Where are all these jobs?

[SecretVictoria]

Every time I open a forum on here, Reddit etc I keep seeing the phrases “It’s an employees market”, “Businesses are crying out for staff”, “Employers have to offer flexible options to keep decent staff”. However, this is not the reality whenever I look!

Are these WFH, flexible jobs just in London? As an example, the company I work for just posted a job that I think I could do and would enjoy, however it says location is head office. For reference, the last two years when they have posted jobs it has said ‘head office’/hybrid/WFH’ but no mention of that now.

I have a job which I like and I love my team but the commute is costing so much in petrol and parking that I’d love to not have to do that, but nor do I relish the opportunity of being squished on a train in rush hour!

I’m in the North West, close to both Manchester and Liverpool.

My friend is looking for a job in a little tea shop, she can't even get that, so no idea where all these hospitality jobs are?
I'm in the Midlands.

They're all in cyber. The government said so.

It’s an employees market if you want a zero hours contract in hospitality. Anything else is few and far between in my area.

There are so many jobs... I am in full time work and went on indeed for extra money. Put my CV up. Inundated with calls for work. all remote. Lots of customer service type earning 10-11 an hour, but better than nothing and easy to do.

Love it, thanks for the thread just what I've been asking myself.

I've come across so many employers really dragging their feet it makes me wonder. Employers able to schedule an telephone interview time and then not attend themselves. Employers not being clear on what someone's working day looks like is not an Employee's market to me.

Are the job boards posting jobs that actually doesn't exist?? So many times I have come across job adverts that don't match the reality. One time recently I interviewed for customer service rep, then saw the same job advert as internal sales co-ordinator and I think if they don't know what they are looking for lord help us. I had to attend the interview same day in a rush it could not wait, 2 weeks later the company still have had no grace to let me know the outcome.

Weird what people are applying to - one wine company with a role at 21k got 110 applicants, (that's been the highest number my application has been involved in!) whilst other businesses you would think would be more in demand have 1-5 applicants.

I even applied in a kind of desperate measure (as I don't really want to go back to hospitality) to a local supermarket who are said to be desperate for staff - easy way getting a foot in doing a temporary checkout job I thought - no!! notice I still had to do the same assessment as that of an online assistant/general store assistant when I wasn't applying for these roles but a specific one - not a chance.

If you ask me the job boards have a lot to answer for.

@AlternativePerspective it’s in Wiltshire!

@Onlyrainbows what is an SDR please?

I know I can’t do customer facing roles remotely (obviously)I just haven’t seen hardly anything that IS remote, even when not customer facing. I would consider re-training but nowhere seems to offer that either. When I was on the dole a few years ago, I asked them and they said that as I had GCSEs I wasn’t in need of training.

To explain a little further; I sort of fell into training by accident. Long story, but was on a course run by external consultants who spotted potential. The course was brought in-house, I used to help the trainer deliver the course. A vacancy then came up as the company decided to expand the course and wanted a full time trainer. I got the job and wrote new course material for 3/4 different areas and was asked to do more. I did a ‘Train the Trainer’ course internally and so I unfortunately have no formal training qualifications.

I’d be happy to do my current job nearer home but there aren’t any vacancies and when there have been and I’ve applied, I’ve always been rejected.

The only thing I ever really wanted to do was make-up and beauty but I feel I’m too old (42) and people in their teens/20s would prefer someone younger who’d have more experience.

Sigh.

There are loads of them in cyber security though. 🤣

Fancy retraining, OP? There are WFH training contract type roles too because it’s a skill shortage area. Keen to get more women in too.

You are not too old for health and beauty (although WFH would require you to set up your own business from your house).

Sure, some young women may prefer a younger practitioner. But there is a big market of older women who may feel very differently about things.

@fyn I'd love that job, but I’m miles away! This is what I mean, it’s very area dependant. I guess here, we have very high unemployment levels so employers don’t need to offer so much 😢.

I'm not averse to moving but we couldn’t afford the SE again as our house here won’t fetch what we’d need. Gah, wish we’d never moved after redundancy.

I work in the IT, Information Security, Governance area and there are a huge number of roles with people able to name their salary as they are in demand. WFH is definitely becoming the norm too with roles advertised as fully remote.

You can DM me too if you like

@SoggyPaper I'd absolutely be up for retraining, it’s just very hard to find out where offers these courses. My shifts are another stumbling block, I do one week early and one week late and EOW. It’s very difficult to work around.

I did think about dropping to a PT role within my company as it was all early turns for 6 days, then 7 off. I could have got the train and not needed to pay for parking/petrol and would have given me a much better work/life balance; I have a hobby that I find difficult to attend as I can only go on early turn. However, they made it some late turns and some weekends, so I’d have been spending almost the same but on half the money.

There are loads of cyber security apprenticeships. Salaries vary.

For example: uk.indeed.com/m/viewjob?jk=3803a05e078793ce&from=serp. (That’s advertised as Leeds but the company have a Manchester office too and I doubt they care where you are since everyone is WFH whenever they like).

I work in engineering, and we are desperate for people. If anyone wants a job, let me know and I can send you details! We are an international company so have offices all over the UK, and are likely to continue with some degree of wfh (although not full time).

Even if you used to be an engineer and left to raise your family etc, we run a returners programme to help you get back into things. I had a 12 year gap, and have returned, it wasn't easy to begin with, but its definitely been worth it.

See also: www.ukcybersecuritycouncil.org.uk/careers-learning/apprenticeship-schemes-and-opportunities/

Look at Cafcass admin roles, offices all over England, most are hybrid, public sector so great benefits and very family friendly.

Manchester airport has lots of job vacancies atm, the pay is not massive but definitely over minimum wage with reduced rail card to travel in and out of work.
If you're in the north west maybe look them up, they're offering paid job training as well

Warehousing - can't get the staff, especially counterbalance/Reach/combi/gas truck drivers but also pickers.

(S.Yorks)

Are these WFH, flexible jobs just in London?

If they're WFH it doesn't matter where the head office is based, surely?

I do something similar to what you did previously. Companies who aren't using agencies are recruiting internally for those kinds of roles.

Depends on what you do.

There are loads of jobs available here, but they're all shift work (mostly hospitality, but some retail too) and part-time cleaning jobs. Not ideal for anyone who relies on childcare or who needs full-time hours.

I hear you and I am going through the same thing. I keep hearing how employers are clamoring for personnel, yet the wages they offer are shit and WFH is often not even on the table.

I am still looking though, because at my current job management is trying to do away with WFH alltogether and the payraises are currently not even half of inlaftion rates. I already have to economize and I am fed up. Why does my employer get to raise their prices, but I am stuck reducing expenses just to be able to keep paying the essentials? They've had two very profitable years FFS!

I do agree that the headlines about more vacancies than jobseekers and such like are a bit misleading.

Yes… there are lots of vacancies. But…

How many of them are for skilled and experienced roles in areas with serious skills shortages? There’s a limited pool of people there and it’s always been tough to recruit.

There are lots of companies looking for people already trained and with 5/7+ years of really specific experience. There are far fewer who seem to be looking to take on people with potential and train them. Nor are they scaling down their expectations about what their roles entail. The result is that the people they want become ever more unicorn-like and the vacancies don’t get filled.

Having AI systems sift your applications doesn’t help there either. They just look for the ridiculously long shopping list of extremely specific requirements and filter out interesting people with slightly quirky experience or backgrounds. Or whose CV is not quite written in the right way. A whole range of people who could do the job brilliantly get filtered out by systems set up to match for unrealistic expectations.

How many of them are deeply undesirable in some way? Crap hours, inflexibility, poor pay, ridiculous expectations of 24/7 availability, no possibility of progression…

How many people appear to be ‘economically inactive’ because the labour market isn’t offering the kinds of roles that would make work viable for them? They aren’t ‘looking for work’ but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t like to working.

It’s a complex picture that’s the result of many years of pretty crap policy and practices. Different issues in different industries, but it does mean that the narrative of ‘there are loads of jobs; it’s a jobseeker’s market’ doesn’t match many people’s experiences.

Finance related. South east. Loads of jobs and wages rising. Highly skilled and 15+ years experience can basically name price and preferred work location!

I don't think there ever was a glut of well paid wfh jobs for those with decent but not highly specialised skills. There was a lot of wishful thinking however