Student Debt

I am sorry but this is bollocks. There are jobs literally going everywhere. As a senior person in a £150m t/o civil engineering company, we struggle to recruit everything from apprentices, labourers, technicians, supervisors and managers.

Right and are any of them suitable for short term temporary jobs for students? Are you sure you read my post correctly?
 
Right and are any of them suitable for short term temporary jobs for students? Are you sure you read my post correctly?
What is stopping somebody from writing a letter setting out what they are doing and what they want to do and what they need.

"I am currently doing this, I would like to do this, with a goal towards this...."

It is not rocket science.
 
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What is stopping somebody from writing a letter setting out what they are doing and what they want to do and they they need.

I am currently doing this, I would like to do this, with a goal towards this....

It is not rocket science.
They probably have no idea you are likely to have vacancies. If you want to do something like that start and promote a Talent Pool. Entry level jobs can get 50-60 applicants these days, but obviously there are so many variables and differences between industries, but the employer needs to be at the top of their game too.
 
They probably have no idea you are likely to have vacancies. If you want to do something like that start and promote a Talent Pool. Entry level jobs can get 50-60 applicants these days, but obviously there are so many variables and differences between industries, but the employer needs to be at the top of their game too.
This is in response to people looking for gap filling employment to build up their CV. :)
 
What is stopping somebody from writing a letter setting out what they are doing and what they want to do and what they need.

"I am currently doing this, I would like to do this, with a goal towards this...."

It is not rocket science.

That is precisely what my son has been doing to no avail, but that’s still different to what I was talking about, which was the availability of just temporary manual labour in between terms for the goal of just earning money, let alone the more skilled roles you’re talking about.

To ask again, are the roles you’re talking about by about available to students as a temporary role? If so, great, I’ll dm you for more details!
 
That is precisely what my son has been doing to no avail, but that’s still different to what I was talking about, which was the availability of just temporary manual labour in between terms for the goal of just earning money, let alone the more skilled roles you’re talking about.

To ask again, are the roles you’re talking about by about available to students as a temporary role? If so, great, I’ll dm you for more details!
If a student asks to do a particular role and define the days, weeks, and length they want to do it; And more importantly why they want to do it, then it becomes pretty irrefusable as an employer.
 
If a student asks to do a particular role and define the days, weeks, and length they want to do it; And more importantly why they want to do it, then it becomes pretty irrefusable as an employer.

Unpaid perhaps but I still don’t get how that’s relevant to my initial post about temporary manual labour purely to earn money.
 
Not all students are cut out to do Mechanical Engineering or Chemical Engineering, if you are not naturally gifted in the areas you struggle or even worse fail.

There are lot of fairly generic degrees that cover the same modules that are probably better for the average person. For example economics, and you would cover economics modules on dozens of courses, marketing, law, business, studies, accounts, and vice versa in most cases given options. It used to be you did one of those if you didn't know what to do and didn't want something too difficult to understand.
It's also worth mentioning that it's all well and good saying that these 17 year-olds should have a good idea of what they want to do and make better choices, but actually the course they are eligible to apply for is determined by which A-levels they took. So in reality, people's entire future careers are determined by a decision they made at 15 years-old.

I think it's one of the things we could learn from the American system (and the system in most of the rest of the world, tbh, including the International Baccalaureate, where they have a science stream and a humanities stream, but don't force kids to completely specialize so early). I think a lot of kids, me included, don't really know what they want to do, and end up choosing A-levels on a whim. This may be especially the case for kids who come from families who never went to university and have no experience navigating the whole thing.
 
The other issue I’ve seen is the lack of jobs for young people nowadays while they’re studying, particularly in the breaks. When I was at uni, I was able to earn pretty much every break just doing temporary factory work, which you could get at a days notice. As we don’t make anything anymore, this jobs just don’t exist and everyone is fighting for the same jobs, usually in hospitality.
You've got to do a week of health and safety inductions nowadays to work for any big company. I worked for a university for 7 weeks once, and they said they had to fight really hard to get the H&S training down to 2 days.
 
What is stopping somebody from writing a letter setting out what they are doing and what they want to do and what they need.
Honestly, these days? Bloated online application forms and AI filtering of candidates are two things for starters. In some companies, it's hard to actually get your CV through to a recruiter for them to even look at it. Nothing wrong with trying the speculative route though.

I got my first job at Currys by walking in with a CV in an envelope. It does come across as pretty old-fashioned advice these days, but you never know.
 
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You've got to do a week of health and safety inductions nowadays to work for any big company. I worked for a university for 7 weeks once, and they said they had to fight really hard to get the H&S training down to 2 days.
So true. Back in the day after A levels and when home from Uni I worked for Manchester Parks using a mower to cut grass and in my final year worked in a engineering factory operating an overhead crane on occasions. Never had an accident and had no H&S crap
 
Honestly, these days? Bloated online application forms and AI filtering of candidates are two things for starters. In some companies, it's hard to actually get your CV through to a recruiter for them to even look at it. Nothing wrong with trying the speculative route though.

I got my first job at Currys by walking in with a CV in an envelope. It does come across as pretty old-fashioned advice these days, but you never know.
It honestly means so much more. I have job adverts out for QS roles of various levels all the time and it means so much having a meaningful cover letter than just a spam sent CV through linkedin or indeed, or agencies, or people who think they can just fire out their bog standard CV to everybody expecting a job.
 
Ideal world completely. The issue there is the number of placements, my sons about to go into this third year, is on for a first and wasn’t able to get one so is instead going to start trying for graduate placements after he finishes.

The other issue I’ve seen is the lack of jobs for young people nowadays while they’re studying, particularly in the breaks. When I was at uni, I was able to earn pretty much every break just doing temporary factory work, which you could get at a days notice. As we don’t make anything anymore, this jobs just don’t exist and everyone is fighting for the same jobs, usually in hospitality.
I dont know what field your son is studying at university, but many larger firms are connected via professional institutions and offer summer placements along with year in industry. I know our business has had a lot of success with the IET power academy and a number of them we have gone on to offer full time roles upon graduation. All the large consultancy firms, national grid, Atomic Energy Authority etc all take people in and pay them. We also get them via similar schemes with the ICE (civil engineering institute) and IoP (Institute of Physics).

Likewise for people on finance courses HSBC, Barclays, The Bank of England, Deloitte, KPMG etc all do them.

The only ones that dont seem to be paid are those in medical, sports science or biosciences.

What you wont get is jobs at a days notice, unless you know small family firms that need a bit of help on the side. My lad for a couple of summers, worked for the neighbours accountancy business doing basic data entry and building some automated spreadsheets. Minimum wage but he enjoyed it.
 
It honestly means so much more. I have job adverts out for QS roles of various levels all the time and it means so much having a meaningful cover letter than just a spam sent CV through linkedin or indeed, or agencies, or people who think they can just fire out their bog standard CV to everybody expecting a job.
It probably works better for small and medium businesses. I had my application for my current job tied up with some shite ‘professional services company’ in India for two months as my mate was complaining about all of the shite candidates he had to interview. I was only because I knew a bunch of people at the company that I was able to push them to look into it for me. For anyone else, it would have got lost in the ether. A friend of mine got rejected without interview for a job he literally used to do a year earlier because his application never got past these BS systems they all use now.
 
Reading some of these posts I am glad to be out of the system and retired.
It has never been easy to get placements as a student in order to get experience particularly with smaller firms.
Many applicants do themselves no favours in a very competitive market with appalling CV’s littered with spelling mistakes, poor grammar and look like it’s the 10th they have done that morning.
No name of the firm, not ever dear Sir or Madam.
When I ran my own accountancy practice, with the really bad ones, I used to return them with hand written notes in reds ink pointing out errors and telling them they need to get their CV’s checked out.
My Mrs thought I was being a bit of a twat being so harsh, but in my eyes I was giving up 20 minutes of my chargeable time, rather than just putting them in the bin with no reply.
 
Reading some of these posts I am glad to be out of the system and retired.
It has never been easy to get placements as a student in order to get experience particularly with smaller firms.
Many applicants do themselves no favours in a very competitive market with appalling CV’s littered with spelling mistakes, poor grammar and look like it’s the 10th they have done that morning.
No name of the firm, not ever dear Sir or Madam.
When I ran my own accountancy practice, with the really bad ones, I used to return them with hand written notes in reds ink pointing out errors and telling them they need to get their CV’s checked out.
My Mrs thought I was being a bit of a twat being so harsh, but in my eyes I was giving up 20 minutes of my chargeable time, rather than just putting them in the bin with no reply.
In modern usage it should be CVs not CV’s.

C- Must do better!


;)
 

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