Work

[mim731]

4 hours ago, SuperBacon said:

The job market is an absolute shit show at the moment.

I've honestly never seen anything like it. I've been between jobs since March, and it's horrible out there. Just a proper bloodbath and so much competition for every role in a way I've never seen before. Good luck to everyone hunting, it's just awful currently. 

[SuperBacon]

12 minutes ago, mim731 said:

I've honestly never seen anything like it. I've been between jobs since March, and it's horrible out there. Just a proper bloodbath and so much competition for every role in a way I've never seen before. Good luck to everyone hunting, it's just awful currently. 

Honestly working within employability and actively working with employers to identify their needs, whether thats staff, training, apprenticeships for the last 5 years or so, I have absolutely no idea what employers are looking for the majority of the time. I don't even think they know! 

I'm not smart enough in terms of economics and all that, but I'm convinced* that the advertising of jobs or budget increases for more staff (which don't actually exist) is some tax loophole everyone is doing. Advertise job; can't find anyone "suitable"; absorb that budget saving into team again; find extra budget; advertise job; rinse and fucking repeat.

And they're all so fucking stupid. Without doxing, my organisation made a load of redundancies around this time last year (other departments) and all those people got some absolutely huge packages, and now they're all being taken back on! 😆 (you can't rejoin within a year) Might as well have kept them and got another year out of them.

The other thing is the amount of effort job applications take these days. I fucked one off the other day after it wanted 5000 words (5000!!!) for the application. Someone I know had 4 interviews for the Royal Mail! Something needs to change, from the DWP, to employability programmes to employers to applications to interviews. @burnham you massive pussy, make me a cabinet minister and I'd sort this all out.

 

*Living near Matt Le Tissier for too long is affecting me.

[Tim Healys Chutney Spoon]

To be honest, it wont be getting any better now AI and automation is taking over more and more roles

[gmoney]

Huh, that's an interesting take.

[hallicks]

I’m praying my role survives the current AI mania into the bubble bursting, but once that happens, we’re into the economic downturn to end all downturns, so getting through that intact seems even less likely.

Everything feels incredibly bleak at the moment, I wish all ‘keffer jobseekers the best. 

[Lorne Malvo]

4 hours ago, SuperBacon said:

The other thing is the amount of effort job applications take these days. I fucked one off the other day after it wanted 5000 words (5000!!!) for the application. Someone I know had 4 interviews for the Royal Mail! Something needs to change, from the DWP, to employability programmes to employers to applications to interviews. @burnham you massive pussy, make me a cabinet minister and I'd sort this all out.

I went for a pint with a mate the other day and he was telling me about an interview he'd gone for. The role was for a behaviour specialist in a school, something he's been doing for about 10 years now. He said the interview process is getting more and more ridiculous each time. This time it consisted of;

- Him leading a 15-minute assembly to all of Year 10 about 'respect'

- an unseen data task (40 minutes)

- a 'learner panel' - I'm not sure what this is (20 minutes)

- A safeguarding test (20 minutes)

- a 10 minute presentation on how he would 'lead behaviour' across the school

Then a 45 minute interview to finish off.

And this is only stage 1! I know we want our educators to be thoroughly assessed before they get a job but christ that's a long process.

[deathrey]

A learner panel is where you are interviewed by students. When I interviewed for my last job in a school (2017) it was fairly similar minus the assembly to Year 10. Expecting an interviewee to do that is absolutely wild.

[CTXRussomark]

He had to lead an assembly of actual students before even having the job?  Surely that's all kinds of inappropriate? And how does that even work - the students have to sit through presentations from everyone being interviewed?  Bizarre.

[davertfnewman]

I've seen candidates going for vice principal roles have to deliver assemblies (BADLY) to students. Obviously a group of staff present to monitor behaviour. One guy tried to an inspirational speech about Colonel Sanders and it was painful. The presentations would be to staff, though.

[deathrey]

Exactly, how did they all prep for it?! Were Year 10 out of lessons all day?! That's absolute wildness for a Year 10 class. I can not imagine how that got through safeguarding/no platform policies. The SLT of that school were really throwing balls to the wind

 

Edit: my comment was meant to follow on from @CTXRussomark

Edited October 7 by deathrey

[BomberPat]

On 10/7/2026 at 4:38 PM, Onyx2 said:

Is your part of the academic world unionised? Can you get a rep to support?

We're with Unison, so yeah. This was a regular meeting we've had for the past few weeks, so IMO not the place to bring them into it, but I made it clear that I have no intention of doing the level of work I've just done again, and that I will ensure I have a union rep back me up if we're in the same position next month.

I had to explain the scale of the task to him, and once I was done he asked, "and is that job done for this year now?", and watched his eyes kind of glaze over when I said, "no, we have to do it every month for the next ten months". That's only kind of half true, as the difficult part is done and it gets easier, but he doesn't need to know that.

He's said he will try and have conversations with other department heads about finding some support, and figuring out where certain parts of some jobs could be moved out of our team. I'll believe it when I see it. These are departments who have somehow remained largely untouched by every restructure, who have never learned about any of the changes to other teams, and who somehow are able to dictate which parts of their work they will and won't do (usually meaning the bits they want land on us, without us ever having the option to say, "no, we don't do that"). I don't really believe anything will come of it, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt for now that he's at least trying to support us.

There's a recruitment process in place for a new director, new manager, and two coordinators at my level. But I learned two days ago that we're also losing one manager - the first I heard of it was in the meeting on Wednesday, yet apparently she handed in her notice in August, meaning she's been making a load of decisions that I've disagreed with, that were clearly about making her life easier, and her keeping control of the jobs she liked doing rather than improving the team as a whole, and that entire time she knew she was on her way out. So I'm fuming about that. I also don't think a new director will help - they won't come in knowing our background or what we do, and I expect they will be far more inclined to try and please their higher-ups by promising them the world from us rather than trying to support us and protect our boundaries, which was our former director's stated goal for this year.

I just don't see myself lasting this academic year. It's never been this bad before. 

[Ironic Indie Lad]

Add me to the list of people hating their job at the moment.

My company is one of many who have basically gone "AI will save us money. Lets move ahead with this and worry about it later!". They seem to have binned a bunch of roles off on the assumption that AI will be able to do their jobs, which has failed. Its meant that other people (such as me) have had to absorb more duties into their already very, very stretched working day.

Everyone in my entire department is very behind and extremely stressed. It has led directly to some people leaving and some others going off sick. This has a further domino effect as other people (me again!) need to pick up work in progress for those who have left or are absent. 

Every single day I have much, much more work to do than I can possibly complete. I was briefly logging in early and doing extra work just to try reduce my stress by getting more on top of things. I've since come to my senses and made it clear that this isn't my problem and I wont continue to do this. I've given management plenty of data on how much I am doing every day and how it is completely unmanageable and cannot continue. I've asked them to suggest how to move forward and the answer is basically "we don't have anyone else who can do the work".

I've gotten far better at logging off at 5 sharp and not letting it bother me until 9am comes but I can still feel the stress creeping in. There are plenty of times where I wake up in the middle of the night and my thoughts are about calls I really need to make, emails I need to respond to etc. It's not good.

 

 

 

[DCW]

We're going on strike on Wednesday, unless the government agrees to negotiate and accept discussing pay rise at the beginning of any talks for new public service deal. We've been work to rule since end of September doing no overtime, training or filling in for vacant posts.  I thought government would have coughed by now, but looks like they're going to try and look strong. Reckon that will change when their constituents start complaining about kids being off school etc. 

Good thing to come about from all of this is loads of my younger colleagues who previously had no interest, have joined up and are now participating actively with the union. Great to see. 

[westlondonmist]

My workplace just has a lot of unhappy workers who can't leave. My team was 6 down at one point but it's down to 4 as one position was filled by someone on a fixed term contract (who's original contract ended this month), one more recruited and we will try and fill one more. But we've been at least 4 down for about 12 months. The full team is 16. Another 2 year fixed term will leave next month, so not a vacancy but a smaller team. 

 

We were supposed to be given a draft of our new structure this month. Been told it will be another 12 months. As the council is doing a wider one, which was announced nearly 6 months ago but only now decided to delay. Honestly you do wonder if directors have any idea how workers feel and the unsurity it all brings.

Edited Saturday at 05:56 AM by westlondonmist

[Mr_Danger]

On 10/7/2026 at 5:31 PM, SuperBacon said:

The other thing is the amount of effort job applications take these days. I fucked one off the other day after it wanted 5000 words (5000!!!) for the application. Someone I know had 4 interviews for the Royal Mail! Something needs to change, from the DWP, to employability programmes to employers to applications to interviews. @burnham you massive pussy, make me a cabinet minister and I'd sort this all out.

 

Can’t remember how many interviews it takes for the humble grunt on the street postie roles but it takes a good 6-8 weeks from start to finish I think. The funniest thing is that they don’t stay longer than that either as it’s usually apparent very quickly that the big boy paper round job isn’t as cushy as most people think it is and they can probably earn around the same money packing out pallets of groceries in Aldi. You’d be surprised how many people who have backgrounds in much better, harder jobs can’t do our job. Either physically can’t do it or just can’t in principal as the ask is greater than the reward. This last month and a bit I’ve seen a project manager, ecologist and a policeman roll through the building.