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.

you will find there is a massive IT skills shortage about to happen.

I think you're probably being somewhat hyperbolic, most school leavers are far more adapt at using word, email, etc its not just snap chat or instagram.

Many of them aren't adept at anything more than that, and they're just user skills, and often not much more than basic.

What we're dependent on behind all that is the programmers, systems administrators, database admins, storage admins, network engineers. Even if everything is in the cloud, somewhere there is physical infrastructure and management of that. Every app has been thought up and written by humans - even though there are interfaces to make the programming easier, we still need people with the initial ideas and creativity to make it use able and comply with data protection and all that sort of thing. Those are the IT skills we lack as a country, not office admin skills, and most school leavers (not all), have no idea about most of that. They use technology, but often don't understand how it works beyond the user interface.

Most 20 YOs won't earn anywhere near £30k.

In my first proper graduate job at 21 (I'd had three other jobs after graduating that paid less) I was paid £17k. Inflation-adjusted that would be £26.8k today. I'm not far above that, sadly.

Pay has fallen behind inflation. It's a big problem of these times.

I think these days that’s something all school leavers have so it’s not necessarily unreasonable, but depends on what else they are asking as the pay is terrible.

Pay has fallen behind inflation. It's a big problem of these times Very true. Many wages don't seem to have increased in the last 20 years. My starting salary 20 years ago is the same as what I am earning now! Same sort of role. Moved jobs due to the recession.

I don't think school leavers will have advanced Microsoft package skills. I've got three older teens, two at uni, one in sixth form, and none can do anything particular with Microsoft. None would know how to set up an email signature, for example.

... This baffles me, genuinely!
I have seen Admin who (No, I’m not exaggerating!) cannot “Save as PDF” or print to a specific printer tray, I’ve seen Admin who can do nothing more than type into Excel and then use a separate calculator to total figures and then attempt to demand high salaries simply because of duration in a company despite a lack of ability!

You will probably find this kind of comment was made by someone who is “confident” on computers to weed out THOSE kind of Admin simply to find those who are capable of using Office Applications effectively, and in an Admin role that is certainly NOT unreasonable given that computers are now the entirety of their work in the majority of cases, regardless of the hourly pay. As other people have mentioned it’s not a particularly well paid role anymore.

I suspect by advanced it is just one way of weeding out people who need instruction what to do if they reach the end of the mouse mat.

Having been involved a couple of years ago in an application which asked for " proficiency in Microsoft Office" the number of people who interpreted that as "Can you use Word?" and didn't seem aware there was more to Office than just that was significant.
It was an excellent way of being able to remove candidates who not only didn't know the computer well enough, but also displayed their ignorance of their lack of knowledge in full innocence.

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

But that isn't advanced surely. My Y2 pupils can attempt most of those at an entry/basic level.

TBH I would interpret the 'advanced Microsoft skills' as someone who doesn't really understand what Microsoft packages really are, or what skills they actually want. Others they would have mentioned the skills more clearly, without the vagueness. I mean - which MS apps do they mean? What can of skills do they feel are advanced level?

It is incredibly unclear, as this thread proves. No one really knows.

I'm going to go against the grain and say nope, I think it's a pisstake. I work in two different fields, one if which means I have genuinely advanced office skills (VBA, advanced formulae, etc etc) which I've ended up using in the other field to pretty much create our own systems. Every single member of staff we've had (generally in their 20s) has had absolutely minimal office skills, can't do so much as a sum formula never mind a mail merge.

We have an admin who still wouldn't be described as advanced office skills, especially with excel, and we pay a good amount more than that.

And I'd actually agree, the requirement is vague as heck and they probably don't really know what they want. There's probably not that many jobs which actually require advanced level in all or even most of the office products - and those that do I would expect to be paying much more.

Here is a take on what Advanced level MS Office skills include:

iws.collin.edu/cesyllabus/cesyl_ct/ComputerTechnology-89s.htm

www.study365.co.uk/course/microsoft-office-2016-advanced-training-online-2/

Any job that doesn't pay the living wage probably isn't worth doing.

The term "advanced" is completely subjective and essentially meaningless. In Excel I can use pivot tables, formulae to a reasonable level, data validation drop down lists and so on - I would consider myself to be reasonably competent but not advanced. However, these skills seem to be defined as 'God like' by some colleagues who can barely manage to set their out of office messages

In my experience the inclusion of "experienced" or "advanced" is usually a deliberate attempt to weed out people who don't know what they are doing at all. Any job which genuinely requires particular knowledge will almost always specify what they are looking for - e.g. The ability to create and administer shared spreadsheets, run macros etc.

One point about Access - it may well be nearly obsolete in some quarters but it's still very much alive and kicking in my sector (financial services). The number of people who can use Access effectively is increasingly small but there is a very real dependency on it. Don't make the mistake of thinking that because an application is old, that employers won't need it!

Have the jobs been linked on here? Would be good to see what they actually say.

Aragog I'm really surprised by that! According to the curriculum I have "advanced" skills (I can do most but not all of the Excel things and just about everything else). However I would not consider myself to be "advanced" at all - simply competent. There are people in my firm who can do truly complex and amazing things in Excel - if I'm "advanced" then presumably they are "superhuman"?!

Is this just a thread to allow op to “show off” at their salary at 20. Well done OP. It’s great news that you got £30k at 20. Very well done. Not the norm though I guess.

I wondered that Sb74. Like a stealth boast

Outside of London, maybe that's fair for junior admin. In London you'd really be looking 25 - 30k. Unless entry level, in which case they probably don't know a pivot table from a master slide.

It would have been useful to have had the job adverts linked. Of course that is if they exist...

Exactly!! 😀

I don't think they'll get many people applying.

I do a specialised skilled office job for not much more than that. Most people have left and now they are struggling to recruit. Occasionally they find someone desperate enough, but they don't usually stay more than a month or two once they find out what the job involves. We've got a huge backlog of work and a half of us are suffering with stress.

I would warn anyone against office work. We're just dogsbodies.

We recently advertised for a general admin post, salary about £20K. I gave examples of the skills we would need in Excel, eg using pivot tables, writing formulae, lookups. Almost all applicants claimed competence or proficiency or "advanced" skills in Excel, but not one single person took the trouble to detail what functions they used, not even the functions we had listed. It was a very disappointing response. I did of course put them to the test at the interview stage!

Have the jobs been linked on here? Would be good to see what they actually say.

No they haven't. Despite a number of posters have asked....i wonder why. 🙄

"I would interpret "Advanced microsoft skills" as being competent at making word documents, basic spreadsheets, powerpoint presentations, and sending emails"
I think that's basic skills isn't it? (basic spreadsheets' giving a vague hint). Advanced skills involved macros, pivot tables, advanced formulas. Having worked with a good few school leaves I can't say most have advanced skills. Basic yes, certainly not advanced.

It's not really subjective in my opinion. Look up training in Microsoft and its ususlly broke into Basic, Intermediate and Advanced.

Haven’t RTFT but M Gove removed ICT from the curriculum and replaced it with Computing, because programming skills were “in high demand” and ICT just covered basic MS Office stuff that no one really needed.
Hence school leavers woefully unskilled in probably the most useful tools job-wise. And large numbers of kids put off choosing computer based KS 4 courses as they found the mathematical aspects of the courses challenging.
(I am a retired teacher of Maths/ Computing/ ICT who strongly believed in offering a range of courses suited to different students, their abilities and requirements.)