Should my recently graduated son expect to work 55 hpw for £17500 pa?

Eldest has graduated this summer and is applying for graduate jobs. He has his first interview in a couple of weeks with a multinational car lease company, and it is expected he will work 55 hours a week. Is this normal now amongst big companies, puts him on less than minimum wage which seems wrong.

seems on the wrong side of harsh to me… but a foot in the door I guess.

Competition is high. The questions are, is he willing to do this for the money? and is there anything better out there?

I guess he is on the “apprentice” rate for the first year?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_Time_Directive
Well working time directive would be out the window first.
What exactly do the expect him to be doing for 55hrs a week?

That’s not bad going really, it’s the first rung on the career ladder, work harder paid less at the bottom.

If it is less than minimum wage, and over the working hours limit, it may be illegal, and he needs to think if the long term prospects are worth the short term pain.

Everyone has a degree these days. It doesn’t guarantee you any sort of job any more, let alone a “good” one.

taking the piss.

you dont have to let your self be a doormat to get a job – it screams to me that the job is of the quality that i wouldnt want.

talking as someone who graduated at the start of the recession when everyone put out their no vacancies signs.

FWIW ive opted out of the WTD and i am Expected to work as needed. if my work started being 55hr weeks – id be off looking at a new job ASAP.

The money an WTD directive does not apply to all jobs especially in the UK. What is the job actually advertised as?

Even a graduate has to start at the bottom. Give it 6 months and see where it leads.

A degree doesn’t guarantee a 40k a year job, decent hours and a good boss!

plus, what’s he actually doing? There are plenty of firms who will pay better than that, i’ve just employed a grad for £27K in Essex! (not as a grad, but normal job).

If it is less than minimum wage, and over the working hours limit, it may be illegal, and he needs to think if the long term prospects are worth the short term pain.

And also if he wants to work for a company that treats staff like that!

Everyone has a degree these days.

True. What is his degree in?

“A degree doesn’t guarantee a 40k a year job, decent hours and a good boss!”

your right it doesnt – but it also doesnt give them the right to treat you like a door mat.

if i was in an interview and told i would be “EXPECTED” to work 55hrs a week i would end the interview there – regardless of the money offered.

if i was told “UP TO ” 55hrs a week as required then i would be alot more interested in working for them.

Eldest has graduated this summer and is applying for graduate jobs. He has his first interview in a couple of weeks with a multinational car lease company, and it is expected he will work 55 hours a week. Is this normal now amongst big companies, puts him on less than minimum wage which seems wrong.

If this is what they are saying before he starts, it will be a lot worse in the job.

And also if he wants to work for a company that treats staff like that!

This.

Tell him not to bother with Enterprise, it’s not a real grad scheme, more of a “trainee” scheme. I was offered a place many years ago but within 15 minutes of the start of the assessment centre I knew I didn’t want to work there. Also know a couple of people who did work there and both left within 1-2 years.

Seems shit. I graduated 6 years ago (when things were a bit shit) and got a choice of jobs paying a lot more than that for fewer hours.

I’d be questioning if I wanted to work for a company who had such “expectations”. What if I did everything expected of me in less time? Would I have to sit there for the balance of the “expected” hours? I’m assuming it’s not actually contracted at 55 hpw.

Are you worried about it or is he?

55 hours per week, perhaps with an hour for lunch each day will not trouble WTD. Those are long hours but, in certain industries, not unheard of. If there are good career prospects and the hours are likely to drop then I would do it, if not (and certainly if he has other things in the pipeline) perhaps not. Also, £17.5k is not a bad graduate salary, not brilliant but no horrendous either.

Doesn’t seem too unreasonable for a first job. I did 65 hour weeks when i first started working. The employer can always ask you to opt out of the WTD as well. Although you are not obliged to, they can word it so you would be at a disadvantage if you didn’t

Depends on the prospects of the job; if the job leads on to what your son wants to be doing that follows on from his degree then might be worth it. Given they can offer such terms suggests they’ll be plenty of grads who will accept the terms

Put it this way.

YOU have been offered a new job, 55 hours per week for £17.5K.

If that is in the contract and he’s over 20 then it would be less than the minimum wage. Illegal. Although the company might try to wiggle around that by stating that the contracted hours were 40 and then would “expect” you to do the extra hours for no pay. Or something like that.

You can opt out of WTD but it’s not possible to get out of minimum wage properly
https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/low-pay-commission

Depends on what other options there are. I’d have taken whatever job I could get just to get started as a grad. Once in one it’s easy enough to find a better one.

As above depends where he can go from here. I started with a company that expected a chunk of unpaid overtime. They were a good employer with plenty of help and training available as well as plenty of room for promotions so I was happy to do it. Gave me a good start on the career ladder. I later moved to a company that had a demand for unpaid overtime and offered little support or any training. They really took the pee and I soon left.

I think there are a lot of misconceptions about university graduates, and walking into high paid jobs.

Unfortunately, although you will have the correct training, you won’t have experience to put that training to good use for a year or so. even within each individual company, you have 6 months or so to learn how they do things.

I’ve worked with a lot of graduates, and apprentices. I can honestly say a good apprentice after 3 months does as much meaningful work as a graduate. It takes a few years for the graduate to pull ahead and start putting their knowledge to full use without being helped.

(this is in my industry BTW – design, but I know it’s different for doctors and other more specialist graduates)

It’s a foot on the ladder and he should take it for now, it will be easier to get the real job he wants if he’s already employed.

There are ways around minimum wage that need fixing. If they are on commission they can use it to bump up the wage but next time you have a good week they claw that money back. Its totally crooked but lots of placesd do it.

If it really is the first step on the ladder, and it’s part of an overall decent package, it might be worthwhile. But quite often these things don’t work out that way, we’re getting more and more reports back from graduates that their “starter” role quietly becomes a permanent role with no more than vague promises of progression some day.

£17.5K sounds rubbish for a grad, that’s around what I started on in 2000, nearly 15 years ago!

Run for the hills.

Hmmm… well it’s much worse than I got for a bottom of the ladder sales support job a few years ago straight out of uni so unless the prospects are pretty amazing I’d do something else.

Then again, I don’t think you could pay me enough to make me want to work an extra 20 hours a week.

Then again, I don’t think you could pay me enough to make me want to work an extra 20 hours a week.

This.

He got a 2/1 in politics from Newcastle, so whilst not medicine I would have thought it a reasonably good qualification.
Unknown, it is Enterprise. They have reviews as being a good graduate employer, but from what you say it might be worth giving them a wide berth.
If anyone needs a well presented, articulate ex grammar school bod he is willing to move out of the north west for employment (and I would be extremely grateful if someone could get him to move out :wink:)

They do seem demand ridiculous amounts from young, fresh out of uni, graduates nowadays. One of my mates started at Ernest and Young 2 years ago as an apprentice. He had to sign a waiver to the WTD, and had to be based in London, all whilst paid £18,000 a year. He had no family in London so had to rent which cleaned him out financially. During busy periods he was working 7am til 9:30pm 5 or 6 days a week. He’s sticking with it because at the end of his apprenticeship was a degree from Durham university and a very well paid job.

Another mate was offered a £90k job at another of the big City banks, but was told in the interview to expect to work at least one weekend a month and that he would probably need to bring spare clothes with him a few days a week so that he could shower and change at work. He asked them why would he want to work for someone that pays him so much money and yet gives him no time to enjoy it.

But in response to the OP, it seems par for the course for uni leavers nowadays.

If he doesn’t like the pay/job prospect, could always do what my little brother did, get a PhD and then start 10 years later on just 10k a year more but 10 years behind everyone else at the intake…swings and roundabout

In my previous industry grads typically worked 7.30 until 8-9pm for about 18-20k basic + commission. In London your ability to work like a donkey is directly related to how long you last in your first few roles. Any dissenters got shown the door in a few weeks.

Lemonysam – I’m earning 2/3 what I was on 15 years ago, and that’s after getting my degree. Sometimes life just sucks

“my mates started at Ernest and Young 2 years ago as an apprentice. He had to sign a waiver to the WTD, and had to be based in London, all whilst paid £18,000 a year. He had no family in London so had to rent which cleaned him out financially. During busy periods he was working 7am til 9:30pm 5 or 6 days a week. He’s sticking with it because at the end of his apprenticeship was a degree from Durham university and a very well paid job.”

thats a totally different kettle of fish.

Depends on prospects.

I was earning less than that when I came out of law school and working 50-80 hours a week. I used to then work every Saturday and Sunday in a part time job to pay my monthly rail season ticket to get to work. 2 years without a day off and was more skint than when I was a student. Means to an end though.

could always do what my little brother did, get a PhD and then start 10 years later on just 10k a year more

That was a long PhD!

I’d rather have the OP son’s potential job than none.

I’m very much of the opinion you work to live and not the other way round, so it does concern me that he will have very little time to himself if he takes this or a similar job. However, the job market would appear to be fairly appalling at the moment so half of me thinks he should go for whatever he can. Easier to get another job if already employed apparently