Is the jobs market really so dire or am I missing a trick somewhere?

[GetSmart]

Here's the rant.....I used to work for large multi-national in a decent career (sales role) prior to having kids. Decided, and was very fortunate, to take redundancy and have a a few years break to raise the children, thinking I would think of a new venture, or get into a new line of work when the children are a bit older. That time is now! I can't believe how dire the situation is. Unless you want to sell make-up, or books (and there's nothing wrong with that by the way, it's just not me), or have a few quid to start something of your own up (which we don't have following a break), there are ZERO jobs that even remotely suit the hours needed when you've a family.

I've now also found that I'm actually not qualified to do any other role as they all want experience. Sales isn't a career for returning women to the workplace.
Is it just me? What's everyone elses experience?
It's a shocking situation as there's tonnes of talent amongst the Mum community thats just going to waste, which is a very sorry state of affairs.
Come on employers and seriously embrace the flexible working please.

swung

@GetSmart - the solution is you look for a full time role and your partner who has had the luxury of a SAHM supporting his career for last few years moves to flexible working in his current role. Every single woman I know in a very wide range of jobs has done this, it is no longer acceptable for men to claim they can't.

You can switch in a couple of years - if you want to.

But Grobags the chances are the bloke is soaring in his career as he has stayed on the ladder and it wouldn't be financially viable
When I had our first child we were both teachers earning the same - I chose and wanted to have a few years as a SAHM and during which time dh has gone into management and is now an acting head earning double that of what I would earn if I went back to teaching so it's a nice idea but often not realistic

Of course you are, you’re not an administrator. Why would someone employ you in an admin role when there are people out there who have already done the role. Admin is not an easy role, it’s very hard to find good administrators, I’ve had a fancy for 6 months which I can’t fill with anyone decent. I need someone who can hit the ground running and that’s not generally someone who hasn’t done that role before. We. We’d to stop thinking it’s the default of you think you can’t get another job. Aim for where your skills actually are

^ this

Plus the fact there are very few admin roles nowadays and lots of candidates with relevant experience.

If you've never done admin before then don't bother. It is not the doddly job you think it is, seriously!!!

Moral of the story is, take ANY job. Cleaner, factory, pub worker... it will almost definitely lead to something else.

Be wary of expecting this from the NHS though. I took my band 3 role hoping they would appreciate my potential (I'm a grad and former professional) but they couldn't give a shiny shit. I'm stuck.

Absolutely Thirtyrock39! DH commented how I can pretty much do anything I want in comparison to his position because he is now earning over 3 times my current salary unlike 12 years ago when we earned about the same. If he has career gap like me, he is at high risk of either being unemployed or have to start from scratch - the older you are, the harder it gets. We simply can not risk.

While you took on 'any job', still keep an eye out for jobs that have prospect. There are a lot of dead end jobs out there, but It's fine if you are not looking to climb.

It's much, much easier to negotiate part time hours or flexible working when you're already in a job - you have demonstrated your worth and the employer won't wasn't to lose you.

I'm sure that a lot of DHs whose careers have benefited from having a SAHP could work more flexibly in order to support your return to work, if they chose to do so, but the reality is that most of them don't ask. As a manager, I would certainly support such requests from male employees, but I very rarely get any. I wouldn't mind betting that some of them tell their wives that it would never be an option!

As for those saying that it would be impossible for their DHs to work flexibly because they have progressed so much further in their careers, I think it's generally much easier for senior managers to work flexibly - with a few key exceptions in certain sectors - than it is for those in junior roles. We should all be encouraging men to pick up a bit more of the slack.

So how does a forty so somethig person get back into the job market? I have been a teacher, advice worker for a very similar site to MN, learning support worker and now CAB volunteer. No one wants to know. Do I just try for any job, regardless of satisfaction? It feels as though thats the only way forwards now.

BlitzenandMikey, don't you want to go back to teaching? I always thought we are shortage of teachers?

Dingdong I am trying unsuccessfully to get back into teaching. The thing is the school would have to be desperate to take me at the top of the pay scale rather than someone they can pay £17k less in the first year alone. I don't want to work in a school where behaviour is dreadful any more than I want to work in my dead end job. It's very difficult.

I thought I'd find something outside teaching but I've come up against obstacle after obstacle. I've tried very very hard. I'm trying now to be philosophical, starting a masters and hoping that a specialist job will come up at some point in the reasonably near future.

At the other end of the scale, I have three younger brothers and sisters who've graduated in the last four years. None of them have found a stable, decent full time job yet. I was working full time straight out of uni.

Ding dong, there may be a shortage of teachers, but like the PP, when I left I was top of the pay scale. Also been out of the profession way too long to go back. I shall keep persevering and keep the faith!

MyNameIsNotSteven what do you do within the NHS? I always thought they were decent to work for and you could work your way up the ladder?

MyName and Blitzen, if you really want to get back in to teaching would you consider working at M6? A lot of schools seem to have that as their cut-off. I didn't take a career break but I did leave a job that was UPS2 and take one that was M6 because I was desperate to leave a newly-academised school and find something part time elsewhere. It grates that I've had to take a pay cut but I feel it was worth it for longer-term job security.

I was at a jobs fair on Friday I was looking for part-time admin finance or customer service

I got told that there was nothing part-time at the whole fair and that I should consider going full time

I pointed out that I had a disability which men part time was my only option and they just Shrugged

I have civil service banking finance and admin experience but spent 13 years running a nursery on a self-employed basis
I had 6 months off last year and haven't been able to find work since

Minnie, I suppose I would for a really good school.

In my experience the NHS is not interested unless you already have a degree in that specific discipline. I would need to retrain and they've made that very difficult where I am (not England)

KatyMac it's been my experience too that employers will not accommodate part time workers. Well, I say accommodate, I really mean tolerate. My theory is that employers have become far more exploitative, combined with falling rate of profit, falling rate in which value can be extracted from work (structural contradiction in capitalism itself) with a possible issue with how value is created in modern forms of work, (value in the Marxian sense may have been uncoupled from its original premises, with decline in manufacturing, and move to service sector work) this means employers are struggling to make labour pay. The Marxian concept of surplus value appears to have worked for ever....so there is a tendency for employers to think in terms of making workers work extra hours in order to exploit greater value from them. This is born out in stagnating wages, lower share of value shared with labour, poor working conditions, salaried positions where we are expected to work over and above contracted hrs, and employers increasingly using "flexible working" (or concept of) to their own advantage whereby staff are literally on call 24/7 plus because working conditions are becoming less tolerable for workers employers develop a protectionist paranoid position, full time ++ workers do not have the time or energy to bargain individually through job hunting, or collectively with their colleagues. Part time work is seen as obstructing the profit making of the employer.

I gave myself until January to find a good job

Now I just want a job

Same here KatyMac 🙄

I actually considered getting into teaching, after reading these posts I'm really glad I didn't. Seems its across the board, whatever role we've previously done/education we've received.
I'm not sure what the answer is. I'm not sure anyone does.

For me, it's not about wanting full-time work, or wanting my husband to work P/T or flexibly (I wouldn't enjoy beans on toast every night and a half clean house!!). I want to be able to pick my kids up from school and ideally be there for some of the school holidays (as a family, where husband and I don't have to take seperate holidays to cover them). I'm realistic in that I would consider a before school club as most hours are starting at 8:30 or 9 which I couldn't do after drop off.

Ideally, I would love to set something up myself. Any ideas?! Million dollar question! Anyone learnt a craft and done well setting up a little business from it? x

To be fair, if there are part-time/flexible roles in an organisation, these should rightly go to existing employees, rather than newcomers.

Also, the pp looking for an admin/PA role... er, the workplace has moved on. When I started work nearly 30 years ago, everyone had a secretary. It was a status symbol as well. I once did some temping for an itv company. It was ludicrous - there were hundreds of secretaries and most of us had absolutely nothing to do!

Now everyone can type. In fact it’s easier to do your own letters/documents and manage your own diary. You still find traditional secretarial staff in the civil service and other public sector-type organisations, but most businesses are not going to pay additionally for admin staff.

I do however feel the pain of fellow - particularly mature - job hunters. And I agree that voluntary work is absolutely useless as a foot in the door. Only do it if you like the volunteering.

if there are part-time/flexible roles in an organisation, these should rightly go to existing employees, rather than newcomers

No, they should be offered to everyone. This is precisely why so many of us who have posted on this thread are in the situations we are in. Because businesses see flexible/part time work as an earned privilege instead of something a good boss would offer to provide just that little bit more for their staff so they feel they want to remain working for them.

I would hazard a guess that a good proportion of the senior management would have their partners at home looking after their children so they are, by not making flexible working available to every single employee at their business, actually showing their at home partners that they aren't worth employing unless theyre going to work full time and when they demand. Theyre basically enforcing the view that a persons family is worthless and an inconvenience that gets in the way of their business. Instead businesses should be looking at offering flexible working and part time hours and employing more people to do the stuff like admin. Its been shown time and time again, business that offer flexible working have better results, perform better across their sectors, maintain their staff better and, although they may not pay as much, employees would rather work for them so they often have very large numbers of applicants for roles.

The positives gained by businesses that offer flexible and part time hours far outweigh any negatives.

I don't know what the answer is. Feeling totally depressed with it all now. Just looking at job sites and I don't seem experienced or qualified for anything advertised. All the NHS roles state "must have worked for the NHS previously" or "must have xyz experience". Just cannot believe how stupid I have been... hey ho...

I would hazard a guess that a good proportion of the senior management would have their partners at home looking after their children so they are, by not making flexible working available to every single employee at their business, actually showing their at home partners that they aren't worth employing unless theyre going to work full time and when they demand. Theyre basically enforcing the view that a persons family is worthless and an inconvenience that gets in the way of their business. Instead businesses should be looking at offering flexible working and part time hours and employing more people to do the stuff like admin. Its been shown time and time again, business that offer flexible working have better results, perform better across their sectors, maintain their staff better and, although they may not pay as much, employees would rather work for them so they often have very large numbers of applicants for roles.

^ this is a great utopian ideal but it just doesn't happen in practice.

The reality is, businesses exist to make money. It is easier for them to employ full time staff (i.e. you're always there, it's less admin than employing two part-time members of staff, etc.). Unless they are struggling to recruit staff there is no motivation for them to employ part-time staff on flexible hours.

Most businesses are run by men who have never had to juggle it all because they earn enough to have a wife at home (or have a career wife so have double bubble to employ the nanny, cook, cleaner, gardener, etc.).

Sorry, but that is the cold hard facts of business and, without meaning to sound patronizing, some of you on this thread are a little out of touch. If a business actually has an admin person they are probably doing the work of five people so don't assume that is an attractive option!

I think the only way out of this is for women to have enough of the status quo and set up businesses to operate in family friendly ways and make use of the wasted talent out there.

I do know someone who has done that and is reaping the rewards!

Five years ago I applied for a job. Got an interview, didn't get it.

This year they advertised the same job again : EXACTLY the same specs, but 5k less. That's 5k less, 5 years later on.

Tells you everything you need to know about the job market.