly a great employer but at least you get paid exactly for the hours that you put in.

As said md 1990s worked there once, I work 10 hours I get paid for 10 hours it was something like £22 for that. Although staff turn over quickly and the morale is low they aren't THAT bad as employers I could never do it again though.

While in the modern day work place, like my old accounting firm I work 80+ hours get paid for 34.5 hours divide that hourly and I was being paid about £3-4 an hour gross before tax. Just goes to show even though Mc'ds may not be a great employer there are much worse ones out there.

Of course we can all hope that Karma sorts this out, in that if you kick people on the way up they may end up kicking you on the way down, question is why all the kicking in the first place?

How wide spread is this?

A quick search revealed lots of these scams:

WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: NPS/40698


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE


NOTTINGHAM, NOTTINGHAMSHIRE


06/08/2009
............

WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: BTR/17661


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE OTE £30,000 PER ANNUM


BURTON-ON-TRENT, STAFFORDSHIRE


18/01/2010
............................

WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: CRY/67747


MEETS NAT MIN WAGE OTE £30,000 PER ANNUM

WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: ROI/72250


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE OTE £30,000 PER ANNUM


ROTHERHAM, SOUTH YORKSHIRE


18/01/2010
..........................

WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: CHL/65855


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE OTE £30,000 PER ANNUM


CHESTERFIELD, DERBYSHIRE


18/01/2010
...........................................

WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: BAL/67828


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE OTE £30,000 PER ANNUM


BARNSLEY, SOUTH YORKSHIRE


18/01/2010
CROYDON, SURREY


25/01/2010
...................................

WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: CVD/71725


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE


SHEFFIELD, SOUTH YORKSHIRE


06/08/2009
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: ROI/72250


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE OTE £30,000 PER ANNUM


ROTHERHAM, SOUTH YORKSHIRE


18/01/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: CHL/65855


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE OTE £30,000 PER ANNUM


CHESTERFIELD, DERBYSHIRE


18/01/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: BAL/67828


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE OTE £30,000 PER ANNUM


BARNSLEY, SOUTH YORKSHIRE


18/01/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: DCG/30621


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE OTE £30,000 PER ANNUM


DONCASTER, SOUTH YORKSHIRE.


18/01/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: MHH/15262


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE OTE £30,000 PER ANNUM


MANSFIELD, NOTTINGHAMSHIRE


18/01/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: RET/24937


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE


RETFORD, NOTTINGHAMSHIRE


20/01/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: HUD/87506


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE OTE £30,000 PER ANNUM


HUDDERSFIELD, WEST YORKSHIRE


18/01/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: MAC/50174


ON TARGET EARNINGS OF £30,000 PER ANNUM


MACCLESFIELD, CHESHIRE


18/02/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: OLH/75310


ON TARGET EARNINGS OF £30,000 PER ANNUM


OLDHAM, LANCASHIRE


18/02/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: HAF/57244


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE OTE £30,000 PER ANNUM


HALIFAX, WEST YORKSHIRE


18/01/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: LPP/43459


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE


LEEDS, WEST YORKSHIRE


06/08/2009


WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: ROC/63531


ON TARGET EARNINGS OF £30,000 PER ANNUM


ROCHDALE, LANCASHIRE


18/02/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: FTS/131763


ON TARGET EARNINGS OF £30,000 PA


MANCHESTER, LANCASHIRE


06/08/2009
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: NPS/40698


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE


NOTTINGHAM, NOTTINGHAMSHIRE


06/08/2009
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: BDC/129220


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE


BRADFORD, WEST YORKSHIRE


06/08/2009
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: SCN/11981


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE


SCUNTHORPE, SOUTH HUMBERSIDE


20/01/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: LOS/32064


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE


LINCOLN, LINCOLNSHIRE


20/01/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: BTR/17661


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE OTE £30,000 PER ANNUM


BURTON-ON-TRENT, STAFFORDSHIRE


18/01/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: NOR/32172


ON TARGET EARNINGS OF £30,000 PER ANNUM


NORTHWICH, CHESHIRE


18/02/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: YOR/142611


ON TARGET EARNINGS OF £30,000 PA


YORK, NORTH YORKSHIRE


06/08/2009
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: GNT/11459


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE OTE £30,000 PER ANNUM


GRANTHAM, LINCOLNSHIRE


11/01/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: BOL/99226


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE OTE £30,000 PER ANNUM


BOLTON, LANCASHIRE


18/01/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: SKP/32569


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE OTE £30,000 PER ANNUM


SKIPTON, NORTH YORKSHIRE


18/01/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: HUW/34304


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE


HULL, NORTH HUMBERSIDE


06/08/2009
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: WBA/26668


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE OTE £30,000 PER ANNUM


WIGAN, LANCASHIRE


18/01/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: MEL/22103


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE OTE £30,000 PER ANNUM


MELTON MOWBRAY, LEICESTERSHIRE


11/01/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: BCK/33771


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE OTE £30,000 PER ANNUM


BLACKBURN, LANCASHIRE


18/01/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: PRS/112945


ON TARGET EARNINGS OF £30,000 PA


PRESTON, LANCASHIRE


06/08/2009
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: LCR/46340


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE OTE £30,000 PER ANNUM


LEICESTER, LEICESTERSHIRE


11/01/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: GTT/24529


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE


GRIMSBY, SOUTH HUMBERSIDE


20/01/2010
WEB OPTIMISATION CONSULTANT

Permanent

Job No: WSQ/123249


MEETS NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE


LIVERPOOL, MERSEYSIDE

Revenge of the Job scam

Looks like a job initially doesn't it 30K 40 hours per week Monday to Friday, but look at the detail, this is actually an advert for a training scheme which YOU pay them £2500. Sooo uh how is this a job then? In that if YOU pay them 9/10 it is a scam, but you are buying a service to them and not selling your services to them therefore it isn't employment. Quite frankly it isn't a job it is an advert for training.

Bizarrely enough this IS still counted on the government statistics on their jobs available for people to apply to, the job centre website is littered with examples of these kinds of 'jobs' it again makes the government statistics not particularly credible. Oh there is loads of work out here, but when 1/4 of the 'jobs' are these then if the government claims there to be 100,000 jobs then 25,000 are not jobs. a good 1/4 jobs are scams and the other 2/4 are a combination of fake internships and or apprenticeships, with the few real jobs not working out (the pay is impossibly low) then where are all these jobs people scowl the unemployed for?

For those of you who have jobs

Today I was going to comment about the revenge of the internship, however I've been busy with other things and instead bring you this extreme overtime.

The TUC states that 900,000 people are doing extreme amounts of overtime, on a regular basis which is unpaid...erm so if it is regular and unpaid then surely your salary should cover it right? In that if you work 100 hours on a salary of £500 a week then dividing it one by the other you get a simple answer of 500/100 = £5 an hour right?.

Does this yet again mean that minimum wage is meaningless? I am actually guilty of this myself in times past gone when I used to be paid £5500 for my first job I had as an accountant I worked officially 30 or so hours a week a full time role already I was underpaid NMW £3.02 an hour. Except I put more hours in as I had no choice ending up with my pay on an hourly basis somewhere around the £2.20 mark.

Hold on isn't NMW £5.80 yes it is but it is meaningless as business practices like this are so wide spread that the NMW is essentially meaningless. As I said again wab back in 1996 working in McDonalds I used to be paid £2.15-£2.25 an hour, how is it that a Mc'ds worker gets more than somebody who had to study for years to get a specific vocational qualification?.

It just makes no sense, this is hardly isolated in that Mc'ds staff clock in and clock out and are thus paid for EACH and every hour they attend, this includes briefings and meetings. I'm kind of surprised that Mc'ds staff are treated better than bloody office worker so called white collar staff.

The world ceases to amaze me at how far people will go to exploit others for profits, it seems that indenture never went away.


Additionally it isn't just the money side of things, in that what about the things inbetween being born and dying? Shouldn't you put some effort into actually living? what external costs are borne because of absent parents? Both my parents worked but they were always there to walk me to school and also to have dinner with me then back to work. I think I came out of it alright, but does everybody manage to do that? What is the social cost to all of this.

Again if we destroy families and future who will buy those products in the future?

GSK creates 1000 jobs....?

GSK creates 1000 jobs

Erm

GSK cut 3000 jobs

A net loss of 2000 jobs then,

Golden goose?

Have a read through some of Hansard HMRC is winding up companies to get its pound of flesh its money NOW, even though other creditors are happy to wait for their bills to be settled.

I'm sorry but isn't this rather stupid and short sighted? , most of us would have heard of the fable the Golden Goose, in that the owners end up killing it from their greed and end up losing the golden goose.

Isn't HMRC doing the same thing? Yes HMRC gets its hands on money but what about next year and the year after that and till eternity? Oops erm we've just killed the business. I know lets kill another one.

Makes no sense at all to me, although I hate this phrase, better to have something than nothing (as it is one of those hobsons situations whereby you are forced to settle for something). In this case it is better for the government to get something than nothing.

Yes they are killing their hens'. Although they get a veritable feast of chicken meat now, they will no longer have eggs and once the chicken meat runs out then what?

Corus Steel plant mothballed 1600 jobs gone.

I'm sorry but mothballed?, that's just a euphemism for closure isn't it?.

I'd bet that post election it will be announced that it is closed.

What the hell do we make in this country anymore?.


Link

Resolved!

In a forum I frequent somebody told me of the apprenticeship scam, it is a variation of the new deal scam.

For the new deal 50% of your pay is paid by the government, 50% by the employer, this means uber cheap employees, the crick is that if you perform well the person is kept on. The employer gets some sort of bonus for simply taking them on, what happens though is at the end of the year the person is let go, the positon vacant for a few weeks then another New Deal person is hired the employer gets cheap staff, a bonus etc the cycle continues. Although the person who did it has a years worth of work experience and reference to hand, although the usefulness of this is questionable as if you can hire somebody for 50% of the cost and get a bonus why hire somebody you need to pay fully?.

The scam is this:

Is it a scam however, [edited]or whatever, is taking on 55 at £100 a week, suspicious i'd say. I've just been offered the chance to take on a plumbing apprentice, government scheme, £1500 for me on accepting the youngster, a further £1000 for me after 12 weeks of employing the apprentice. If i pay £100 a week, and sack him at week 13, id be £1200 in pocket.

So there you have it, it effectively means it IS a scam, with 12 weeks work experience it also makes your CV look bad, as it looks as if you can't hack it even if you were a perfectly capable employee. This also says bigger things in that the National minimum wage doesn't actually exist in this country as there are methods to get round it. If people find it hard to make ends meet on NMW then how on earth are people going to get by on apprenticeship wages? of £2.71 a year.

In that yes government top ups are available but doesn't this mean tax payers are subsidising the wages of the low paid? , doesn't this distort and encourage wage fraud?.

In that two businesses A + B , if A hired somebody playing cricket on NMW ,and B hired somebody on an fake apprenticeship then surely B has a slight advantage. This advantage of which he can pass to his clients or take a bigger profit and reinvest, A is at a disadvantage so either continues as normal or plays the same game.

In the end the employees lose out, and again we have the Henry Ford problem, if nobody can afford your goods and services you'll go out of biz.

Oddly enough recessions encourage this in that if something is cheaper for the same thing people will buy it as it stretches their money further. However somebody else pays for the savings you make and longer term everybody pays. Those cheap £5 jeans you see in some supermarket? , somebody in China has taken the job of a British person for that.

I'm not saying British jobs for British people just a moment of consideration as to why things are the way that they are right now.

Unemployment UP, no Down!

Who to believe?

The BBC or Bloomberg


BBC says:

The number of people unemployed in the UK has fallen slightly, figures show.

Total unemployment stood at 2.46 million for the three months to December, down 3,000 on the figure for the previous three months.

Bloomberg says:

Feb. 17 (Bloomberg) -- U.K. unemployment unexpectedly jumped in January to the highest level since Tony Blair led the ruling Labour Party to power almost 13 years ago as the recession destroyed work at businesses from carmakers to banks.

Claims for jobless benefits rose by 23,500 from the previous month to 1.64 million, the highest since April 1997, the Office for National Statistics said today in London. The median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey of 27 economists was for a drop of 10,000.

Having a look outside and the jobs websites I am more inclined to believe Bloomberg tbh

Yahoo says the same thing as Bloomberg.

So does Reuters news

young fear years of unemployment

Here

As they set out to find work, only half of young people feel their education has prepared them well for the jobs market, survey shows.


I think I know how they feel in that when I first graduated it took me 5 months to find my first role, it was poorly paid, I was exploited but in the end it was a huge relief, I wonder how the current generation feel in that I'm not sure that they will be so lucky. In that once you get over a certain threshold morale vanishes and those shiny certificates of your work lose their gleam to the graduates and potential applicants who graduated after you.

Where have all the jobs gone pt3

Productivity gains since 1900, when everything was horse or steam driven, have been enormous.

If we produce the same with 20% of the labour then we could have a similar lifestyle by cutting our hours 80%.

A single farmer produces food for hundreds even thousands even tens of thousans, gone of the days of labour intensive farming where hundreds of people worked the land with hand tools, like in the second world war land girls etc.

This process will no doubt continue and perhaps accelerate, as I have mentioned before in older posts I once worked as a mid level tax expert, my job was replaced by a line of code.

There may be a job for the person that programs the robots or writes the lines of software though this is self defeating in that the other workers have no jobs and no income, without jobs and without income what are they going to use to buy the increased productivity gains?.

A large part of the productivity gains has gone to increase the number who in some manner do not work. In effect we society has said that their labour is not needed so they live on alternative means, these might include pensions, income support, disability benefits this is not an exhaustive list however .

A tendancy of the 1990s and 2000s has been that governments around the world have sought to increase the school leaving age or university placements. Whearas in the 1970s and 1980s 2-6% of people would go to university today (2009/2010) this figure is closer to 40% . But this is fallacy in that if there are no jobs for them then what is the use. Infact if you think about it a little deeper it is worse. In that young people are fooled into thinking university and education is the way to a brigher future.

Yet more has gone into make work position in the public sector. When we can produce all the goods that society needs with just 10% of the labour force then this will become clearer. Those few left in work will pay out 90% of their wages in taxes. It must be this way to enable the unemployed 90% to continue to buy their output.


The olde' meme of well of work and study hard and rewards may come, this sounds nice doesn't it. Unfortunately the disconnect with hard work and reward has been broken.

I am sure many of you have a basic understanding of psychology in that we encourage good behaviour by positive reinforcement , the inferior method considered by Skinner is negative reinforcement, this is not punishment as is oft mistaken for. Negative is the removal of something unpleasant.

Hence you work hard and get the money right?

Wrong, in that this disconnect has been broken, you can work hard as you want yet if you aren't lucky you won't progress anywhere. Luck might be synominous with ruthlessness as well by the way.

This has led to me thinking that people aren't being silly when they simply refuse to work and instead stay on benefits. In that this is their only legtimate manner in which they can protest. In that why fight a system that is so corrupt and twisted that the serfs are kept in their place?.In that today internships and apprenticeships are becoming more and more common, as a whole generation is willing to fight itself to work for free and undercut each other. I myself did this to others I worked for £5500 PA for 6 months about 4 or 5 years ago, did we do this to ourselves?.

Yet right wingers, boomers etc stifle this debate by just shouting at them as workshy or scoungers, you can see a certain logic as to why people don't play such a rigged game. Many people do not gamble at casinos as they know it is inherently rigged in favor of the house, many people simply choose not to work as the whole game is rigged infavor of others.

Another blog

This is a rather lonely (when I say that I mean the number of followers is rather low compared to some blogsites which have hundreds of followers, I class this website as lonely too) website about a recent graduate.

I'm finding it hard as a graduate WITH experience years of it, it is a fascinating insight as to the quandry of graduates today and this person has an MA which in theory stands head and shoulders above the rest of the crowd. Though theory and reality are two completely different things I suppose.

The link is here

Even window cleaning jobs are not safe

As an extension of the previous post about manual work being replaced by robots, here is another (depressing) example of it.

Window cleaning is now done by robots and will be done in the future again the same problems occur.




To those who champion automation, bigger profits, or people having more time to pursue meaningful tasks and creative tasks. I say nay, this may make me a luddite


But this dream was sold to our parents in different guises, in the 1960s and 1970s massive amounts of Indian labour was imported so that the local man could pursue more meaningful work. This never happened productivity did increase this along with quality of life, but the locals were pushed out of jobs.

In northern towns today there are nasty racial tensions regarding this.


In the past also it was postulated that the aspects of automation would mean that few people would have to work. This work would be in food and energy production as well as maintenance the rest of the population could sit back and live in a star trek world where people could spend their time in self-improvement. This future never happened. Instead the extra productivity was used to both push down wages and the owners of such factories scooped the profits up.

This is why I see rather dark times ahead for our societies; it actually reflects a few disturbing sci fi novels I’ve read in my time. Where millions of people pick through the rubbish of abandoned cities looking for something to eat or to sell.

The most depressing thing is

The most depressing thing is about all this is the feeling of helplessness, next to this is probably the fact that people who are under or unemployed suffer a feeling of confirmation bias. In that being unemployed is a depressing experience motivation can only last so long before it starts to crumble horribly.

In that you may spend half an hour an hour perhaps longer adjusting your CV, then typing out and spell checking then either emailing it to sending it via post to the supposed employer. That is IF the job exists in the first place, when quite often it does not (agencies are particularly guilty of this).

In that you spend all that time applying for the job doing all of the above. However the potential employer can’t take the time out to send a simple no email back. Granted there are two problems with this in that if it is a postal application then it would require them to post something back. Although many people will attach email addresses to their CVs and covering letters as a method of being in touch in more ways than one.

Also that there may well be a huge number of applicants to the job meaning replying simply isn’t feasible as they have other things to be doing.

Such as money making activities. 3 Workplaces ago I remember Trevor who worked in payroll for both the company itself and for a stack of clients. He also did the HR work filtering the work applications for potential new hires.

However here is where the confirmation bias comes in, in that people are already low in morale and not being worth a few seconds of somebody’s time confirms that they are unwanted or un-needed leading to a greater loss of morale and makes it harder to motivate and apply for jobs in the first place.

Way back in 2004 I remember one of the firms I applied for, he took the time to write back to me stating that there were no vacancies and he was very sorry. He did however write some advice for me and give me some hints. I put those into action and got my very first accounting job (the pay cheque a photocopy is on my wall to this day). This encouraged me and made me feel better, I wonder what employers have to gain from lower morale?.

This is of course not inclusive of several nasty return letters I received more than once from potential employers. One particular one from Stockport sent back a lengthy reply giving a sentence by sentence point by point of my CV and covering letter knocking each and every point. She had nothing positive to say and seemed to revel in great delight at belittling me.

So I suppose not getting replies sometimes is a good thing.

An old friend

Today I met an old friend from high school, its been 14 years since I left highschool with a handful of GCSEs and dreams of a better future.

His name is Alex, he will never read this blog and I make no reference to his surname so he won't mind me mentioning him. He has been in and out of work since high school when we left in 1996.

I bought him a coffee and had a chat in that effectively he had never had a job that was not a contract job, all of his jobs were short 6-9 month contracts whereby he was usually given the push at the end of it. He is a nice guy, but he looks kind of ill but I've not been in contact with him all that much.

I think back to my accounting jobs, the same thing happened to me, nobody there was actually an employee everybody was a temp worker, in that this did two things it gave nobody any rights or protection from being fired. It also saved on redundancy money.

These trends are disturbing to me, in that I feel that the legacy of the 00s as it is nearly the end of a decade is good for the corporates and those at the top but will leave a bitter taste in the mouths of the staff and the employees. Job security was bad before, now I think it has to be redefined. In that I sometimes think far into the future as an old man (if I live that long) where myself and my friends are in a pub talking about the good old days about job security rather than everybody working temp contracts.

I believe that the youth of the future if there is a youth of the future (as economic pressures mean nobody can afford to have children) will not believe us at all.