Job market at the moment

[GonnaGetGoingReturns]

How’s everyone finding the job market at the moment?

I’ve been a contract PA (not by choice, want a permanent role) plus legal secretary for a few years.

Just got rejected out of 4 candidates for a PA role in a legal firm. I apply for a few perm roles but often it’s a no.

A friend of mine has worked for on a contract past 18 months to 2 years as PA but doesn’t like the company so isn’t sure if she’d like to work there permanently but feels like job market as it is, should she accept it if perm role were offered?

Another friend works in post room of a City company, her first perm job in a while, been working there over 2 years (before covid) but is being bullied and on a disciplinary for lateness.

People are clinging onto their jobs and not leaving.

So what gives?!

People on mn keep saying there’s loads of jobs at the moment… not in my world. Lots of redundancy, bullying is everywhere because it’s dog eat dog (it wasn’t like this at all, was a lovely environment to work in until 18 months ago when things began to change). There’s some jobs but pay is £20k less than I’m on for more responsibility.

@GonnaGetGoingReturns our Council had admin lay offs recently. I was offered one and it was pulled before they even asked for references ☹️

My industry, childcare, is the opposite.
We just can't recruit qualified staff.

At least 50% don't turn up to interviews.

Wages are going up, loads of incentives such as extra holiday, gym membership etc, but no applicants.

It's disastrous and places are closing or restricting the number of places they can offer as there are just not enough staff to provide the service.

According to this woman I know they’re crying out for staff, no layoffs. The other nearby council has been bankrupt twice so I wouldn’t apply there.

Most industries are in a state at the moment. Most people are sitting tight and not really hiring.

Weird, where I am it’s a real struggle to hire and people are leaving left right and centre for new jobs.

Must be very sector and area dependant!

Most people are sitting tight where I am, there are jobs but lots of competition. People are worried about cost of living crisis, recession and also I’ve heard of at least 3-5 people treated badly at work, bullying.

What are the industries where people can’t find staff? Someone mentioned childcare. Any others?

I've been considering the idea of going into childcare for a few years but the wages seem so low? For such a tough job. I've always thought opportunities for progression/pay increases is very limited, would you say that's true? Especially considering the massive responsibility of e.g. being a nursery manager for example.

Accountancy.

I'm a software developer and it's tough. Lots of redundancies.

But the industry has always been this way with a small amount of early career roles. So many people are being conned into 'retraining' when companies don't want to hire juniors. Comp Scie degrees have a surprisingly high unemployment rate. People work their way up through various roles including IT support, not learning to code and immediately getting 40K jobs as is the expectation now.

Perhaps because 'teaching coding' is big business. Especially all the 'diversity' ones.

I work in a government ALB and we are really struggling to hire people - just had to readvertise a bunch of roles because nobody applied for them! The money is crap and they want the moon on a stick. That said, I want to move into a more challenging role but there's not much about, not even internally.

That said, it's worth looking on Civil Service jobs to see if there's anything local to you.

@WeightoftheWorld you are right. The pay is not good. Although now it is above minimum wage in most places due to lack of staff.
Moving up the ladder is not always worth it. Depending on what type of provision you work in you could earn from about £11 an hour as a term time only pre school manager, to £30k ish as a manager of a large full time setting.
Working for a group as an area manager or above could get you over £40k I guess, but I've not worked for large groups like that.

Financial Services

That’s interesting. I have a friend in her 40s who qualified about 10 years ago but then had childcare as has children and had her second when she qualified. She’s recently got her second job in accountancy and locally to where she lives but says the big 4 like Deloitte where I’ve worked (not as an accountant) wouldn’t touch her.

Admin has been dying a death for a long time and is typically difficult to get long term roles in, especially now (we have zero admin staff at my work, we split all the office management, reception duties etc between us), have you thought about retraining in a more specialist role like data analytics?

I am a lawyer (in house but have a lot of contacts still in private practice) and I think it’s very tough for PA/secretarial staff right now. I get the sense that a lot of firms have cut secretarial staff / have reduced the “PA” type role to cover partners only with a more limited number of secretaries in a “hub” of sorts to cover associates. This seems to be a general trend so the opportunities for secretarial work in the legal industry will continue to reduce.

I want to retrain as a paralegal or in HR.

Lots of firms apparently want lawyers to do their own admin. I personally think this will work for a while but then there may be a kickback against this and they’ll re-employ legal secs.

The divorce/matrimonial lawyer I worked with in a previous small practice, he had issues getting letters, papers, forms submitted and sent out on time. My boss who owned the firm offered me and my colleague to help him out with this if we were paid for this but he refused. We had to field lots of annoyed clients who were angry about forms etc deadlines being missed. Last I saw on google requires he was still getting bad reviews for this and it’s a shame as he’s a good lawyer, just quite disorganised.

There are fewer young people entering the accountancy profession and the profession is haemorrhaging qualified/experienced staff.

Vicious circle because the inadequate staffing creates unbearable working conditions - which results in more people leaving to escape.

Have you tried PA jobs in the NHS for an Executive for example? Each hospital also has legal departments where you may find a suitable role. Look on nhsjobs.co.uk for the main website

I do wonder what sub-sector this refers to though. My undergraduate degree was in Accounting - I choose a different profession but still keep in touch with my cohort.
When discussing professional services Audit certainly haemorrhages staff - but 'twas ever thus. Very few people see it as a long-term profession -just good enough to qualify and then jump ship. Certainly that was the feeling even I was at university close to a decade ago,
Friends who are looking to leave the Big4 are finding the same level of competition for well-paid 'industry' roles - like being a management accountant, controller or finance business partner in a large company.

Meanwhile more 'admin' accounting roles (the ones that don't require professional qualifications) like bookkeeping, finance assistant, payroll etc I see a shortage mainly for 2 reasons IMO.

One is a low salary - similar to a PA/receptionist but the accounting job is a lot more responsibility a mess up could cost the firm £££! The other is that a lot of routes to these jobs are no longer available. Young people used to be able to get jobs as school leavers, work their way up. These days almost 50% of young people go to university, they want a 'graduate job' straightaway and then to progress quickly - not these jobs. Especially as many of them don't offer qualification opportunities.

The Big 4 are not the whole of the accountancy profession. They're not even representative of what it's like in the rest of the profession - they've always had a burn and churn model.

I agree that young entrants want fast progression (regardless of whether that's actually grounded in the reality of the skills it's possible to develop in the space of time they want promotions and pay rises).

Certainly not the case in all sectors, we are crying out for experienced admin roles. The issue I feel is that those with experience have established WFH or hybrid roles that they do not want to leave for an office based role. The other issue is that there are fewer opportunities for young people to come up through the ranks of those jobs like banks, there is also less capacity for training if existing staff in smaller companies are already really struggling.

The issue I feel is that those with experience have established WFH or hybrid roles that they do not want to leave for an office based role

Again, this is sector specific. Our sector have seen people opt to come into the office when they don't have to. People no longer want to WFH.

It's so interesting to see how different areas and sectors are seeing different attitudes!