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Have you tried to hire a secretary? If they can speak and write proper English, use a computer (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and a browser), speak intelligently on the phone to a customer, take and forward messages - you know, *be a secretary*, not a warm body in a chair - they cost $80,000 a year.
And, at that price, some of them want to be the boss and think secretarial work is beneath them. If you hire someone who doesn't, you better hang onto them for dear life because they'll be in greater demand than LeBron James.
$80K a year is roughly $40 hr. When did a secretary warrant that kind of pay? Does a sheepskin make the difference and if so, why isn't that person pursuing a career related to their major? What skills are involved that some 15 year old kid can't do at home other than juggling another's schedule?
I am quite aware the federal government overpays employees - not workers - and most people would be shocked by those salaries. Most in this area are employed by the government.
Wait, wait... chefs, butchers, bakers, mechanics and electricians?
Aren't those some of the job fields hit hardest by illegal aliens? Backroom illegal chefs, illegal meat packers, illegals building homes... And they wonder why American's aren't getting in line for a job where they have to compete with people being paid absurdly low wages under the table?
Also, chefs, bakers, mechanics, and electricians are all fields that were either hit hard directly by the Housing Bubble's collapse, or indirectly via fewer people going out to spend money at restaurants, bakeries, etc. Again, and they are wondering why they now can't find enough people in those fields?
Bah... it's more of the same - a fake "labor shortage" to get more people in a field to drive down wages and then toss them aside when those fields are busts again.
Sometimes I think what we really need in this country is another Great Depression for ten years, with 30-40% unemployment, to remind people of how fortunate they are to have a job. Of course, in this day and age, the federal gov't will just borrow trillions more dollars of our grandchildren's money to keep everyone fat and happy.
Well, we did have a depression in the US for several years, though the media would only call it a Great Recession. Millions, of all professions: IT, Engineering, Teaching; couldn't find work despite years of searching. But you are right on one point: the Lucky Employed, cloistered in their offices, didn't realize how fortunate they were. I know a project manager who was lucky enough to land some temporary work in a factory and mentioned how the permanent employees complained about no raise, no 401k match, etc. His comment was,"why were THEY complaining? They had steady jobs!"
Blue Collar - industry type jobs, have had an insanely hard time of finding good, reliable employees. Attendance is the number one reason we fire people, hands down. These are blue collar jobs making $100k a year. I'm 27 and have been making g 100k for several years, about 150k the last 3 years, and now I just accepted a contract job blowing 200k out of the water. While I've moved past skilled labor and into management, the industry in general is always looking... If you're worth a sh**. Which many aren't.
I didn't earn six figures in NYC as an admin, but it was close. I believe I was worth every penny. In my five years with the company I did their web design, all of their marketing, all of their publications, mass mailings, and was the backup IT person. And this was in addition to supporting three partners in my regular day-to-day tasks.
We had one bad hire at the NYC company where I worked, and after they fired her for incompetence, the partners asked me to come up with a basic skills test for all future candidates. I created a very simple PPT presentation that included a small Word table, a basic Excel graph, and a slide of bullet points with some clip art included. All they had to do was create a reasonable duplicate of the printed version I gave them. They had 20 minutes to create those 3 slides. If they couldn't do it, we didn't hire them. Even if they wowed us during the interview.
In my current job when we had to replace an admin in my old department, my boss said she wanted to hire someone like me (read: tech savvy and competent) so I told her about my 3-page test. She was quickly on board with that idea. The woman we ended up hiring has been fantastic in her year-plus in that role. Out of 9-10 people we interviewed for that position, she was the ONLY one that could do the PPT presentation.
Finding good admins IS possible, but due diligence and skills testing should be par for the course in hiring practices.
Wow they pay that much to do those basic skills? I don't need to do those things at all at my job but I can use Word, Excel and PP reasonably well---probably better than most people who actually DO use these programs everyday.
Wow they pay that much to do those basic skills? I don't need to do those things at all at my job but I can use Word, Excel and PP reasonably well---probably better than most people who actually DO use these programs everyday.
I know, right? I don't believe it. It's not like they are doing pivot tables.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by houstan-dan
Blue Collar - industry type jobs, have had an insanely hard time of finding good, reliable employees. Attendance is the number one reason we fire people, hands down. These are blue collar jobs making $100k a year. I'm 27 and have been making g 100k for several years, about 150k the last 3 years, and now I just accepted a contract job blowing 200k out of the water. While I've moved past skilled labor and into management, the industry in general is always looking... If you're worth a sh**. Which many aren't.
I saw a job listing advertising 70K to work in oil. When I broke down the numbers though, the actual wage was only about 12 bucks an hour. They just worked a crap ton of hours. You could make that in a climate controlled factory in the south. Why bother?
I hope that is not indicative of all oil related jobs, and I'm sure it isn't. It's just, those were the only jobs I saw advertised. Long hours and low hourly wages. Kind of like salaried workers who work 70-80 hours a week. Umm, no thank you...
For what it's worth, I rarely miss a day of work, and genuinely enjoy being at work most days. The employers I have worked for have expressed deep frustration with either having to let me go, or me walking out the door.
There has been a great deal of downward pressure on what many employers in blue collar trades can pay anymore. They have corporations to appease, or possibly shareholders. It's getting hard to hold on to good blue collar workers when utilizing a similar work ethic in other fields yields better returns. Oil is no different, as the whole industry is cyclical.
But what I see more of lately than ever are people bouncing from one crappy paying job in one field, to another crappy paying job in another. They are really shooting themselves in the foot by starting over so often. Everyone seems to think the grass is greener somewhere else.
$80K a year is roughly $40 hr. When did a secretary warrant that kind of pay? Does a sheepskin make the difference and if so, why isn't that person pursuing a career related to their major? What skills are involved that some 15 year old kid can't do at home other than juggling another's schedule?
I am quite aware the federal government overpays employees - not workers - and most people would be shocked by those salaries. Most in this area are employed by the government.
Please refer to my post saying what a professional executive secretary does. Also, if you want, I'll forward you a spreadsheet with some financial data. Please correct all the errors in the spreadsheet and then make a PowerPoint presentation out of it, beautiful to look at and with no mistakes, for me to edit and then present to a group of executives. I'll be surprised if you can do it, but I don't know you and maybe you can. That is what good secretaries do these days, it's worth $40 an hour, and that is not a lot of money (try to live on it in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, etc.).
Wow they pay that much to do those basic skills? I don't need to do those things at all at my job but I can use Word, Excel and PP reasonably well---probably better than most people who actually DO use these programs everyday.
Those are basic skills, and far from the entire job scope of a true secretary. Many companies now call them office managers, but their jobs are to not only do the stuff most people view as basic such as typing out memos and such, but they handle the schedules for any executive they work for, they double check executive work for errors, they handle the receptionists, and so much more. I know for a fact that most competent secretaries make $40K a year to start in my area, good ones with a few years of experience make considerably more, and are worth the money for what they have on their plate.
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