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.

Hmmmm what constitutes a Microsoft Package? Office 365 includes, Flow, Teams, Power BI,

Someone else going for a gotcha, you think someone wanting a Power BI user is not going to target a dev and not be specific but put it under an umbrella of Microsoft Package?

Tbh I would interpret "Advanced microsoft skills" as being competent at making word documents, basic spreadsheets, powerpoint presentations, and sending emails. And therefore totally reasonable for min wage.

If a company wanted someone who was an advanced Microsoft Access user with loads of SQL experience, or someone totally proficient in Excel with macros, VBA, etc, they would actually state this - if only to weed out all the people who (rightly or wrongly) interpret "Advanced Microsoft skills" the same way I do. And the pay for those roles would obviously be higher than min wage

Yes, what Plump says. Better still, a cleaner outside (get some fresh air and sunshine if you're lucky) for the same "wages".

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...

TBF many organisations set this via group policy to maintain a standard, so the computer DOES just know...

I don't think it's grads that don't understand Office. I think it's that their expectations of technology are much higher than the generations before. They know how smart the tech can be coming out of rich silicone valley companies and find it a shock when their much poorer hiring company has not invested the time, money or effort into just making their tech work with minimum human input.

except that the chances of progression of a cleaner are pretty slim. Many people have started as "office admin" and gone up quite high in their field.

TBF many organisations set this via group policy to maintain a standard, so the computer DOES just know...

Yeah I was going to point this out, via GPO and exchange is how its set in most organisations, but it does depend on the IT dept of the organisation.

Depends very heavily on who's written the advert. The office manager at my old employer had got zero interest in computers and she'd stayed at the same employer for a long, long time so she'd never needed to sell herself. As a result, she'd done nothing to stay up to date with IT and she'd phone me to ask things like how to change the line spacing on Word. If she wrote 'advanced Microsoft package skills', she'd mean mail merge and basic Excel formulas.

Many people have started as "office admin" and gone up quite high in their field.

Haven't seen many at all in the past 20 years. It's usually now quite a dead end job, IME, unless you completely retrain for something else. And then get another job with another company in that role or most of the time, IME, the employer still wants you to do some crossover with your old admin role

I am an ops manager now but spent years as a PA/EA. I saw one job advert for an EA in central London at 21k - they required 6+ years' experience and a degree. Total joke.

Computer skills are a prerequisite for any office job now though.

Haven't seen many at all in the past 20 years.

I see some everyday! I work in recruitment, and you don't have to stay an "admin" if you don't want to.

If it wanted advanced skills would it not be a bit more specific, it just probably means intermediate type skills, not the very basic ones

Haven't seen many at all in the past 20 years. It's usually now quite a dead end job, IME, unless you completely retrain for something else

Started as "administrative assistant" after I graduated from University nine years ago. Now Operations Manager of a small charity. I know plenty of people who have done similar.

Businesses pay what they can get away this - thats business. If they get staff for minimum wage that is what they will pay. I dont agree with it, but thats reality (and in my organisation we pay more). The various mobile phone shops in my town are staffed exclusively by graduates, its a sad state of affairs this country has come to!

It's usually now quite a dead end job, IME

I agree. Historically, there was more opportunity for a girl Friday/secretary/PA to climb the ladder etc if she was ambitious. But this was at a time before mass higher education and so many vocational degrees. Lots of women progressed this way - e.g. in publishing, media and so forth. But I think its much rarer now, because younger women tend to "go for" the careers they have in mind, armed with relevant degrees and work experience etc, rather than just wandering in via admin.

Where I work, person specifications routinely state "high level of proficiency in MS Office" as an essential criterion for any admin post. Despite this, I would say fewer than half a dozen people in the entire department have anything beyond a basic ability to use Word like a typewriter and Excel as a grid to type numbers into. What they mean by "high level of proficiency" is actually "basic level of competence". I suspect the "advanced Microsoft package skills" in the advert you saw probably means the ability to produce a table of contents and use a few basic Excel formulas (sum, average, etc.). I'm fairly happy even to find someone who can edit a paragraph style instead of inserting blank lines between paragraphs: this is very, very, very basic but seems to be regarded as advanced here.

Agree people seem to think advanced excel is setting up formulas or doing pivot tables.

To be honest, if they're not calling out for specific skills in that 'Advanced' umbrella it's pretty much a done deal that they want someone who can do more than just open a document, amend a word and save it again.

The amount of people I encounter who see anything more than this as 'technical' is depressing when they were supposedly employed with competence in MS Office as a requirement.

If they were truly after an Advanced MS user they'd list the specific systems (because MS Office is actually huge) and the type of actions being carried out so from this perspective the wage sounds as fair as minimum wage can.

Depends what they mean by advanced, but I have noticed a lot of jobs that require quite a bit of experience that are minimum wage. Even though I think its sad, I'd happily take a job like that myself over my customer-facing job paying £8.50/hr.

I would interpret "Advanced microsoft skills" as being competent at making word documents, basic spreadsheets, powerpoint presentations, and sending emails

That's not advanced. That's very very basic and what a beginner should be able to do after a few hours tuition.

Thus illustrating that the term 'advanced microsoft skills' being quite meaningless. It's impossible to say what the person who wrote the advert meant by this.

Just seen two job adverts saying "Advanced Microsoft package skills is an absolute must".
The pay? £7.80 and £7.85 an hour

At least they were paying jobs! I answered an ad last year for a p/t volunteer adminstrator with a community organisation. (Estimated to require 8 hrs a week) They wanted 'at least 5 years advanced IT experience including DTP', covering of a 2-hour management meeting weekly and production/distribution of minutes, setting up and management of Facebook, Twitter and other social media, liaison with local media and production of regular press releases. Fortunately the open day event they required the successful candidate to take the lead on organising was only once a year!

In my area most schools do the ECDL as a compulsory thing in Y10 or 11. Is that considered evidence of advanced knowledge of MS Office? In which case it's a school leaver job?

That's capitalism for you.

I'm with you OP

unless someone has seriously misunderstood the term "advanced"

but yes, generally I notice salaries going down. I'd be interested to hear how the rest of the job is described.

It works both ways. Freelance professional and have had people ask if they have to pay. Err yes

I know what Macros and Pivots are and believe me that is not as advanced as it gets but it is far more than the graduates I employ can do. I think you might find the person writing the advert doesn't know what could be employed by "advanced". I've worked in excel for years and am very competent but I have an excel guru who puts the programming in for me for some of the really advanced stuff as I am not that good. Pretty sure they are paid well over minimum wage!