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.

Advanced office skills aren't complex. If you don't know them you can learn them very quickly with MS help and google.

Yes but for £7.85 an hour you're having a proper laugh

Thank the national minimum wage. In an ideal world the NMW would be a baseline for the most unskilled and undemanding of jobs. Unfortunately, it's largely removed wages competition for the majority of unskilled and semi-skilled jobs.

Being able to use MS office software for entry-level positions is a must these days

And yet you wouldn't believe the number of young people who don't have them.

We hire recent grads (up to age 24ish) and most have no idea how to do more than type in Microsoft. Most expect everything to be intuitive e.g. a recent hire told me after a few weeks that something was wrong with his computer as it wasn't giving him an email signature... he had no idea you actually had to set it: he thought the computer would just know...

And this isn't a young people/millennial bashing post - I'm only 27, but the difference those few years have made in terms of experience with technology is amazing.

Considering silverlight is pretty much end of life

It was officially deprecated by Microsoft getting on for four years ago.

blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2015/07/02/moving-to-html5-premium-media/

As a "hah! you didn't think of that!" piece of pedantry, Silverlight is about the silliest.

YABU

I've met so many people who claim to have basic Office skills, but struggle with anything other than creating and saving a new document, never mind things like setting up a mail merge or freezing panes in a table (both of which I would call intermediate skills). I bet that the ad says "advanced" in order to weed out people who can't do the essentials of what the job requires

You could probably earn more working retail. At one time, office admin was paid a lot more than minimum wage. As minimum wage has risen over the years, admin salaries have stagnated.

From April 2019, the minimum wage for those 25+ is going up to £8.21.

I’ve retrained in an profession as admin jobs are becoming harder to get as loads of people apply for them. And the wages haven’t risen - I think they’ve gone down!

In the 1980s there was a job advertised in a job centre fir a security guard. The wage was around £3 per hour but the wirst part was that applicants must have their iwn guard dog. I once saw an advert fir head of low pay unit in Scotland and the pat was woefully poor - I was interested in the job but nit at the advertised salary. Most Employers want to pay as little as they can - I am an exception

Most expect everything to be intuitive

Probably Apple users, where things tend to be a bit more spoonfed user intuitive

'Advanced' isn't vague whatsoever. It's a level of Microsoft qualification. Very low pay for that level.

I agree, speaking very generally, that companies tend to want a lot for what they pay for nowadays.

We were recruiting for an admin assistant recently, and I looked at a few job advertisements before I wrote ours. We live abroad and every ad stated that three languages, advanced tech skills in several software packages plus excel, professional appearance, willingness to take initiative, work hard, liaise with a team (those last three requests fine of course) with a "flexible" attitude to working hours were basic requirements, that's before we got on to occasional potential travel to other sites, events planning, minute taking, expenses sorting, familiarity with billing software, etc etc etc, all for a very basic wage. I was astounded frankly!

Somewhere, the pendulum has swung a bit too far in favour of the employee I think. Having said all that, having employed a very (thankfully!) few bad eggs who weren't willing to work hard or take any initiative and swung the lead wrt to lateness, sickness and reliability, I suppose some of these somewhat excessive demands have become a necessary evil.

Sorry for woeful grammar and wording in that post btw; distracted!

I'm not really 'Advanced' on some Microsoft applications, but I'm paid over 30k a year for it

But being able to use a basic standard set of computer programmes is not the entirety of the skills and qualifications that you're paid for unless you have a very generous and somewhat naive employer.

Probably Apple users, where things tend to be a bit more user intuitive

As an apple user yes I do expect my human computer interface to be intuitive and I fundamentally believe that it is a design flaw if it's not.

Doesn't mean I can't do complicated things with it. The first thing I open when I turn on my Mac is Terminal and I bet your average windows user would have a hard time understanding my .bashrc let alone creating it.

Assuming this is an entry level office admin job, I’d expect someone with better than basic MS office skills.

YANBU. I wouldn't expect anyone who genuinely had advanced Excel skills to be paid minimum wage. Advanced does not mean able to use something rudimentary like countif.

As an apple user yes I do expect my human computer interface to be intuitive...hard time understanding my .bashrc let alone creating it.

(Anyway, bash is heretical. MacOS ships with ksh93 which any fule kno is far superior).

Surely it depends on what the job is? If all you do is create specific MS documents using info/ data provided by others, you should be able to use the packages correctly. But I wouldn't call that a high-level job.
A professional person using MS to create files etc is simply using the package for recording info that they may well have collated, or be using to create policies or strategies etc. Probably doesn't need to be skilled in MS, but may well have other higher level qualifications relating to the actual job, and hence paid more.

It's a level of Microsoft qualification. Very low pay for that level.

Unless they are asking for Microsoft certifications then it is just a vague job spec term, depending on the company it could mean anything from being able to open, edit, basic word formatting, to using excel pivot tables and importing external datasources.

Hmmmm what constitutes a Microsoft Package? Office 365 includes, Flow, Teams, Power BI, Yammer plus lots of others. Are they expecting advanced skills in those? That is not beaing reasonable.

Plus Word e.g mailmerge or Excel VBA, macros etc, they are advanced.

ReflectentMonatomism

I kind of like zsh personally but anyway, I just don't get the stereotype that Mac is somehow bereft of "advanced" features. I came to Mac via linux and I miss exactly nothing from the transition.

I agree with OP and SlightlyCoddled.

I think many employers often want alot of "bang for their buck" now - on the most basic wages.

Companies who advertise dishonestly, "Puffing up" and exaggerating requirements to supposedly weed out people who are liars, also weeds out honest people .

Screwed up world.

YABU

It's basic supply and demand. you need niche skills to expect a higher salary. I can't see the issue. It's impossible to comment based on 1 line of a job ad. If the company doesn't pay enough, they won't find the person they are looking for, simple. They are running a business, if you don't need to pay more than the market rate, why should you? Some jobs need to offer a good package, others simply don't.

Do you go to farm shops and pay the highest price because you want to give the best rate to the farmer, or do you pay the market price?

Advance MS package is open to interpretation anyway, it depends what the job actually is.

My younger sister gets paid more in an admin job than I do in my career position, with a PhD and ten years relevant experience. You definitely can be well paid in admin (in London).

For that money I would assume they're trying to scare off people to weed out anyone with no knowledge of Ms packages. I certainly wouldn't expect to do any advanced stuff.

99% of admin jobs are shite. The employer wants a human robot to perform every function in there for shite pay. I'm not surprised at this request at all. Personally, I'd rather work as an office cleaner, you get almost the same pay and since you work after the office is closed, you don't usually have to serve a team of twats tea and then lick their boots on top of that.