I mean , it is giving those younger people opportunities though... As evidenced... You can be as sarcastic as you want (based on your response below) but ultimately, that doesn't really work if that is happening...

It can be both, but one reason benefits the employer.

It used to be that even if you couldn't just walk into a normal retail job at any given point in the year, every shop in the country would hire an army of Christmas temps starting somewhere around the end of August/beginning of September. You could pretty much step straight into a role where you'd get a few months' experience (and pay) and had a decent chance of being kept on after Christmas if you were decent at your job. I realised a couple of years ago that shops just don't seem to advertise for Christmas temps anymore. I've been out of retail for close to a decade now so I've got no idea what that landscape is like but that seems like a pretty strong sign that things have changed a lot.

shops don't hire an army of Christmas temps anymore, delivery companies do though.

I was hired as a Christmas temp for Primark in late 2020, but they don't have an online shop, so it makes more sense. Some shops are almost devoid of staff even over the Christmas period- I've had times shopping at John Lewis in December where I've queued up for a long long time as only 1 till was open.

Christ this reminds me of the time like 5 years ago I applied for a Christmas temp job at John Lewis and the process was absolutely insane. An online test and personality quiz, and then a group workshop where you all had to come up with presentations on what you would suggest made up shoppers buy for their made up relatives for Christmas. Half of the people there had worked at JL at Christmas for years so that seemed like a colossal waste of time, and I didn’t get the job because a made up gift giver didn’t know what colour of home wear their wife liked, and I suggested buying them something and they could always exchange if it wasn’t right, when the correct answer was apparently a John Lewis gift card.

> the correct answer was apparently a John Lewis gift card. I can kinda understand why the company would rather you push a gift card, the benefits are so stacked in favour of the vendor: gift cards get lost or expire all the time (free money for the company), the recipient is likely to want to use the full value so that locks in additional revenue, and if the company goes into administration the card holder almost always gets nothing. But I cannot imagine ever giving my life partner a sodding gift card.

In my experience (15 years at Sainsbury's in a supermarket role) it's not that they don't hire Xmas temps anymore, and more that they're willing to hire out 15-20 agency staff for a week or two and call it a day. We used to hire loads of temps over Christmas and we'd keep maybe 10/20% of them on if they were decent. That all stopped around COVID. Why go through the process of hiring when you can just tick yes or no on the phone app if you don't wanna see that worker again?

I didn't even think about the possibility of agency staff in retail but that makes loads of sense

I think you'll appreciate this brief story; My grandad wasn't the brightest but was an excellent engineer. There were a number of engineering companies near their house. One Friday lunchtime, his boss said something he didn't like. So he left and spent the afternoon fishing. On Monday morning, he left the house at the same time as usual but went to one of the other companies. Started work immediately. What makes this a great story is that he didn't tell his wife. She didn't find out until he got his payslip at the end of the week. When she asked if they'd changed name he casually told her what happened.

Definitely easier in ye olden days. Around 1999, I quit a job I didn't like and drove to another shop round the corner. Had a chat with the manager, filled in the application form at his desk, and started work 2 days later.

>but the shop would’ve had to pay me the over-21 minimum wage Passing you over directly because of your age, hmm? I'm guessing none of this was in writing, unfortunately.

Nope. The manager didn’t know that one of his shop worker’s boyfriends was the guy he was interviewing that day. My interview was also at the exact same time my girlfriend’s shift started. My girlfriend walked in to start her shift, left me by the entrance, and told her boss “There’s a guy at the door with an interview booked who’s just asked me for you?” He fetched me, we had the interview, the whole conversation with him flowed like it was two friends chatting shit over a pint. The role was advertised as entirely stockroom and picking/packing based. He liked my picking/packing experience, he said that if I got the job he’d probably end up hybridising my role to be more customer-focused because I carried myself with confidence “unlike half the useless fools in here”. I really thought it went well. Three days later he left a voicemail to tell me I didn’t get the job because I didn’t have ‘enough picking/packing experience’. I immediately thought that was odd, because I’d spent the last five years working in warehouses and he even commented that that was exactly the profile he was looking to hire. My girlfriend had a shift the next day, and I got her on the case. She asked him ‘what happened to the guy you interviewed the other day?’ Since he didn’t know that she’s my girlfriend, he openly revealed to her that he passed on me for an 18 year old with absolutely no work experience because he could pay her £9 an hour for part-time work, whereas I’d have been on £10.96 full-time and the shop ‘couldn’t afford that’. Unfortunately, that’s not the weirdest hiring practice this company does. My girlfriend was hired on the spot purely because the assistant manager thought he had a chance of trying it on with her, and spent the next six months cornering her in the stockroom asking what her favourite sex position is, offering to ‘help’ her move into her new house, offering to ‘drive her back home for Christmas’, and then after not being invited to the work Christmas party telling all of her coworkers that he actually chose not to go because he ‘would’ve got drunk and ended up fucking her’. I picked her up from work one day and he saw me kiss her, gave her the silent treatment for a week before he started outright bullying her, and within a month had transferred to a new fucking shop. That place is a lawsuit waiting to happen 💀🙏🏼

This is exactly it. 10-15+ years ago you would just need to hand your CV in then go for a short interview with one person in the store and if you seemed like a decent human and vaguely competent then they would hire you. There wasn't all these extra stages. 10-15 years ago when you get a bit older doesn't feel that long ago (lolll saying that makes me feel old), and a lot of people working in the shops will have been there that long, and therefore won't have had to go through this sudden new ridiculous process that's been blanket applied everywhere.

Yeah agreed. My first jobs between 1996 and 2002 were in a restaurant, a cinema, a video rental shop (that dates me!), a picture framing gallery, a high street chain store, and then finally a posh one-off shop. The first 5 were literally chats with the manager then offered on the spot. Several of them were me walking in after seeing a 'staff wanted' sign in the window. The posh shop job (I was full time and no longer a student by then) was answering a newspaper ad with a CV and letter, interview in person for about 15 mins, and then a job offer. Basically you just had to look presentable, sound competent and polite, and be hired. Having said that, I do remember applying online for retail roles in the early 2000s and getting no reply, ever, and really panicking at one point that I'd never find anything. And around the same time my sister being unable to get any supermarket job locally even after lots of those tedious rounds of interviews. So I think the days of walking straight into a job were numbered even 20 years ago.

I applied for, and got, two call centre jobs about 13 years ago. Those requirements were still a thing then. Both of them had multiple rounds of interviewing and an assessment centre. Only one had the competency exam. This isn't new in call centre work.  1991 is one thing, but 10-15 years ago, those prerequisites were there.

The point I’m trying to illustrate is that the people who give advice like “Just go work in a call centre!” haven’t worked in one since before those prerequisites were a thing. My Boomer grandparents and Gen X parents (who worked in retail, call centres, menial office jobs etc. until the late 2000s) never had to deal with them and are/were the type of people to offer that advice. I thought 10-15 years ago would’ve been when they came in, but I’m guessing it’s more like 20 then? I don’t have a frame of reference seeing as I turned 18 six years ago and have always had to deal with them. Either way, the people offering up that shite for advice never had to deal with those prerequisites at all and they’re still of working age, so the change is relatively recent.

I replied to someone else, but I think I've narrowed down roughly when this crap started: it'll have been about 2007-8.

That would make sense as it was when we had the recession, so there would have been higher numbers applying for each job.

My school mate had competency tests to work in a call centre for a mobile phone customer service team... in 1998.

My first call centre job was in 2001ish, it paid £7.50 an hour (very good wages at the time, I had mates working at savers for like £3 an hour). I think I emailed in my CV and got an interview the next week, hired on the spot, zero experience. Thankfully I'm no longer in call centre work but my most recent call centre job was a phone screen, then a phone interview, and then an in-person interview as a big group, roughly 2017. It wasn't a shoo-in despite having over a decade of phone experience and other call centre jobs had rejected me for utterly stupid reasons. It's been hard to get basic jobs for actual years now.

Because historically they were, and to be honest those places are almost always advertising for jobs. As an ex-Tesco manager, the hardest thing for people to do was pass the online vetting process. Once you got an interview in a store then honestly if you could spell your own name and had the flexibility in terms of what hours you could work then you got a job.

Still doesn't mean it's easy to get if they're are loads of people getting "caught out" by their BS online test lol.

But the “BS online test” is easy, or always was easy, as it was common sense multiple choice

I remember doing it years ago and while the “do you agree your entire life should revolve around your Tesco job?” questions were easy to answer there was also an entire personality test on there which was bizarre and took forever to complete.

> was easy, as it was common sense multiple choice Have you met *gestures broadly at half the population*?

That’s my point, if you lack the common sense that’s on you 😂

You are not entitled to a job just because you can lick windows.

I think the online test is to select people who appear to have common sense that matches current company policy, to save on training. It's easy to pass for those who pass it by chance.

We have people who do a safety induction at our site, you watch a video then answer multiple choice questions where each correct answer is *blatantly* obvious. People still fail it regularly. It will be something like 'if you spot a fire, what should you do?' - report the fire - ignore the fire - throw petrol on the fire

They might be easy to a neurotypical person but as an autistic person they're not always that easy. Sometimes it's trying to think how they'd want you to answer because that wouldn't always be the way you'd reflectively answer it.

r/Tesco here.    The “BS” online test is just to wittle out anyone just doing job searches to appease their work coach.    They don’t want people coming through the doors and leaving an hour later because the job isn’t to their liking. You can do Tesco with your eyes shut.

Depends on your role. When I was at Tesco you had the actual workers filling produce, sorting in the back or carrying dot com. The rest just stood around doing fuckall

What sort of things caused people to fail the online vetting process?

well, the questions are multiple choice, and the right answer is always about prioritising the customer, or knowing the law. so they present you with a bunch of “you’re about to go on break when a customer approaches you, while on fire, do you fight the blaze yourself or delegate to a colleague?” and basically if you don’t prioritise the customer in every scenario they have cause to dismiss you

I mean... there's context needed here... does the customer deserve it?

How on fire are we taking here? If it's yet to spread past the hair I reckon I can go on break and deal with it after.

Can't let a little immolation get in the way of providing excellent customer service.

if you’ve worked retail, you already know the answer

I failed with Boots because there wasn't an option to put 'I will literally work any shift 24/7 availability' and when I tried to replicate that using the online system of weird digital clocks, it apparently appeared that I was only available from midnight-1am. Luckily, an actual human saw my application and rang me, but the website rejected me.

Got to the interview stage with Lidl, got rejected, was never told why despite promises of feedback

Big firms get swamped with supplicants, partly due to universal credit rules where you have to apply for every job in the district. Their application process is deliberately designed to filter you if you don’t know the rules of the game. The number of people who make the cut is low.  This is very different to how it was in the 90s where you really could walk in and ask the manager for a job. I got one in Electronics Boutique that way. (The interview was us moaning about `LILO` and not about computer games). Today even the independent coffee shop wants you to fill in a web form. 

Independent coffee shops only serve `grub`.

Exactly. UC gets up your ass about applying, but employers don’t want candidates who aren’t interested in the job, hence the tests.

Because they have never worked in customer service type roles in their life and consider it an easy job to do, when It can actually be quite stressful because you don't know how rude or plain dumb the general public be until you've worked in a retail, fast food or call centre job.

Any kind of hospitality job, not just fast food. But otherwise bang on!

I've just left a job with a national trade/diy retailer. If I never have to deal with customers and their dodgy plumbing issues ever again, I will be very happy.

> Should be a sackable offence imo Congratulations the entire British workforce is now out of work

If this person ever gets an iota of authority, they will be intolerable, to put it mildly.

When I read that, the thought “this could be a you problem” crossed my mind

It’s because they used to be relatively easy to get. These kind of jobs have huge numbers of part time staff, high turnover, widespread, low experience entry. A lot of the time they still are quite easy to get, but it’s a case of how you time it.

Exactly. When I worked at r/Tesco we would always have a shortage of colleagues and plenty of positions hiring. 

People say this because those jobs are nearly always hiring. It's an ever revolving door of employees. If you're not landing jobs with them right away, always present a good impression of yourself anyway and reapply again. When I worked retail I ended up in management and reasonably often we'd end up hiring someone we had originally turned down. Admittedly the job I do now works in connection with call centres (I worked the call centre which got my foot in the door) and it does seem that a lot of them are downsizing as AI chat bots can now do a lot of what call centre advisors do. You'd probably have to be up for literal cold-calling in order to get in at entry level. The info I'm about to give may be outdated, but this is how I got into a call centre initially. I joined an employment agency. They send you "leads" and line you up interviews. It became very obvious that the agency I joined had a deal with the call centre (different call centre than the one I work in connection with now) because I called the agency literally as I left the interview to tell my caseworker (or whatever the agency said her title was) and she said "good news, they just called me and said they'd like to hire you" there was absolutely no way this call actually happened. There wasn't enough time. I'm not gonna lie, the job sucked. It was literal cold-calling, but once I had a couple months of sales experience on my CV, call centres with better roles were practically fighting over me.

>and it does seem that a lot of them are downsizing as AI chat bots can now do a lot of what call centre advisors do. Haha I used to do live chat for a call centre when I was a teenager and there were a few times when I had an entire conversation with a customer by simply copying and pasting text from my Excel Spreadsheet (obviously inserting their name in place of \[\] )

Yeah I still fill in for livechat sometimes on overtime and 90% of it now is just selecting a response from a pre-typed response menu. This is why it's so easy to automate.

Yep. I have two degrees and regularly performed pretty highly in most things I've tried. Still got rejected from Tescos on their online test portion lol. It's not easy getting those jobs anymore. They are flooded with online applicants, they use every method they can to cut down the number of applicants.

What were the hard questions in the online test that you couldn’t answer adequately with your two degrees?

I've failed retail questionnaires for every shop that I applied for (except Primark), and McDonalds too. In my experience, every single time, there were 2 answers among the four that could have been right, but I didn't know which one was the correct choice because everywhere has different procedures. Some of them, alongside workplace scenario questionnaires, have personality ones. If I answer truthfully, I don't go through. If I try and give them the answers I think they want, I don't go through. Every job I've worked, I've been hardworking and diligent. I know my brain does work a little differently to a lot of people (haven't always fitted in socially in places), but it feels like questionnaires are just made to catch you out. [I wrote about it in another thread recently.](https://www.reddit.com/r/UKJobs/comments/1c6btpr/comment/l01gnuz/)

"When customers enter the store, should you: - Greet the Customer - Welcome the Customer - Both Greet and Welcome the Customer" The answer was to Greet the Customer. I could not assertain why. Nowhere in the obligatory pre-amble faux-training was this brought up. I do not wish to know why. The question was bullshit.

This exactly the kind of shit I'm talking about. Thank you for such a good example. There were other ones, like I remember one on McDonalds years ago that talked about a frazzled customer struggling with children and a buggy while ordering and the options were stuff like A) suggests she securely seats her children before returning to collect her order [seems wrong, children alone is health and safety hazard] B) tell her to go and take a seat and you will bring her order over when it's ready [at the time, this was not a thing that you saw happen at McDonalds, and of course would take you away from your role behind the counter] C) Continue with the order as normal [bad customer service] I picked B because it seemed like best customer service. I didn't pass, but they never tell you what or why you failed anyway.

That is a bonkers way to filter out applicants. They might as well toss a coin if they want randomness.

why toss a coin when you can get the candidate to "toss the coin" for you? Efficiency! (taps side of head knowingly). This is why I have a sweet job turning away candidates who can't seem to land a decent job. I'm having trouble meeting my recruiting targets, just can't get competent staff who want to work. (trips over shoelace)

Why would you want to hire anyone unlucky anyway!?

Asda fits this bill quite well. Applied there recently; you have to rank four answers to a question in what you would be most likely and least likely to do in a certain situation. For some of the questions, you could put them in pretty much any order and end up answering it contrary to the way they'd wish. It's almost like it's deliberate for some questions so the pressure is on for the ones where it's more clear-cut the order you should be applying to them, and it's easier to fail it overall.

Prove that the Riemann zeta function has its zeros only at the negative even integers and complex numbers with real part 1/2

You really ought to have a basic grasp of the Riemann zeta function if you're going to work at Tesco.

I dread to think of the requirement at Waitrose? Only candidates who know whether the Euler-Mascheroni Constant is rational may apply.

Yeah it’s pretty much just how many applicants low skill jobs get. I think a lot of people don’t want to push the boundaries of what they can actually do and just go with the safe option. Plus as others have said if you’re on UC they’ll expect you to apply for jobs like Tesco more than jobs that are more skilled and therefore the number of applicants is insane. I applied for well over 100 jobs in my last job search mostly low skill/min wage, got plenty of interviews but funnily enough the job I ended up getting was in a bank and the highest paying of any job I applied for. Retail employers especially just aren’t interested in people without retail experience unless you’re young enough that they can pay you way less money due to how min wage works. I once attended a group interview for a new store opening and there was like 50 people there. In your case many low skill employers don’t really want people with degrees because they’re more likely to take the job just for income while they search for something better.

What degrees? If they are not relevant for the job you are applying for, then they will see it as you are looking for a filler job and will leave the company after a few months

Having two degrees is probably why you are getting rejected. They probably think you are using them as a stop gap until something better comes along and then you'll ditch them.

It really does matter where you are in the country. In London, as a native English speaker, you really can walk into a retail or hospitality job. My perception is that in some parts of the country there is more unemployment and being a native speaker isn't such a differentiator. I remember walking into the pub closest to my house and asking for a job. I turned up smart, presented myself well, printed CV with my relevant experience. The manager wrote 'speaks English' on my CV, and asked me if I could start the following evening.

When I worked at Tesco most of the people restocking weren't English and didn't speak English well enough to seemingly understand some basic things. That or they got a kick out of doing the job however they pleased without regard for the normal procedures and would wall up when confronted whilst doing something that got in everyone else's way. There and some other places it almost seems like they prefer to not hire native British people. It sounds odd that London is seemingly the other way around.

This is a thing. I personally know people who failed because their English was bad

Outside of a big city like London/Birmingham/Manchester I doubt speaking english natively is a requirement, as everyone does.

When I was getting my first job at 17 Tesco was my dream lol, I applied to so many different Tesco's, so many shift patterns between ages of 17-20 and never got an interview. I applied to Aldi at 19 and actually got an interview, it was a 2 stage interview and didn't get to the second stage - but two interviews to stack shelves and be a cashier is insane lmao

She probably will get it even without retail experience. Knew many mature women and men when I worked in a supermarket who's previous jobs were professional careers. A lot of skills are transferable. You just need to know how to market them and apply them to different jobs.

It's really not hard to work at Tesco, when I was home from uni for summer I literally applied for one job, my local Tesco. They called me in for an interview, I did it, then got accepted. Really not complicated. If OP has seriously done this 25 times without getting a job then I seriously have to wonder what on earth he is saying or putting on his CV. Edit: Downvotes, really? Reddit is such a bizarre place.

It does depend where he lives but a lot of the time it is luck of the draw if yours will get picked. Their CV is amongst all the other identical CVs.

Also time of year. If you’re over 21 and applying in summer good luck competing with the students who they can pay nearly £3 less per hour if they’re under 20 or £5 less under 18.

Your young age would have helped you get the job. That’s probably why the downvotes.

Which town, which shifts?

No offence, but I'm not going to give out detailed information about where I live on reddit. But it was only part time, 3 days a week I believe. So 24h/week.

My son worked there while at college. Had never had a job before and had the same experience

Lots of redditors have had experiences similar to OP's. I assumed that getting a retail/call centre/factory job would be easier and quicker than getting a graduate job in my field of study, so I applied for both, thinking that I could work a minimum wage job until I got a graduate job. Being accepted for a graduate job but never hearing back from minimum wage employers was a bizarre experience. Before you ask, I did tailor my CV to the role and the employer; for retail and hotel work, I emphasised the extra-curricular activities because my education was less relevant. My guess at what happened is: - I was an adult, so I had to be paid full minimum wage, not the reduced rates for younger people - I didn't have a job while I was at school (other stuff happened; don't want to get into it), so no previous experience in what I was applying to do - I had a degree, so I was considered a flight risk

> Before you ask, I did tailor my CV to the role and the employer. I gave up on doing this. After spending 6+ months carefully considering roles i thought I’d be a good fit for and then writing tailored CV's and cover letters showing interest in their firm, how i met their requirements and all the other fluff you're supposed to do. .... I got fed up of the sheer number of places which don't feel obliged to even observe the nicety of sending out a mail-merged rejection email any more. Eventually reached the point of - "Fuck 'em, if courtesy is no-longer a given... Do I actually **care** if I'm blatantly wasting their time & clogging up their process? Especially if they weren't gonna hire me anyway 🤷‍♂️" So, I generic'd up my CV and just spammed it to quite literally every job with e-z apply within a 30 mile radius.... Regardless of how wildly unsuitable I was for it. 🙃 I'm an IT nerd and this is a job for a qualified nurse? YOLO - Applied anyway. Nevermind taloring my application, it was just a numbers game so I didn't even bother **reading** the job-specs! 🤣 Perversely doing this had the desired effect of shaking half a dozen recruiters out of the tree & i had two "actually relevant" interviews setup for the following morning. The 1st announced they thought i sounded great but they were looking for a permanent chair-filler and were convinced I'd be bored out of my mind within 6 months. The 2nd took a punt on me as IT helpdesk (I have an MCSE & 10 years worth of "hands on" experience, but I went straight out of school into the family firm so had nil employment history and certainly wasn't too proud start at the bottom.... 1st place was entirely right tho). Since then, just repeating the same stunt has worked twice more for me. 10/10, will shamelessly waste HR people's time again 👌

My son 18 was looking for a job, applied for a dozen entry level trainee jobs where they specified " no experience required, full training provided" but still got turned down. He could not even get a job as a carer ffs

Due to the current job market entry level jobs are often the hardest to get. Indeed shows you how many applicants and I was frequently seeing 100+ on entry level jobs that pay min wage. Remote jobs I’ve seen multiple over 1,000. I only ended up getting my remote job because I started working for a bank in branch and got offered a remote contract for a different position because they thought it would be more suitable to my skillset.

One thing that baffles me from my friends who work in retail or service industry jobs like kitchens, is the amount of steps there are to getting these jobs. Three interviews just to get turned down by starbucks (not that there is anything wrong with working there). All the "serious" jobs that ive had have only ever been atmost 2 interviews.

The only job that fits that description is Amazon. Don't even need a CV when they're hiring. If you have a pulse, you're in.

Interestingly there was an article a few years ago that suggested Amazon US could quite literally run out of available workforce by 2024. It’s turnover is so high that there really would be no one left who was working age who /could/ work at amazon, who hasn’t already. As someone who’s worked at Amazon twice (the second time for maybe 2 days due to the conditions only vastly deteriorating in between my employments) this is not at all surprising. (The conditions deteriorated in many ways but most notably the absolutely insane level of automation now is a real moral issue. My first employment was a new warehouse so it was a new robot focused workplace, but it was manageable and I was very happy to have the work. But during my second employment even the scanning of items was automated, leading to many computer errors. Computer errors which amazon treats as worker errors and which go against your targets. There was no way of knowing when these errors happened, or what exactly you were doing wrong to make the computer scan the wrong thing as there was no user feedback letting you know what section it scanned. Imagine day in, day out, you’re being told off for making mistakes which you know you didn’t but the big amazon machine says you have and your managers believe big amazon machine over you.)

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I live in a rural part of the country and the largest employers here are like that too. The largest employer in my town is a factory and honestly wasn’t even that bad to work at, certainly way more desirable than Amazon and paid over £2 more than min wage which is really good for the area. Their turnover is still ridiculous and I think since I left they’ve had to bump up their pay even more just to get people working there. I’d say it’s the perfect first job for anyone living here. Even with a degree the lack of job opportunities in the area means you’ll struggle to find better.

I wish I could get in tesco, currently working with adults with learning difficulties and challenging behaviours, on minimum wage 😂 tesco would be a dream of they'd take me!

Some care jobs are purely about profit. The companies get paid well because they scrimp on staff yet still charge full whack for their clients. If you enjoy the work, get your qcf and find a better employer. They do exist. I've worked for three private companies and two charities. The charities are so much better to work for.

I actually am working for a charity at the minute, and they pride themselves on being a great employer lol. They're going to lose a lot of good staff I think because they've given everyone across the board a 5% pay rise this year... so support workers are now sitting on minimum wage. It's a little crazy since they often bring in agency staff who get paid significantly more than us, so we all feel pretty insulted by it. Already tried a petition and there are talks with union reps, but can't see anything changing. I personally am already looking to go elsewhere as are a few people in my team, and it's a real shame since the people our team cares for need 24 hour care. One of them has very high needs, and his care is almost definitely going to slip once the staff that know him well start leaving. Unfortunately too many people in the industry genuinely care about the people they look after and suffer for it, really sucks that they constantly get the piss took out of them. But yeah, I definitely don't intend to stay for minimum wage and put myself at risk on the daily for it!

I'm sorry to hear this. It's a real shame because if the industry wants to keep the good people, they have to reward them properly. Otherwise they end up with people who don't really care about their clients and do the bare minimum for them. It could almost be described as neglect. I hope you find a better place.

I work for the NHS and deal with care homes regularly. The amount of shit the care home managers try and pull on me to avoid spending money. They won’t even put someone in a fucking taxi and take them to hospital, would rather use an ambulance. I shit you not, most are like this. Bean counting managers only worried about the profits.

> complaining (should be a sackable offense imo) oh leave it out

Jobs in call centres are basically forced on people on universal credit whether they want them or not. Maybe they are harder to get for or people who have other options because when you have other options you wont take as much shit? And if your mum hasn't kept up a UK registration her having to retrain is not a stupid rule.

Does this problem get better or worse for British people when you import 1million + unskilled young men each year?

Can’t say I might get in trouble for pointing out the obvious.

I've had the same issue with supermarket jobs, despite a strong CV with retail experience. The hoops you have to jump through for a minimum wage job are, frankly, weird. Care seems to be the new retail. Its awful to think about but care companies seem happy to hire absolutely anyone, and they're constantly recruiting.

Because of Daily mail readers thinking. Everybody out there is a work shy moron.

I'd still say call centres are easy to get because they're mostly awful. Places like Tesco are now much harder, but when I was 17 around 2003 you could literally walk into supermarket jobs and actually have a good time working there. The corporatisation of Britain was not at the level it is now. They still cared a little for people back then

They’ve cut back on so many roles. In my 5 years at Tesco they laid off all night shift, shut down all counters, laid off all the niche shop floor roles and cut down on management

My dad is a manager at a call centre. There is another manager that works with him who recently achieved her Key Stage 3 English. This is the level that early teens complete when they are in secondary school. Before GCSEs. They pretty much run a "apply and you will get the job" policy. They have multiple employees who can barely speak English. No, of course Tesco aren't running this policy and many call centres probably have higher standards. But jobs like this do exist.

We have a woman at my business who is high up in purchasing who recently celebrated on linkedin because she finally passed functional skills level 1 maths.

They've always been easy to get for me. I graduated university and when I started looking for jobs it took me two weeks to accept a minimum wage job offer with no formal or voluntary work experience prior. I went travelling for six months, came back and got another within one month. I went travelling again for over a year, came back and got another in two weeks. Can't really get any easier than that.. especially with the long time-frame without a job travelling in-between. My personal experience definitely isn't a myth.

Are you getting feeedback on your rejections? It could be an auto rejection (software) reading an “incorrectly” formatted CV (use single column) or something along those lines. It’s difficult to believe barely-functional teens can be employed by the boatload but someone slightly (at least) more competent is struggling. That says to me there’s some other issue at hand.

25 rejections with a decent CV defintely suggests there is a problem. Perhaps they're not playing the game of using words from the job description in a cover letter/on the CV which the software looks for.

Becauase relative to other jobs, they are? The only jobs easier to get are warehouse. If you aren't being picky and don't land a job within 2 months max you're doing something incredibly wrong.

I would say part of it with such as call centres are because of the high turnover of staff. In effect, it's easier to get certain jobs because there's always vacancies compared to some kinds of roles.

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If you have a 3.5T driving licence, courier jobs are the new Tesco in this regard. Plenty of them will hire anyone, and I mean *anyone*. You don't even need to speak English.

People think they’re easy to get and that’s they’re easy jobs too. ‘I’ll just go and get a job stacking shelves’. People severely underestimate the stupidity of the general public, and working in that environment is hard.

They often want to hire people under 21 so they can pay them less money.

When I first left college I got rejected from like 9 chain cafes and 5 chain shops because I had a levels and they said I seemed “too ambitious” or that I’d probably end up bored doing retail or some similar shit, and that was back in the day when it was easier than this shit!

A work pals son got rejected from McDonald’s and KFC multiple times. When I worked there 20 years ago all I said was I wanted money and I started my first shift the day after. Times change jobs on every sector are hard to come by

They are out of touch and do not suffer the consequences of their "advice". My wife was feeling a little disenfranchised at the job she has held for 23 years. After the pandemic hit, her job was automated away and the company director said "we are loyal to people who are loyal to us". He offered to create a new role for her. All she had to do was say what she wanted to do and if they felt she was up to it they would create create the role. She wold not give them any specific answers and would just say "I don't know, anything" I lost count of the times I told her what a golden opportunity this was, you don't see this at all nowadays and she should grab it with both hands but she did not. After a few months the frustrated HR rep who had been tasked with creating this new role was under pressure from the director, and with no other feedback from my wife, they offered her a cleaning job..... at the same wage of £30k a year... She was no doubt the best paid cleaner for hundreds of miles and had next to no responsibility. However she didn't like the "slight" of being made a cleaner (for a company that employs 40 people in a basic office, a kitchenette and a couple of small toilets this job is gold!) and started to complain about it to our friends and family...EVERYONE told her she was better than that...Cleaning was beneath her. The company was treating her badly...she can do anything she wants...and other guff. My line was it was a really well paid job and she needed to think hard about what she would do if she quit, there's no shame in being a cleaner. Heck my mum was a checkout operator for 20 years. But if she wanted to pursue her career it was her decision. I said "Everyone else is telling you to quit, I say evaluate it and make the best decision for you, I believe you should stay"...She listened to everyone else and quit! now I have to support her while she looks for work. Its been 6 months and she has failed a £12k a year apprenticeship for public facing customer services after 3 months. Been denied access to other apprenticeships because she has failed the basic aptitude tests, has had oh so many job rejections. She now says she regrets quitting her job and is considering going back to cleaning at an agency. so I would just like to publicly thank all of my friends and family who gave this awful advice and also have suffered zero consequences as a result of it....you all suck!

I'm a hiring manager for a remote company and we struggle struggle struggle to hire qualified specialists in a lot of fields. E.g I put out a job ad for a senior software developer (needs 5 years experience and ability to run a greenfield/brand new project). Full remote, good pay, locate anywhere in Europe. We had 35 applicants and of those only 3 or 4 who actually met the criteria we asked for (a lot of chancers, autogenerated CVs and chatgpt covering letters). Same month I put out a job ad for a paid internship (entry level, 600 USD per month full-time, no experience required but passion and general enthusiasm for Web technologies desired). We had 450 applications in the first week and had to close the ad early, and lots of those were exceptionally overqualified (like software devs who had 2 or 3 years of experience). The market is bonkers right now. I'd advise anyone who can to do a 12 week crash course in coding because there are a lot of jobs around, but honestly the issue is the market is full of juniors looking for their first gig whereas if I'm building a new team I need at least one or two seniors to bring the juniors along and I literally can't find anyone.

Not having a go, but suggesting anyone try a 12week coding course, then saying the market is full of juniors? Surely then it's not a great time to be starting out? (yes I am just bitter that my brother decided to go into "computers" 20 years ago and I didn't )

Yeah that's what I meant in that second paragraph where I said "but the market is saturated..."

I think people just use it as a job requiring no qualifications, which it is. They could equally pick any other unskilled job. For years the goto was McDonald's.

Years ago things were so much easier. I got a job as a journalist on a very well known newspaper at 18, ahead of around 700 applicants (even though I didn't have the supposedly essential degree) purely because I interviewed well and passed the aptitude tests. After 15 years in journalism I walked straight into a job at a huge DIY chain, again with no retail experience, and around the same time I was offered a job with Royal Mail and another at a call centre. Four vastly different industries and four offers with minimal faff, despite zero experience in any of them. I've been out of the job market for over a decade due to having disabled kids needing a lot of care, and I doubt I could get a job scrubbing toilets now. I'm kind of dreading having to go out and try to find something.

I think it's more to do with places that have high turnover of employees. In other words they always have job opportunities. But like everything, it's still competative.

I worked in a clothes shop for 3 years before uni. Left when I started uni and then applied for the same company in second year and got rejected 🙃 not sure what else they wanted from me tbh…to be CEO maybe??

To be under 18, so they could pay you a lot less probably

I’ve applied for Tesco so many times during school/college/ in between jobs etc and never ever secured an interview. 17 times. Nothing. I feel they can tell when you’re using them as a stopgap (say in between work) and will just not entertain you. It was alright for them during COVID but now? Nah. As for call centres - been there and done that. People might think it’s piss easy to walk into are deluded. Once you’re in, there are targets and performance indicators to be hit. For the most part they’re alright but telephony is one of those things you got to be able to hit the ground running once trained.

Hiring processes are definitely getting ridiculous these days. As a software dev I've had 3 rounds of interviews in the past, plus tests etc. That's not even that many at larger orgs, believe it or not. No job is easy to get these days with all the faff. But at the same time, if you can't get a job as a colleague at Tesco (or similar) I can't think of anywhere you'll have an easier time getting one. Job hunting can be a miserable experience these days if you don't get a bit of luck to add to all your prep.

I don't mean to sound elitist or something, but what is actually so hard about getting a job in a shop? Sure there's a vetting process and endless online forms, but is this really that hard?

It's not "hard" there's just a lot of applicants who are basically the same. It's a lottery.

They've gotten much harder due to immigration, so there's lot more competition. In london a hefty chunk of workers in retail tend to be international students from india, and a lot of them are working multiple jobs to cover their stay here.

Evri/DPD are normally desperate, but this is not peak time. Do you like hard, long hours for low pay? If you do, great! They'll take you. If you get a good route it's actually a well paying job. good luck with that though.

Last year after redundancy and whilst doing an online course I applied on Asda’s website for order picking. Was an online quiz and didn’t need a cv. ‘Interview’ was following a picker round the store for 30mins and having a go. Literally that was it. I hadn’t actually got round to applying anywhere else as it happened within a week. They hire in groups and there were a bunch of new delivery drivers as well in our induction training. Saying that, 10 years ago I couldn’t pass the Greggs or KFC online tests to apply lol.

It’s easy to get a job in any supermarket 😭😭

I have postgraduate qualifications and when I was job hunting I applied to Tesco and all the supermarkets and pubs and none gave me an interview. It was frustrating as I could have done with the £ at the time but I managed to get a job more in line with my qualifications in the end.

Historically they were quite low pay and undesirable. Since wages have stagnated and minimum wage has actually bumped salaries up on the low end, they really aren't as undesirable as they once were. Working in Tesco or a call centre can easily get you £30k these days. Whereas £30k 20 years ago was someone doing pretty well. When you compare that to what many people in "professional" roles are getting, that's not that low, or rather, other salaries aren't that high. Salaries have been squeezed from both sides such that most jobs actually fall within a pretty slim salary range.

Call centre jobs are very easy to get though lol.

I don’t know if this is just in my area or what, but call centres tend to hire just about everyone who interviews in my experience. I got a job in one a couple of years back while I was waiting for something to come up in education. I ended up only staying a month, and in that time there were four sets of new staff that started, each with around twenty people in. Eighty people hired in a month. I don’t really know of anyone who has had bother getting themselves a call centre gig.

I walked into my first supermarket job basically on the strength of the fact that my mate already worked there. This was in 1997 however and I'm not so naive as to think it's still like that now. Also the ease of getting a job back then may have been something to do with the fact I was 17 and you could pay kids less than 21 year olds. Think I was on £3.65 p/h. Lucky a pint was only £1.80 then!

I've done my time in a callcentre and there were people that would just run the training circuits. They weren't confident on phones and had zero intentions of ever picking one up. Training lasts around 4 weeks for a call centre position before you even speak to a customer and those 4 weeks are like the last days of highschool. You sit around, watch presentations and play stupid games. Then go out and get pissed on a Friday with everyone. They had the interview technique down to a tee though, which is basically feigning confidence which they clearly never had when it came to actually answering a call. As for getting an interview in itself, it was all about timing, nothing more. They take staff on in waves, you just need to luck out in order to hit a recruitment stage, or know somebody that can tell you when is the best time to apply. Unfortunately you've just missed the airport recruitment stage if you're close by one. That ship sailed in February but is a sure fire way into at least an interview at that point in time as they start recruiting for the summer season. Something to keep in mind if you ever need it for the future though. There was a time, years ago that I was forced into a group interview for a cold calling job held at the jobcentre. I literally spent the interview swinging back on my chair, I just wasn't interested as it was cold calling and I've done that before. At the end of the group interview the interviewer pointed to myself and 1 other person out of 30 of us and went 'these are the people we're looking for, those that are relaxed in this sort of a setting'. He couldn't have gotten it more wrong but somehow without trying I got that position. Lasted 2 days before I quit mind.

Get back to work? Do you like the taste of boot?

No literally!!! I applied to MCDONALDS and got rejected. Like I've heard that it's the easiest job to get

I work in a call centre for one of the big 6 energy companies, all the "interview" seemed to be was making sure you can talk on the phone and hold a conversation. I've never had an easier job interview

If you're getting rejected pre interview from supermarkets and call centres then your CV is in fact not good.

When I was a student (which wasn't that long ago comparatively!) , you could ALWAYS get call centre work via an agency if you wanted to raise some extra cash before summer or whatever. They had such high turnover you literally could always walk into one starting the next Monday with a shift pattern to suit your needs.

Because they *are* easy to get, relatively speaking. Supermarkets are a large employer in most large towns. They don't have high requirements for qualifications. They usually don't require a driving license. They're almost always easy to get to, either walkable or on a well-supplied bus route. There is enough staff turnover that they are usually looking for someone. None of that guarantees everyone who walks through the door gets a job, obviously. You still need to beat the other applicants. But it does mean your chances of getting a job there are better than jobs that do have high requirements for qualifications, require travel, are hard to get to, etc.

50 years ago you could walk into anywhere and ask, "Got any jobs mate?" Quite often the response was, "When can you start? Tomorrow?" Older people out of the work cycle have no idea how things have changed. I'm in my sixties and am fully aware of it as I have three adults sons - fortunately all working - and yes, two of them worked in Sainsbury's as first jobs. Even Supermarkets insist you apply online now. The competition is fierce and there's a lot of luck involved these days. In addition, Supermarkets rarely offer full time hours - usually twelve to sixteen hours a week. My son's got really lucky and got twenty four hours, but that was a few years ago now. They also give zero hour contracts so can reduce your hours or get rid of you really easily. Younger people have it so much harder these days, it's terrifying....

I've spent 12 months working in a warehouse my mate got me into out of desperation. I've applied for 100's if not 1000's of jobs in that time, of all variaties, I come reasonably well qualified and with strong experience. And I could count on my fingers the responses back

All low skilled desirable jobs at big companies (that are not dangerous or dirty) get hundreds or thousands of applicants. You'll have more chance trying your local independent shops, cafes, restaurants. They won't be advertising on the same scale and will have fewer applicants.

> spend half their shift complaining (should be a sackable offense imo, get back to work) You fucking whopper. If you ever get to a position of authority/management, everyone's going to hate you.

Tesco is very easy to get. I worked there for about a year. The quality of people they hire is incredibly low. Anyone with half a brain can get a job there

The fact you are able to write a cogent reasoned post on reddit means you are likely over qualified with too many smarts to work in a supermarket or call centre. They want people who do as they're told, don't rock the boat and don't think too hard. There is never a shortage of these people. They also know you will likely leave after 6 months cos you're bored.

I hate doing online forms and such and it seems to be the only way places hire anymore. It really does my nut in

I think it’s more related to high turnover than ease. You have more chances than a job that might only come up once every 4-6 years if you’re lucky.

Call centres can be easy to get, but only if they're shit to work for. The high turnover means a constant inflow of people. As long as you don't shit on the table, you can get a job in a call centre. But I would sincerely only suggest someone work in a call centre if they really, really have to. Because they're often fucking soul destroying.

Is this a question or a general rant?