To think this is a joke? Companies want so much for nothing

[ALittleCrisp]

Just seen two job adverts saying "Advanced Microsoft package skills is an absolute must".

The pay? £7.80 and £7.85 an hour

This country really has a problem.

The best was the time I was asked for carbon paper. We have a form that needs to be completed in certain circumstances, with us keeping one copy and the client another. The form is stored in an excel workbook (not locked down so can be used, formatted perfectly for printing). This person was printing the blank form and filling it in by hand, twice. They wanted carbon paper so they only had to fill it in once. The suggestion that they type it up and then print two copies blew their mind.

I don't get why I am so unemployable if this kind of story is true...

I get what you’re saying. A lot of schools want graduate teaching assistants but only want to pay them the same as a level 3/4.

I swear to god it's true AnnAbbieLian.

Further example:
Particular task involves completing a template (word) which has boxes for pictures and space alongside for text. Idea being your supposed to put in 3 pictures showing something being done and write a wee commentary beside it. Pictures are (of course) stored electronically.

Found that pictures were being printed individually, blank template being printed, pictures cut to size and then pritt stick used to glue pictures to template, notes hand written...then the whole lot scanned back in!

StatisticallyChallenged

Our apprentices are always wide eyed "black magic" when introducing simple keyboard shortcuts to be honest.

Ive seen no change whatsoever since gove changed the curriculum wrt to general office stuff and I have been supervising them for over for over 10 years, they have got a bit more less rigid in their approach since CS has been pushed and not relying so much on point and click.

I'm in Scotland, so we've not been Gove'd...just the shitty Curriculum for Excellence instead. Which at least at primary level seems to involve iPad for everything IT related.

I get what you’re saying. A lot of schools want graduate teaching assistants but only want to pay them the same as a level 3/4.

Simply because they can, it's unfair for the people that level of job is designed for and unfair for the graduate's who are lacking in a few years work experience because they opted to study.

Particular task involves completing a template (word) which has boxes for pictures and space alongside for text. Idea being your supposed to put in 3 pictures showing something being done and write a wee commentary beside it. Pictures are (of course) stored electronically.

Oh god we had some (uni grad I add) marketing assistant bring down our internal print server that serves a couple of thousand plus because she thought taking multiple raw images and resizing into a word document wouldn't be an issue, the fact that each document she was trying to print was way over 5gb made our servers wince and brought them down.

The excuse from her was the usual "the IT system is shit"...

I get the feeling we'd have fun exchanging war stories in a pub somewhere!!

Excel spreadsheet - client names in column A (about 300), then columns each with a date header, 1 per day (like a year's worth of data). Someone applied sort and filter repeatedly. To Column A. And ONLY column A.

Unpicking that was fun!

It's a small business so we can't afford or justify massively expensive IT with lots of redundant backups, but I've got a fair few on the go after that!

*resizing,

it was taking the raw image photo that was big enough to be used on banners that was dragged into word and re-scaling via mouse drag.

If it was one image it could be excused, but the fact she must have spent over an hour dragging multiple images and resizing them like that made us verify their degree qual.

Which at least at primary level seems to involve iPad for everything IT related

Yeah, no way is that tunnel vision..

*I get what you’re saying. A lot of schools want graduate teaching assistants but only want to pay them the same as a level 3/4.

Simply because they can, it's unfair for the people that level of job is designed for and unfair for the graduate's who are lacking in a few years work experience because they opted to study.*

Not simply because they can. TAs spend an awful lot of time supporting your child in education. The more intelligent they are, the more they realise that they are there to support your child to learn and not simply to do an allotted task for them. TA jobs are also highly sought after by mothers to work around kids, typically those who want something to keep their minds ticking over, and are being cut back at the moment. Another employers' market, and there is no such thing as employee rights any more.

I saw a job advert a few months ago for an administrator in a care home. It started off, "you'll have one quality that sets you apart from your peers. Unparalleled kindness." The job involved managing admin systems and processes "to perfection", maintaining "impeccable" financial records and processing payroll and HR information. It called for experience in admin or secretarial support, "great" MS Office and other skills, "brilliant, positive energy and natural ability to get on with people", and concluded, "you'll be truly considerate and kind."

And the pay offered for this kindness? £8.30/hour. 55p/hour below Aldi's starting salary. I guess kind and considerate people don't seek a reward for their skills.

I am an administrator in a care setting though I do get a pound an hour more than the position you saw advertised, ThatLibraryMiss. Still annoys me that I'm constantly being called through to the boss's office to show her how to do something IT related and she acts as though I've performed black magic if she gives me a questionnaire to analyse and I give her back a presentation containing pretty coloured pie charts. Then I remember she earns twice what I do and the laughter turns to tears!
Disclaimer, I consider myself competent in MO, certainly no more.

@bubblegumunicorn I’m interested what you think advanced skills mean? Do you think everyone that has grown up on Excel can do Macros etc, or just because they know how to draw a table or put a document together that hey are advanced.. I grew up on it (32 yrs) I’m pretty computer literate.. but I know nothing when compared to some colleagues who have advanced skills and can do all types of things.

If you were a man you wouldn’t be upset by this, you would claim you could do it and learn on the job.

If you were a man you wouldn’t be upset by this, you would claim you could do it and learn on the job.

That’s not true it’s like pulling teeth trying to convince my husband to apply for something if 99% of the job advert fits but he’s missing one little thing. Even if it’s in the “desirable” not the “essential” section.

I saw a job advertised that looked interesting. It was an account manager for a manufacturing company, looking after customers by phone and by email, processing their orders, enquiries and invoices, credit control, and lots of other admin and sales work for the company. This was for the European branch of the company, so all customers were from the continent, and not English-speaking. They wanted someone who spoke two specific foreign languages fluently as well as having excellent English skills.

The salary was £18000. I know very few people who could actually do this job, as not many have those language skills.

@Elkilil that’s my point though they didn’t say what advanced is they just say advanced Microsoft office they don’t specify what that means aside from that labour is cheap these days that’s how people get away with looking for those skills in a less than minimum wage job!

I guess it's also a matter of supply and demand. HGV drivers are in short supply hence I get paid circa £35k despite having only a year's experience. I got my license for the relatively small sum of £1500 and a month's time invested (would've been much less if not for the waiting between tests). When I think how much my degree cost it mskes my eyes water!

I must get on average six job offers a week having put my details on Indeed/Totaljobs six months ago.

A lot of class 1 (articulated) drivers are paid £45k by supermarkets and distributors. I find it amazing that graduates are often so low paid, even though the opportunities for progression are theoretically greater.

Egg I'm incredibly tempted to become a HGV driver like you and earn so well for so little

It does have it's stressful moments! Taking a wrong turn and then holding up all the traffic whilst you turn around with everybody going nuts and beeping. Or driving in the city centre.

But I'd be lying if I said I didn't have to work much harder for the same amount as a bus dev guy in a corporate environment.

I do encounter a few female drivers, although admittedly not as many as men (likely also because the median age is 55, so many have been at it for decades).

I was put to shame by one at the Aldi depot in Brum the other day, when she reversed onto the adjacent bay smooth as butter after I'd made a hash of it and had to take a shunt forward. She got in a cheeky comment about male drivers lol. 🤣

I'm of the generation who didn't do Microsoft office at school unless you chose to do computing when you went from high school to grammar school. I know the very basics of it.
When it comes to vague ads though, the more vague the ad the more vague what tasks it will actually entail itself.

I suppose if you can pass the tests, being a HGV driver can lead to relatively good pay, certainly for non graduates who are unlikely to earn much more than NMW in other jobs. There's a shortage in the industry and many drivers are of an age where they will be thinking of retiring soon.

DP has just started a job where he drives a box van/small lorry (I've never seen it but I think it's the biggest you can drive on a normal, but old style car licence, before they restricted categories) and they're already pestering him to go through his HGV test so he can drive the company's larger vehicles. He might one day, but he's just getting settled into this job for now.

Back to Microsoft Office. When we recruit, we ask for 'familiarity with Microsoft Office' and we do a basic task during interview - admin staff would copy a short hand written note into Word and save it in a certain folder plus enter some figures in a spreadsheet, sum them using the SUM function and save it, while technical staff would maybe add a table with numbers into Word, similar Excel task and for higher grade jobs put together a couple of Powerpoint slides to then present.

These days we would expect everyone to have some experience of MO from previous jobs or school/university, but we do offer training courses for those who want them and we just generally learn on the job and help each other out.

We have a wide range of skill levels. Some people are hopeless while others can enter extremely complex scientific formula into Excel. I'm kind of in the middle - I can do lots of the basics, but not things like pivot tables and macros, mostly because I've never needed to. This thread, or another Mumsnet thread has prompted me to set up keyboard shortcuts for a couple of regularly used symbol/text/number combinations. I am aware of the existence of the concept, I've just never bothered to set them up before but now I can see that they're a very useful timesaver.

But anyway, 'advanced Microsoft Office' is still meaningless as I have plenty of colleagues who look at me open mouthed when I say something like 'you know an IF function can do that for you' when I see them counting through a list manually to see how many times a certain word appears, so they would think IF functions are advanced, where I would put it at a more intermediate level.

Well according to this, half of us won’t have jobs within 15 years anyway!

www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-6575195/amp/Chinas-leading-AI-expert-warns-HALF-jobs-15-years.html