To think this salary is an insult?

[FlyingSolo16]

I’m a solicitor and recently interviewed for a position. Five rounds of interview, meetings with different people within the firm, etc etc.

Get to the offer stage and the “competitive salary” they’re offering was £27,500 a year. AIBU or is that an insult?

I"m unqualified but work at a sols with a partner and earn more than that...

I have noticed that the interview process in my area of work has become completely at odds with the pay and level of job on offer. It puts quite a lot of people off applying because the whole process is so time consuming especially when you have to do it on top of working full time. My colleague spent ages going through a lengthy interview process only to be offered a salary that was £10,000 less than her current one. Obviously, she didn’t take it but what a waste of time for everyone! She also said that they could have found out everything they needed to know from a quick chat and saved everyone a lot of hassle.

These recruitment company designed activities and questions with phoney scenarios are such a waste of time and don’t even get the basic info needed such as: would you be willing to do this job for x amount of money? At my last workplace we had 3 of the candidates walk out of a rigorous interview process and the one who remained turned down the job. I didn’t blame them.

It’s a total joke isnt it? Wages no longer reflect the skills - or very expensive qualifications - required to do the role. Interview processes have long been a joke.

Try schools - I found myself invited to 2 interviews which turned out to be whole day affairs. They didn’t even communicate that effectively. The majority of questions at one involved ‘what will you do for us extra for free’. Both were paraprofessional roles involving being left with kids and both were minimum wage pro-rata’d down. I no longer work in schools.

It’s really not worth trying to work up nowadays and we’ve gone back to the Victorian-army set-up in most professions - an army of plebs that is much better on the whole than the officers coming from money who are supposed to lead. Meritocracy is dead in the UK.

I’m a private client solicitor in West Yorkshire and not STEP qualified. Qualified in 2015. I do part time hours due to children but full time salary is £63,000. I was on £27k upon qualification and then £30k after a year so thats definitely a low salary.

Edited to add have you tried a recruitment agent?

That’s a media-generated political fiddle.

All they did was cancel out the cuts that the Tories had made just befpre they left office. I’m sure the Tories are all decent hardworking politicians who want the best for the people and in no way wanted this very media storm to erupt so they could get back in power and get their noses back in the trough that is the corruption they caused??!?

The Economisthad a story about it.

I would’ve actually struggled to contain my composure. I probably would’ve laughed.
Well done if you didn’t

That’s how it was 30 years ago when I started work in London as a graduate management consultant- all of us shared flats with other similar young professionals. Couldn’t dream of living alone until I was older and had moved up the career ladder.

Edited to add that the salary is shockingly low for the role and level of qualification though, regardless of whether it would be enough to live alone!

The rumour is about making partners (not partnerships) pay NIC. Obviously partnerships paY NI for their employees.

I qualified on £29k 14 years ago in a regional firm OP. That’s a poor salary.

Its rubbish but with multiple people chasing each and every job they are hoping someone is desperate enough to take it. I'm amazed at the number of jobs advertising for skills, knowledge and experience but offering minimum wage or pence above it.

I’m a solicitor in the East Midlands - mid size firm. My area is all legal aid funded but my firm doesn’t pay less depending on area if practice.

As an NQ I was on £34k and now at almost 4 years PQE I am on £49k. I’m going for promotion the next round and I expect to rise to £60k.

As someone else suggested, use a decent recruiter and be very upfront/direct about salary from the off.

I would not take that salary unless it was for a new graduate.

I hope the baby boomers are proud of your low expectations.

Just 5 years earlier, before their buy-to-lets frenzy had pushed up house prices 5 times, anyone working in any job at all in this country could afford their own home if they were not spendthrifts. Someone who’d worked to become a professional would have expected a semi or detached to begin their working lives.

Yeah, this modern post-baby boomer economic life is all totally worth the stress. And still they wonder why so many youngsters are turning to crime and drugs.

This is what a lot of people do. I've worked in charity sector and literally everyone is in house shares until they move in with partners.

I agree with the general sentiment of your thread - it’s a shockingly low graduate salary and wages have been stagnating in the UK for some time. However there is nothing wrong with flatsharing as a graduate. I’m the generation above you and I and virtually all my peers did this. I flatshared until I was 30, then briefly rented solo before buying my own flat in London age 31. I can’t think of anyone in my graduate intake (2010s) who rented by themselves.

That’s the salary I started on as a new qualified solicitor. In a high street firm doing criminal defence. 25 years ago!!!

I think there’s a lot wrong with it. Not from the perspective of the person doing it, but the fact that our housing situation is such that the only way young people can afford to move out is by sharing with multiple other people. It shouldn’t be that way. A graduate job should be enough to support yourself.

I’m not judging anyone that does it, it’s just a shame to me that this is the way our society functions now.

Exactly this. My parents are totally shocked that I can’t afford to move out. My dad bought his first house for £6,000 with a 100% mortgage and can’t understand why I can’t just do the same.

I am in hospitality and its unreal what some places want v what they will pay for.

A job came up recently for a bar and restaurant manager, award winning and pushing for a Michelin star. Running the whole thing, with experience at that level, willing to sign out of the working hours directive, manage a very large team etc. All for the princely sum of £32k. I can get more than that as an assistant in a chain!

And the job has been up for 3 weeks so far, they wont get the Manager of the calibre they want for that money.

It has destroyed the entire social fabric, all the social contracts, that I was born into and the baby boomers still expect to enjoy. This is not the same country it was - meritocracy is dead, the infosphere that democracy relies on is dead and what little is left hopelessly corrupted (yay the internet, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, if anyone remembers enough to grasp that point).

And most of all, this is normalised and so there is little hope for change now. The elites are just going to squeeze and squeeze and squeeze, until either something like the French Revolution erupts or people are just dying on the streets. I would say, thank god for the low birth rate, but of course the elites can replace us from around the world now.

A lot of these roles are going to start falling foul of minimum wage legislation unless they stick absolutely to contracted hours.

I have a feeling that whenever you see “competitive salary” in a job description, it’s usually best to steer clear. More often than not, it’s just code for “slightly above minimum wage” or whatever the lowest the role can legally pay.

Timewasters. I genuinely think my secretary deservedly gets paid more.

There’s so many people who seem to think it’s not just the norm but should be celebrated.

Back in the 70s one professional salary was enough to bring up a family and live comfortably. 50 years on, it’s only enough for a flat share. Maybe a house share if you’re lucky.

When you say “now”, this has been the case for decades. The TV show ‘This Life’ aired in the mid-1990s and was literally about a group of law graduates who were house sharing.