Is this a Typo?

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I found this job posted on Jobsite. It's not an entry level position.

Helpdesk Analyst

Our client a World leading IT Services Provider, have a requirement based in Chesterfield, for a Service Centre Analyst to start ASAP.

Brief Job Description:
Our client requires a Service Centre Analyst to provide IT support in a multi client environment. Monitoring requests, the position requires a high percentage of problem resolution using various diagnostic tools and inter-personal skills to guide users through situations, thus providing the highest levels of client support and satisfaction.

Essential Skills to perform role:
- Previous customer service experience, preferably within a busy call centre environment
- Proficient user of Microsoft Office packages
- Attention to detail

Hours of work/shifts: 7.5 hours Mon-Fri
Please apply now for this excellent opportunity, on a ongoing contract, paying £7 per hours.
Age criteria will not be taken into account in employment decision, but used only for monitoring purposes in terms of equal opportunities and diversity.
Teleresources Consultancy Ltd operates as an employment business and is an equal opportunities employer.
Vacancy Summary

£7 per hour for CONTRACT work? Take off expenses and it is minimum wage, or less. What happened to the £50,000pa my training provider promised me?

 

Agreed that 50K is just plain silly.

Have you got any experience of working in the IT field as yet?

 

I dont know about 50k but that job does look entry level to me. Maybe you have to have some experience but its not something advanced like networking, etc.

 

Thats a frontline, entry level position. no two ways about it. The fact that the most technical skill they want you to have is proficiency in MS Office is a dead giveaway. Whilst it may be a technical role (barely), they intend to teach the applicant everything they need to know. Its entry level.

Edit: almost without exception, All Helpdesk/Servicedesk/frontline/etc analyst roles are entry level.

I agree that 50k is unreasonable. Even the software developers at my old work, who were incredibly skilled and had been working in their field for years were only just clearing 30K. Its just not going to happen right out the bag, and is slim even if you are THAT good after several years.

 

Welcome to the real world of IT that your training provider didn't care to mention to you. If they had, they'd have likely not been able to run away with your cash.

For the record, I'm not making £50,000pa, and I've been at this for 10 years.

If this is your first chance at an IT gig, I'd recommend taking it. Getting your first IT job is probably the hardest thing you'll do in IT. You have to start somewhere... and nobody says you have to stay at that level (or that job) forever.

EDIT: I'd agree - that's probably an entry-level job... at least, if I was hiring someone, that's the candidate level I'd be looking for.

 

Can you not sue your training provider is that promise written down in a contract?

Who is the provider compucon I mean teach

 

I doubt that you could sue to be honest. These companies know their beans. There will be small-print in the contract you signed stating that it only counts if you sign between 1159 and 1200 on a wednesday of a full moon. otherwise you are sh*t out of luck.

 

Which part of do you think they didn't understand?

When I say it isn't entry level: they are asking for (essential) previous experience. I see entry level as someone's first job (i.e. no experience).

I wasn't applying for the job for feck's sake!

The main point I was making is that it is a CONTRACT job that pays little better than minimum wage - I'm not even sure if you'd cover minimum wage. You can get a better wage flipping burgers.

There've been plenty of posts here about the advertising styles of a number of tp's . Well, welcome to reality!

 

My first job in IT 2 years ago paid £6.10 an hour & based on London for an Agency.
Their view was/is that if you want to get on the IT career ladder you may well take it. I did and progressed up the ladder, slowly!!

The main thing is with out experience on the job doing IT you can have all the certificates going and no one will touch you.
Taking lowly paid jobs even for £7 an hour gives you experience.

If you want really bad pay come and work in IT in the NHS.

 

I understood it to mean that you felt this way ---> about the promises that were made to you. I usually use , , , , or to indicate I'm joking, but perhaps that can be misinterpreted as well.

This:

Essential Skills to perform role:
- Previous customer service experience, preferably within a busy call centre environment
- Proficient user of Microsoft Office packages
- Attention to detail

...cannot even come close to being considered IT "experience". Thus... it's an entry-level IT job.

You can have call centre experience and not work in IT... in fact, I was a credit card operator from the ages of 15-17, and I was an Operations Analyst for a call center from the ages of 22-28... but none of it was IT experience. When I was an Operations Analyst, I worked heavily with WP and Lotus 1-2-3, and later, Microsoft Office... but again, that wasn't IT experience either.

But you're stuck at that wage if you're flipping burgers. Working in IT at that rate will get your foot in the door... getting you experience that you can use to quickly leverage yourself to £9 an hour... £12 an hour... £15+ an hour.

 

My foot in the door was working servicedesk for a company. I was contracted through an agency, working for a little over 12k a year - thats less than £7 an hour. It actually worked out at about 7 i'd say, since contractors got a little more. When I was made staff it was dropped to a standard 12K. Thats pretty standard wage for a basic entry level position looking for no IT experience. Once you have 6+ months of servicedesk, you can go onto another company who pays more for the same job - many of our staff certainly did.

 

Though salaries have increased since I got my first IT job 10 years ago, I started out at $11/hr (about £5.50/hr, or £11K/year)... and that's after a BS degree and 18 years of "messing around" with computers as my lifelong hobby.

 

I started on £12k, and thats after 3 years higher education and 2 years further education.

Contracts are supposed to be wroughly double that of a permanent job, read any book on contracting. The idea is you have to cover sickness, holiday, insurance, business costs, travel, accomodation, training, pension, time looking for contracts etc.

Nobody, and I mean nobody should take a contract on less than £15 per hour in my mind. Theres really no point contracting for minimum wage, you might as well be perm.

Contract rates above £300 a day are not uncommon. Management consultancies hire out their consultants at £1000 a day so this is not as expensive as it sounds. Yes, you guessed it similar consultants get to work for the NHS while trainee nurses get less than minimum wage due to the blessing of 'training'.

Nobody said the world was fair...

 

Take the job, do your certs add it to your CV then move on.

 

...except to get your foot in the door, if no other opportunities present themselves. Consider it a time investment in your career.

 

Yes you have a point, however I consider this similar to your cert braindump argument. If everyone is prepared to work for free what point is there working in IT, it devalues the profession.

Do you see doctors, dentists or lawyers working for free ? Not very often, generally for charitable causes when they do. People should train hard be confident in their skills and value them accordingly, if they are going to work for little or no reward they should consider carefully where they are going to work.

Soon there will be many highly qualified Russian, Eastern european, Chinese, Indian, and south american workers, they might decide to work for free too, where are we all gonna be then ? All thoose people that worked for free on the hope of something better will just get replaced by the next batch of low cost labour.

 

I posted what I posted with essentially the same POV as dmarsh26. Yes of course you sometimes have to start low and move up - I've even worked for nothing in the past to get my foot in the door, and also worked for a lot less than £7ph for a job I really wanted. But this is a dead-end job, for which they DO want some IT experience, and absolutely NO-ONE should have to do that on a contract basis. As dmarsh26 has said, when you take into account tax, NI + employers NI which you have to pay, plus expenses of getting to work, plus cover for any sickness / holidays, paying an accountant to sort out your earnings at tax-year end, etc etc, this is an unbelievably crap job. £7 an hour for a permanent job? VERY different situation, and I wouldn't have posted.

There comes a point when crap employers need to discover they get what they pay for - and that isn't high quality IT support for peanuts.

 

Just about everyone has to start at the bottom... but nobody says you have to stay there forever. Use it as a stepping stone, then move up to a job that pays more. You certainly don't want to work for "free" forever, or even for a long time.