I am currently not looking for work, I am however receiving emails from people to offer me new roles.
So far I have received one which required a bi-lingual credit controller with four years of experience to commute 5 days a week as they don’t offer home working at all. Along with 20 days leave for the first 5 years. £19,500 a year.
Today – an administrator role which requires organising business travel, hospitality lunches, and all other admin busy work. Again 5 days a week with no home based options. £20,000-£22,000.
Then all I’m seeing is business complaining they have lots of vacancies – the salary range is why.
Any of the rest of you noticed this?
30 comments
My company are struggling to hire while also claiming they are paying ‘market rate’ (probably data collected in 2013). Its getting so bad.
I signed up with a recruitment agency as an IT graduate in 2008.
I received my first email from them 13 years later, suggesting a job as a receptionist at a dental surgery.
because for some reason, many companies think it’s better to hire monkeys for low pay, than pay a decent wage and get decent employeers.
Plus they know there are desperate people looking for work who will take the pathetic wages because they dont have a choice.
Wages are stale, I’ve been contracting for about 6 years now and am still on roughly the same rate, it sucks but can’t really do anything about it
It really depends on the industry. I used to be an Accounts Assistant (similar level to a credit controller doing AP) in 2015 on £20k. Everything else was the same. It really wouldn’t surprise me if they’re still paying that role sub 25k. Then again hospitality is notorious for paying terribly and working everything out of you.
Also, on the more junior side its harder to push for more as lots of people would be going for it and there’s less need to differentiate yourself more than can you do the job for this pay. They’ll just pick the first person they like or whoever can start the quickest.
As you progress it’s different as there’s more competition but in a more meritorious competition so you can more easily justify paying an extra £5k to someone if they’re better qualified.
My advice would be to try and push for higher positions (maybe one up from where you’re looking) if you’ve got some of the experience for it. It’s better to push and be unsuccessful than to simply settle for the lowest they’ll offer if you can.
Lazy recruiters send any old shit to everyone. Several times a week I have recruiters contact me about roles for which I am “a great fit” and would give me “opportunity to further my career”. They are invariably significantly more junior roles on about half of my salary, which they would have been able to tell if they had spent thirty seconds looking at my profile.
>So far I have received one which required a bi-lingual credit controller with four years of experience to commute 5 days a week as they don’t offer home working at all. Along with 20 days leave for the first 5 years. £19,500 a year
That’s £10 per hour, based on 37.5h/week. Adult minimum wage is £10.42.
I frequently get emails/LinkedIn from recruiters offering me entry level roles at 20% of my current wages having done the job for nearly 15 years and now running an entire area of a huge business.
Wages are completely stagnant especially at the junior end of the market. I remember when I was starting my career in the mid 2010s, starter roles would typically pay between 25k-30k in London and 20-25k anywhere else. It’s barely any different now. I recently saw a job ad for a role I applied for in January 2015. The salary offered was exactly the same as it was back then – 23k.
Not just the salary but the holiday entitlement is pretty pathetic too. Why do so many companies offer the bare minimum statutory holiday entitlement? Its not exactly going to make them stand out as a wonderful company to work for if they won’t even throw in a few extra days annual leave
There is a sampling/survivorship bias here. The businesses which offer competitive job listings will fill there roles quickly and the shit listings get chucked back into the sea.
I’m a food technologist and visit factories for audits and food safety etc. The general manager came along and complained how people don’t wanna work nowadays or are part time and get top ups in benefits I asked how much they pay per hour, i shit you not the guy replied minimum wage.
A lot of places are purposefully lowballing so they can show there’s nobody to hire here, and it makes their business case for outsourcing much stronger.
The company I’m leaving are replacing anyone who leaves with a counterpart in Romania, Bulgaria or India because it costs a fraction of a UK salary. In RO the figure is the same but their currency is ~1RON = 20p
Here on the south coast the socials are kicking off because restaurants have been advertising min wage to £12ph for trained chefs.
Salaries are pretty wild – I saw a role I could do for £25k and I’m on over £80k.
Employers willfully don’t know what to pay – I have spoken to some recruiters and I have spoken to them about this, employers hit back at them. Or I’ve had another telling me that I have this role, talk for 10mins and then say basically 2/3 what I am on. And another suggested I should be more reasonable with my expectations.
No-one in London should be on less than £30k in my mind, London is very expensive and although inflation is decelerating, it’s still going up and landlords are misers.
Because a lot of companies still believe they’re throwing you bone and should just be glad of the opportunity. Instead of the transaction it is: your time for their cash
Happened to me a few times. I interviewed for a supervisor role at a large building supply chain and got offered the job… with £2/hr below the advertised rate. Told them to swivel.
Then interviewed for an assistant manager position at a pub (I was a keyholder at a pub at the time and was the same duties). They offered me a position as a “deputy manager” instead which came with about a £6000/Yr pay drop vs what the assistant manager role was advertised as. Also told them to swivel.
I get annoyed that my company doesn’t disclose a salary banding for job applications
It means we get people we can’t afford applying and clogging up the application portal, but then conversely 2 people I’ve hired, I gave them exactly what they asked for.. but I wish they’d asked for a bit more, I’d have paid then a bit more, but I can’t just pay them for more than they’ve asked for… because it’ll trigger questions into my own behaviour
One of the reasons I am still in retail , most entry office jobs I could get, I would have to have like minimum £5000 a year pay cut from my retail management position, but I wanted to travel and buy things.
I had a recruitment agency contact me about a month ago. No idea where from, I’m not out there looking for work, so haven’t a clue who they were.
Anyway, it was an email, for a position in my role, asking for at least 5 years experience plus lots of other stuff. Paying UP TO £19k a year. (I’m nearly 30 years trained earning well in excess of that)
I sent back an email along the lines of how dare they, not only insult me with such an appalling application, but they have responsibility to the industry that when a company they are representing asks them to put an offer out with such a disgusting salary offer, to let them know that that is not an acceptable offer and theat they would not be prepared to help them find someone if that is what they think is the worth of an employee.
I got an email the next day saying: we have removed you from our database.
19.5k is minimum wage if you’re doing no more than 36 hours per week.
Reddit skews the view of what the average earning is. Lots of people very casually talking about being on 50k, 75k, 90k etc
For the vast majority of us, 30k would be an amazing wage and anything above 20k is what you usually expect to find upon entering a company.
Wages in this country are awful.
It is incredibly expensive to recruit and train and retain good staff. But most companies seem oblivious to this and think it’s a great idea to constantly recruit and train newbies – it’s a shit business model.
There used to be 12m members of UK trade unions, now there are about 6m though the overall workforce is much larger.
This is the first year where job postings are actually less attractive than my current job.
Wow – considering that the National Minimum Wage is £20,100 for a 37 hour week – not good.
I’ve seen loads in my field that are looking for 5 years experience and list a huge amount of experience using certain softwares etc….
And offering 20-22k.
I work in a warehouse where I put boxes in cages. That’s it. That’s the job. I earn £26,500. (I work 2pm-10pm, so you get a small premium for that shift.) And I don’t consider that to be enough in todays world.
The fact that there are jobs out there that require skills like yours that oay so little is beyond me.
It’s staggering how out of touch some companies are unfortunately. Round my way you can’t get a self employed labourer, usually a 19y/o kid, for a site (literally minimal to no skill required) for less than about 120/130 a day.
Builder I knew was offering £100 a day and wondered why no takers! They can earn £90 on a shift in Tesco with holiday pay/sickness pay ffs, and no need to sort their own tax out
People are mad
I’m looking for a new job, my home is now 80 miles commute. Long story…
They want me in 3 days/week … I’ve worked it out, over the year, I will lose 1 months salary in petrol alone. On a motorbike (my only source of travel).
Haven’t bothered to work out public transport and I’m not going to bother to … 2.5 hours each way. That alone is a nope; let alone looking into costs.
That’s not the wear/tear, the 2hrs+ day/6 hrs minimum/week I’m losing.
I can and have done my job WFH.
They’re all like “we need you” – Ok, so work with me then. Them: “nope”.
Archaic management means “bodies in the office = work is being done”. 🖕