Aegle Limited

20,000 lost banking jobs

According to Unite RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland) have cut 20,000 jobs in the UK since their part nationalisation last year. Yesterday the stricken bank announced a further cut of 3,500 jobs making the total number of jobs lost 20,600 people.

How much of this has been done to appease the baying hounds of the press and how much to try and really cut costs? The problem is these jobs are all low paying back office jobs, not the high paying super salaries of the very people that put RBS into its current perilous position. (more…)

Reading an article “Betrayal of a generation” in the Daily Mail on Monday I am prompted to write again in what seems to be becoming a series about us over 50’s.

The article is written from the viewpoint of recent graduates struggling to find employment whilst saddled with an average debt of £17,500, having little prospect of being able to afford their own property and faced with the prospect of paying for health care and pensions for their parents generation. (more…)

Do social network sites ruin your job prospects?

Germany is considering bringing in a law banning companies form using social networking sites, eg Facebook, to pre-vet potential job applicants reigniting the debate on whether employers have the right to snoop on employees private lives.

Even if this law is passed how can a prospective employee prove that a company has looked at a networking site, seen something they did not like and then rejected his application. (more…)

Have Health and Safety laws damaged the job market

Finally someone with clout is using common sense regarding health and safety laws and the way they are being abused and used to make legal firms and their clients vast amounts of money.

Any one with a modicum of common sense will accept that accidents do happen and compensation should only be paid out where there is real negligence or disregard for safety.

We have all seen some of the excessive pointless signage and packaging warnings that really should not be necessary, for example a sign above washroom taps (marked H) that state “Warning this water may be hot”, that is why I turned it on because it says hot and I want hot water.

Lord Young has been asked to review various H&E laws by David Cameron and to make recommendations next month. We all hope that once the laws have been reviewed and amended to accept people must accept a certain amount of responsibility for their actions.

It would be interesting to know how much money has been spent by firms implementing various H&E procedures and how much money has been paid out in compensation and to legal firms.

With a more common sense approach to H&E laws perhaps kids will be allowed to climb trees again or throw snowballs and my favourite (when I was a kid) the long slide on ice on a cold morning.

BBC reports today of graduates taking internships in China to get some work experience on their CV so that they will stand out from their fellow graduates when applying for jobs.

Apparently there are 69 applicants for every graduate vacancy and employers can afford to choose only the best. Hence it is important that graduates make every effort to illustrate to a prospective employer that they are flexible and adaptable so worth employing.

The same is true for other jobseekers too, far too many unemployed are not prepared to relocate or spend the week away from home in order to secure a new job.

The necessity for social mobility is not new, I am reminded that my 5xGreat Grandfather Alexander Pollock a papermaker in Edinburgh found work in Keighley Yorkshire, Wrexham Wales and Northampton before finding a more permanent position at Darenth Kent where he worked the remaining umpteen years of his life. The difference is that back in the early 19C he would have walked, at least now we have transport.

So the message is widen your horizons, there is a job somewhere….

Why British Graduates are losing jobs to immigrants

We have seen a lot in the press recently about British graduates losing out in the job market to immigrants: the reasons quoted could be a little misleading when  blanket statements are made concerning their education level.

I have no reason to believe that our universities are any worse than other countries universities; in fact I would say that our universities, on the whole, surpass many others. If this was not the case then why are so many foreigners applying to join our top performing universities? We rarely, if ever, see UK students applying to a university in Lahore or Mumbai, even though their standards are very good. (more…)

Graduate recruitment

As recruiters we receive a large number of CV’s from graduates seeking employment, which I have to admit is not our area of expertise, however there are certain factors that we hear countless times that make us write off that particular graduate.

The most off-putting application that we receive is the one that begins with a telephone call from …The graduates mum; “hello I am ringing on behalf of my son who graduated from university with a degree and is seeking employment”. This applicant will go straight into the bin and never even be opened. If the graduate does not have the gumption to pick up a phone then they will not have what it takes to be employed by our clients. (more…)