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.

I've seen a lot of jobs like this, admin but they want a degree level for a low wage. www.indeed.co.uk/m/viewjob?jk=8256c94b20318f9b&from=serp

Pineapple read the advert. I can't believe the stuff written. Sustainable Goals, Research Excellence, University for the Common Good, Vibrant Multi-Cultural, Core values of Integrity ...

And a degree needed. All for £22k. One wonders sometimes.

^ that is £12.42 per hour btw, for a 35 hour week, £10.87 for a 40 hour week.

Since you have no idea what they mean by 'Advanced' I don't think you can judge. I would be surprised if they wanted more than good Word, Excel, Powerpoint etc.

^ yes, but excel, powerpoint still are significant skills if you do it well. if they say 'advanced' i assume they don't want people blagging their way through it.

I don't think you are. It is a skill that a lot of people don't have at advanced level. I would say minimum wage is an entry level job that you would do after to school to earn money (e.g. waitressing etc), not for someone who has bothered to spend time learning a skill. Usually when using this software you need a pretty good standard of Maths and English too.

I do know loads of people who earn 30k + and are totally crap with MS Office too. I'm constantly helping them out because of it.

"MsTSwift

It works both ways. Freelance professional and have had people ask if they have to pay. Err yes hmm"
Lol. Do they think you're a professional mug?

@BarbaraofSevillle
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.

Of course those aren't advanced skills. That was kind of my point - it's such a meaningless phrase that it almost definitely doesn't mean they want advanced skills, because if they did they would have stated the advanced skills that they want.

'Record numbers in employment'. Yeah right...record numbers of paid slaves who are too scared to lose even their crappy job!

YANBU

Using fucking pivot tables (and similar) in spreadsheets for everything is fucking ruining any attempts to do any proper work and/or analysis.

Demanding these skills at these wages is ridiculous.

Dunno about this but in my line (IT) it's used as a tactic to enable the "post" to be filled by a worker from India here on an ICT.

*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.*

The computer doesn't just know though, someone (IT dept) has set that signature when they've established a user's account or email. This person genuinely thought the computer set it based on the emails they sent or received, that it would work out who they were and auto-predict it

You'd be better going self employed and becoming a housekeeper. They can command £10 - £15 an hour!

Wages in "ordinary" jobs have absolutely stalled.

17 years ago I was earning £10 PH as a medical secretary. Pretty good rate at the time. Out of curiosity I had a look the other day at rates should I decide to go back into it. They’re actually lower now; between £8-9.50...

This person genuinely thought the computer set it based on the emails they sent or received, that it would work out who they were and auto-predict it

What do you mean by sent or received, they do kind of still have a point though, modern practice is to apply the signatures at exchange level so when the user opens an email it is blank, it does just "appear" (ie IT dept set it via group policy and exchange rules).

Agree with you.

To me, having advanced skills would mean applicants should have gained some Microsoft certifications. Assuming this is done either at personal cost or as part of professional development funded by an employer, that doesn't tally with a minimum wage level applicant.

I think it should be common sense surely

Basic wages- basic level skills
Middling wages- middle level skills
Advanced wages- advance levels skills

My current Job pays well for my age (25) with awesome benefits (really good)

At the same time I interviewed for an almost identical job in a similar company (not as prestigious but similar) they didn’t disclose the salary but asked me in interview what I would expect!

I saw the look of shock!

A week or so later (after I had already accepted my current role) the recruiter for the cheap company rang and said they were SUPER pleased with me and would be willing to offer me £21k (they seemed to think this a real stretch and it came with 20% of the other benefits)

When I said sorry but no, she quickly jumped in with ‘it would be good experience for you and we can help you to develop into a higher paid role’

I told her flat that I already had 5 years of experience and had accepted a much higher paying role with a competitor.

She seemed shocked and said that she would pass it on to managers as they had been struggling to find the calibre of candidate they wanted - wonder why 🤔

Justanotherlurker

They thought that the computer would figure it out, not a person in an IT dept setting something, just that the computer would get to know them as they used it and then create a signature for them!

They thought that the computer would figure it out, not a person in an IT dept setting something, just that the computer would get to know them as they used it and then create a signature for them!

Ah OK, thats surprisingly common.

This is the same person who didn't know there were keyboard shortcuts for things like copy and paste, or that you could add sheets in excel, or merge cells, or mailmerge etc etc. Yet like everyone else (it seems) their CV said intermediate microsoft office skills.

BTW this is why talk of a "skills crisis" is bollocks.

There's no shortage of skills - and there's no shortage of people willing to train to get better skills.

There is a huge shortage of employers willing to pay decent wages.

just that the computer would get to know them as they used it and then create a signature for them!

We saw in the 1980s that email addresses quoted in .signature files were often wrong, while the address in the header was correct.

It hasn't got much better thirty years later.

If you work on the assumption that the longer the signature, the more of a dick the sender, you'll rarely go wrong. Special extra "I am a tosser" for unenforceable "This email may be privileged..." wankery - if the sender doesn't know if it's privileged, how is anyone else supposed to figure it out? If you don't want third parties reading your email, here's a free clue: don't send your email to third parties. There, that was simple, wasn't it?

I think a lot of people (including the person who wrote that job advert) don't understand what it means to ask for advanced microsoft skills because they simply dont understand the full capabilities of the programmes. I have just finished developing a resource tool on excel for my work which involved writing a lot of macros and some incredibly complex formulas. I'm considered the office whizz at excel and often people come to me for advice. I would put my excel skills at intermediate at best because the more i learn the more i realise I'm just scratching the surface. I also have undertaken advanced microsoft project training and wrote a full training guide for work, afain would consider myself intermediate.
This means that the person writing the job ad must be either very optimistic in what they are looking for or not particularly profficient with Microsoft themselves .

It's a ridiculous wage. It's not even the living wage as set by the living wage foundation. Regardless of skills needed no one should be paid less than what it costs to live. All that means is employers are subsidised by the state in the form of welfare to those on low pay.

OP, you are definitely not being unreasonable.

I was job hunting and it boggles my mind as to what employers expected from candidates and what measly wages they expected in return. I temped in a company where they were recruiting for a role where you’d need to do financial work, deal with angry and stressed customers, deal with internal and external suppliers, be PA to the whole office, work whatever hours they required of you (including weekends, for no extra pay)...for £20k a year. They went through round after round of interviews and couldn’t understand why candidates who were capable of the role wouldn’t take it, and those who would take it weren’t up to the job.

Note to employers: pay your staff according to their abilities. “Let’s see how little we can get away with” is not a suitable recruitment ethos. If you pay peanuts...