Who will be the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

[adonis 1,454]

1 hour ago, MattK said:

As I said, we sponsored someone from India to fill the role. One of the UK candidates didn't have any experience in the technology we used, although I did refer him to a colleague in another team and the other received an offer elsewhere while we were still going through our process.

what did the sponsorship entail ?

 

[MattK 3,447]

2 minutes ago, adonis said:

what did the sponsorship entail ?

 

Firstly you have to advertise the job for 2 weeks on the Job Centre web site. Ironic given that no one looking for a skilled IT role would look there. Next I had to provide all my interview notes to show why none of the other candidates were suitable for the position, this included two candidates from within the EU. Next we had to submit paperwork from our company and the candidate. The role itself was assessed and had to meet minimum salary requirements, which was memory was £40k. Then the civil service do their thing, which took about eight months.

In total, it was almost a year between offering the role and the guy turning up to start. Certainly not a cheap or quick process.

[adonis 1,454]

4 minutes ago, MattK said:

Firstly you have to advertise the job for 2 weeks on the Job Centre web site. Ironic given that no one looking for a skilled IT role would look there. Next I had to provide all my interview notes to show why none of the other candidates were suitable for the position, this included two candidates from within the EU. Next we had to submit paperwork from our company and the candidate. The role itself was assessed and had to meet minimum salary requirements, which was memory was £40k. Then the civil service do their thing, which took about eight months.

In total, it was almost a year between offering the role and the guy turning up to start. Certainly not a cheap or quick process.

so why was all that effort , time and money , not  spent to give the UK chap  the experience he needed ,

[steve roberts 7,471]

41 minutes ago, MattK said:

You make it sound as if this chance you were offered was a one off and without no other opportunities would have presented themselves. I don't think you really believe that, do you?

 

The vast majority of low skilled jobs could be automated or offshored if we didn't have a vast pool of unskilled labour who are prepared to do them for close to minimum wage. Far from being important to society, these low paid jobs are highly detrimental, as the people working in them expect the same level of services, healthcare, education, pensions etc. but are not paying in anywhere near what these services cost to provide.

 

The reason there are shortages is because university courses are driven by demand from students and not need from industry. The outcome is far more media and arts graduates than there are jobs and far fewer STEM graduates than required. As I said previously, the solution to this is Government and industry working together to define career pathways which people can follow, rather than simply picking something they want to work in regardless of jobs available.

I do not recognise your claim of companies not training the next generation. Every large company I have worked for has had a myriad of development programmes for school leavers, graduates and career changers. Of course, this is a long term process and demand for immediate skilled resources is often filled from overseas.

Why is being poor, from a deprived background or lacking in confidence an excuse? This is 100% a problem with mindset.

There's an interesting programme due to be broadcast on BBC on Monday entitled "How to break into the Elite"

Amol Rajan investigates how much class still matters in Britain's leading professions, finding out what it takes for young working-class people to bag a prestigious position. Is working hard enough? He meets recent graduates who uncover inbuilt biases in their quest for a city job plus another who finds the media industry's mystifying cultural codes provide an obstacle to many candidtaes from disadvantaged backgrounds.

[Humphrey Appleby 10,356]

4 hours ago, Vince said:

I think it's pretty easy to say that people should do this or that to better themselves but for some it is really difficult. For those of us earning a decent wage it is too easy to think it's available to everybody but in some cases it just isn't. Successive governments insistence that academia is everything has ruined the prospects of so many in this country as has the idea that everybody can do any job they want. Roads still have to be swept, bins emptied offices cleaned and boxes moved and the people doing that should be paid a living wage and have regular, full time hours. The increased use of agency workers to fill what should be full time roles has to come to an end as does the idea that they are self employed.

If somebody with a young family who left school without much in the way of qualifications then went into a minimum wage job or even worse a part time one it is a hole that's not so easy to climb out of. There are still all their bills to be paid so it's quite likely they will be grabbing every bot of overtime available, they may work irregular hours or shifts. By the time they can afford the time and/or money to re-educate themselves they are too old.

Don't think anyone is knocking unskilled but essential jobs. I certainly don't, I completely agree people should be paid a regular living wage, and I do think the lot of unskilled members of society is quite poor in the UK. But at the end of the day, just about any fit individual can do those jobs which is why they're low paid, and the brutal reality is that you need to develop skills in something (preferably something in short-supply) if you want to improve your lot in life.

Whilst the UK educational system is reasonably good by world standards, I do think it fails those who aren't particularly academic and the situation has been exacerbated by an overemphasis on needing qualifications for everything these days (although that's a global trend as much as a UK one). But at the end of the day, there still has to be some personal responsibility - far too many doss around at school and then don't apply themselves to getting any sort of training before they start having the family (and the question also has to be asked why you're having kids if you can't afford them), so are immediately on the back foot.

It's fair enough that you might not really know what you want to do when you're young, but if you have some basic skills then opportunities do often present themselves.  I started by throwing cones out on the motorway, but because I was literate and numerate that led to a job ordering the tarmac, which in turn led to a project management job because that had helped me understand workflow and processes. I didn't have the experience far less qualifications for any of it, but I worked hard and did things diligently, and that got recognised. 

If I look at the people from school who've been most successful, very few of them were academically that great and a significant number were actually in the so-called 'remedial stream'. So I simply don't buy that it's not possible for most people to better their lot.

[Vince 8,620]

1 hour ago, MattK said:

You make it sound as if this chance you were offered was a one off and without no other opportunities would have presented themselves. I don't think you really believe that, do you?

 

The vast majority of low skilled jobs could be automated or offshored if we didn't have a vast pool of unskilled labour who are prepared to do them for close to minimum wage. Far from being important to society, these low paid jobs are highly detrimental, as the people working in them expect the same level of services, healthcare, education, pensions etc. but are not paying in anywhere near what these services cost to provide.

 

The reason there are shortages is because university courses are driven by demand from students and not need from industry. The outcome is far more media and arts graduates than there are jobs and far fewer STEM graduates than required. As I said previously, the solution to this is Government and industry working together to define career pathways which people can follow, rather than simply picking something they want to work in regardless of jobs available.

I do not recognise your claim of companies not training the next generation. Every large company I have worked for has had a myriad of development programmes for school leavers, graduates and career changers. Of course, this is a long term process and demand for immediate skilled resources is often filled from overseas.

Why is being poor, from a deprived background or lacking in confidence an excuse? This is 100% a problem with mindset.

I've no idea of whether other opportunities would have presented themselves, certainly the first decade of my working life would have been different.

How do you automate emptying your domestic bins for example. Could cleaning your office including the toilets and kitchen be easily automated. Every night I go to one of the most technically advanced warehouses in the UK, there are still a couple of hundred people there putting parcels onto belts and taking them off. People doing unskilled, mundane work will be needed for a long time to come. Society isn't all about money, not having the bins emptied would make life a misery, not having the latest, greatest graphics on a computer game makes no significant difference to anybody.

I agree about university courses but it's difficult to see how companies are meeting their training requirements if there's a skill shortage.

It's not an excuse it's a reason. As explained earlier once somebody gets into the trap of working every possible hour to make ends meet it can be very difficult to change things. In some ways it could be said to be a mindset but that doesn't mean everybody is in a position to change that.

 

[MattK 3,447]

47 minutes ago, adonis said:

so why was all that effort , time and money , not  spent to give the UK chap  the experience he needed ,

If you have many years experience in one technology is doesn't make any sense to start again and learn something new, unless your skills are out of date. Given this guy's skills were still relevant and in-demand it made more sense to refer him to another team which was looking for his skillset.

[Humphrey Appleby 10,356]

2 hours ago, Sidney the robin said:

My son who worked in accountacy  in Canary Wharf once said there were 100 applicants with the same qualifications going for 1 job??

It's a competitive world, but you have to be in it to win it. One day you might be right person with the right experience and the interviewers take a liking to you.  

[Humphrey Appleby 10,356]

17 hours ago, Sidney the robin said:

In life you need a bit of luck you can work hard and sometimes be crapped on from a large height then get a break and move on with your career.

You almost always get crapped on from a large height, at any level wherever you work, especially if you're there long enough. Just have to accept that you move on when the idiocy outweighs the benefits of working somewhere. 

[Vince 8,620]

5 minutes ago, Humphrey Appleby said:

Don't think anyone is knocking unskilled but essential jobs. I certainly don't, I completely agree people should be paid a regular living wage, and I do think the lot of unskilled members of society is quite poor in the UK. But at the end of the day, just about any fit individual can do those jobs which is why they're low paid, and the brutal reality is that you need to develop skills in something (preferably something in short-supply) if you want to improve your lot in life.

Whilst the UK educational system is reasonably good by world standards, I do think it fails those who aren't particularly academic and the situation has been exacerbated by an overemphasis on needing qualifications for everything these days (although that's a global trend as much as a UK one). But at the end of the day, there still has to be some personal responsibility - far too many doss around at school and then don't apply themselves to getting any sort of training before they start having the family (and the question also has to be asked why you're having kids if you can't afford them), so are immediately on the back foot.

It's fair enough that you might not really know what you want to do when you're young, but if you have some basic skills then opportunities do often present themselves.  I started by throwing cones out on the motorway, but because I was literate and numerate that led to a job ordering the tarmac, which in turn led to a project management job because that had helped me understand workflow and processes. I didn't have the experience far less qualifications for any of it, but I worked hard and did things diligently, and that got recognised. 

If I look at the people from school who've been most successful, very few of them were academically that great and a significant number were actually in the so-called 'remedial stream'. So I simply don't buy that it's not possible for most people to better their lot.

I'd agree with most of that, I just don't think it's possible for everybody to move up the ladder. Just as well it's not really because those jobs still need doing.

I find it irritating when people who are doing ok belittle those who aren't by saying all they have to do is this or that. For some it's not so straight forward and with the ever increasing amount of unsociable hours being worked it becomes more and more difficult to re-train. I see dozens of people working for poor money every night. Many of them are reasonably bright and work really hard but will never do anything much different. Others are bone idle and have no intention of improvement but you can't apply that to them all.

[Humphrey Appleby 10,356]

1 minute ago, Vince said:

I find it irritating when people who are doing ok belittle those who aren't by saying all they have to do is this or that.

I don't see that anyone is belittling anyone. However, far too many want to blame others for not getting out of life (whether that's pay, job satisfaction or whatever) what they think they deserve, when often they've sown their own seeds. 

[MattK 3,447]

14 minutes ago, Vince said:

I've no idea of whether other opportunities would have presented themselves, certainly the first decade of my working life would have been different.

How do you automate emptying your domestic bins for example. Could cleaning your office including the toilets and kitchen be easily automated. Every night I go to one of the most technically advanced warehouses in the UK, there are still a couple of hundred people there putting parcels onto belts and taking them off. People doing unskilled, mundane work will be needed for a long time to come. Society isn't all about money, not having the bins emptied would make life a misery, not having the latest, greatest graphics on a computer game makes no significant difference to anybody.

 

Automated commercial/domestic bin cleaning. Could easily be adapted to do emptying, mounted on an autonomous vehicle and job done.

Autonomous office cleaning

There are already dark factories and warehouses (Ocado, Amazon) which are almost full automated.

As I said, the only reason these jobs are done by millions of people is because of the vast, cheap labour pool. If these people had the skills to do other jobs these activities would be automated in an instant.

[DC2 10,240]

 

Surely every bin man, road sweep and warehouse operative (if those are the jobs seen as needing the least qualifications) could learn elementary computer and telephone skills and have a better paid job in customer services or hospitality?

[adonis 1,454]

20 minutes ago, MattK said:

Automated commercial/domestic bin cleaning. Could easily be adapted to do emptying, mounted on an autonomous vehicle and job done.

Autonomous office cleaning

There are already dark factories and warehouses (Ocado, Amazon) which are almost full automated.

As I said, the only reason these jobs are done by millions of people is because of the vast, cheap labour pool. If these people had the skills to do other jobs these activities would be automated in an instant.

I know a few people who work at ocado 

[Blupanther 18,134]

4 minutes ago, DC2 said:

 

Surely every bin man, road sweep and warehouse operative (if those are the jobs seen as needing the least qualifications) could learn elementary computer and telephone skills and have a better paid job in customer services or hospitality?

My old school friend has been a bin man for years and he seems to earn plenty....