The Jobbridge Scandal

PopePalpatine

And Jobbridge will help "people in the middle ground" because...

SeanSouth

Well newly qualified Doctors will talk to you all day and all night about how much work they have to give for free before they start earning any sort of a reasonable wage. I'm afraid you picked a very bad example. Doctors have their own jobbridge. Its just called something else. Try googling "working conditions of newly qualified doctors and come back to me"

SeanSouth

it will "help people in the middle ground because" WITH THE RIGHT ATTITUDE AND APPLICATION IT JUST MIGHT LAND THEM THAT JOB THAT THEY ARE SEEKING.
Isnt that the whole point ?

Ace2007

SeanSouth wrote: »

Well newly qualified Doctors will talk to you all day and all night about how much work they have to give for free before they start earning any sort of a reasonable wage. I'm afraid you picked a very bad example. Doctors have their own jobbridge. Its just called something else. Try googling "working conditions of newly qualified doctors and come back to me"

A reasonable wage, is different to no wage. Please show me example of where doctors are hired and given only the dole.

SeanSouth

Thats true however they work a lot of extra hours for which they get no wage and that is not different,its the same. Lets not have a pissing contest now....

Ace2007

SeanSouth wrote: »

Thats true however they work a lot of extra hours for which they get no wage and that is not different,its the same. Lets not have a pissing contest now....

So you think a doctor who gets paid a full wage, working over time for nothing is the same as someone who gets no wage working a full week for 9 months?

Xenji

SeanSouth wrote: »

Thats true however they work a lot of extra hours for which they get no wage and that is not different,its the same. Lets not have a pissing contest now....

It seems you have made it your mission to have a pissing contest with anyone in this thread who do not share your viewpoints.

SeanSouth

@Xenji I do fully understand your frustration however those 30 jobs that you see advertised on jobbridge are not real jobs. Initially they are just training opportunities. Its up to the Intern to transform the training opportunity into a job. I agree that all training opportunities are not equal.

1) Some opportunities will never be jobs regardless of the effort of the intern
2) Some opportunities will become jobs due to the success of the intern
3) Some opportunities that could have become jobs will not do so due to the failure of the intern.

The Intern must be very careful in picking the training opportunity

SeanSouth

No I dont do pissing contests. Too much wind about.

Idbatterim

Your hitting the nail on the head in my opinion Sean. Are you an employer if you dont mind me asking?

BlatentCheek

SeanSouth wrote: »

Well newly qualified Doctors will talk to you all day and all night about how much work they have to give for free before they start earning any sort of a reasonable wage. I'm afraid you picked a very bad example. Doctors have their own jobbridge. Its just called something else. Try googling "working conditions of newly qualified doctors and come back to me"

Doctors, like many professions, do a certain amount of unpaid and then not very well paid work as they train up to the level of a highly qualified professional. Traditional arrangements like this were always accepted because it was clear that a certain amount of experience was necessary for someone to perform the final job properly and without constant supervision. In addition there was always a reasonable expectation of a decent standard of living once fully qualified.

The roles on jobbridge that cause outrage are either those that traditionally were given without prior unpaid training as the training required isn't measured in years, eg packing shelves; or they are roles that specify a high level of training and/or prior experience in the jobbridge advertisement, suggesting that employers are just taking advantage of the system to avoid paying for staff. With these positions there is no reasonable expectation of any role, let alone a well paying one, once the internship finishes and sometimes the experience gained is of little value.

Your comparison is so inaccurate that I have difficulty believing that you're serious and not just winding people up.

Hermy

SeanSouth wrote: »

You need to decide what kind of employment you want and go after it from there.

But the employment I want is now being advertised as internships.
I neither want nor need an internship - I want a job.

Push Pop

SeanSouth wrote: »

There's an awful lot of whinging and whining on this thread and more than a dollop of naivity as well.

From the employers point of view, I can tell you here and now that I will pay 1000 euro a week to anyone who can earn their keep and generate enough revenue to cover their costs. The minimum wage is all very well but its at a level that makes it very difficult to hire anyone !! We're in a capitalist society whether we like it or not. Employers are not charities and wont survive in business very long if they dont hire wisely and ensure that the cost basis is in line with the revenue stream.

Jobbridge is a good scheme. Young people should use it to their advantage.
Approach an employer that you want to work for. Go after the skills and experience that you need and get yourself into a position where you can earn more for an employer than you cost. It really is as simple as that. If you do that and promote a healthy and enthusiastic attitude to your work, I can guarantee you that you will be out of jobbridge in no time and into full time regular employment. Jobbridge is a means to an end. Unfortunately its also a separating of the wheat from the chaff. People with bad attitude, low productivity, clock watchers and individuals with overbearing sense of entitlement will come and go. The others will succeed and do so rapidly.

Employers have no interest in people who are putting in time. You need to be conscious of your contribution and your attitude.You need to have clear goals and a burning desire to succeed.

You must decide which group you belong to. If you have reasonable intelligence you will plot your course, plan where you want to get to and how to get there. If you are a loser you will sit around all day complaining about the slave labour of jobbridge and complaining that the government hasn't provided you with a job.

For anybody out there that believes that employers are laughing all the way to the bank, nothing could be further from the truth. Employers will hire enthusiastic hard working individuals all day long.

Jobbridge is a two way street.Take control of it and make it work for you. If you start tomorrow packing tractor parts and if you make a good impression, it wont be long before you're running the packaging department. You make your own luck. Its up to each individual

Is that you Bill Cullen?

SeanSouth

Yes there are outrageous jobs on jobbridge but surely everyone has enough insight to stay away from those. C'mon, no one is going to take on an internship for washing dishes. Lets be fair and agree that people are being a bit sensationalist here. I'm talking about proper graduate internships with decent employers and nothing else. and as for your accusation that I'm winding people up, I will say it again below.

If I was an unemployed graduate, lacking in practical experience and I was offered an opportunity to undertake a six or nine month work experience or training with no payment and no guarantee of a placement at the end, Would I take it ? Yes of course I would. Six months experience is a lot better than no experience. I would give it my best shot and see it as the best available stepping stone to the next opportunity. If that makes me a fool, then that's what I am.I assure you that I am absolutely serious and to finish off, I will tell you that if I had two candidates in front of me for a position and one had got off his bum and made an effort to do an internship, it would place him miles ahead of the guy who gave me a speel about "the wurker been screwed by jobbridge"

Jeez lads, Give me a break. You're putting me in bad form now.

Hermy

SeanSouth wrote: »

Yes there are outrageous jobs on jobbridge ...

And those outrageous jobs on jobbridge reduce the number of real jobs available to people looking for work.

Ace2007

SeanSouth wrote: »

Yes there are outrageous jobs on jobbridge but surely everyone has enough sense to stay away from those. C'mon, no one is going to take on an internship for washing dishes. Lets be fair and agree that people are being a bit sensationalist here. I'm talking about proper graduate internships with decent employers and nothing else. and as for your accusation that I'm winding people up, I will say it again below.

If I was an unemployed graduate, lacking in practical experience and I was offered an opportunity to undertake a six or nine month work experience or training with no payment and no guarantee of a placement at the end, Would I take it ? Yes of course I would. Six months experience is a lot better than no experience. I would give it my best shot and see it as the best available stepping stone to the next opportunity. If that makes me a fool, then that's what I am.I assure you that I am absolutely serious and to finish off, I will tell you that if I had two candidates in front of me for a position and one had got off his bum and made an effort to do an internship, it would place him miles ahead of the guy who gave me a speel about "the wurker been screwed by jobbridge"

Jeez lads, Give me a break. You're putting me in bad form now.

did you choose to ignore my comparison above about the doctor who works overtime for free?

Again you are talking about graduates, Job Bridge is not solely for them.


How do these dish washer jobs get onto the website it the first place, where is the checking by the job bridge team? If I go onto a site and see pages and pages of crap jobs like that, I'm not going to waste my time going through the rest.

So if you were from Kerry or any county with no big city near it, would you be happy to leave home, find accommodation, pay rent, pay for your own food, pay travel expenses to and from work for 6/9 months, suppose your parents can't afford to help you out financially - what do you do?

SeanSouth

@Hermy - and that's the part you dont get.........Those "jobs" on jobbridge ARE NOT jobs

In many cases they are opportunities for employers and interns to hitch up to see if there might be a job in the future and nothing more than that. Because there is no payment, it allows the employer to work with the intern on a trial basis. If the employer needed to pay the intern from the beginning it normally will not be feasable at all.

Go back to my example of the company that is just breaking even each month and trust me when I tell you that there are lots of these. The monthly sales are 2 and the total costs are 2. There is no money available to pay an extra worker.
Through jobbridge the employer now has an opportunity to try and expand his business on a trial basis at no extra cost (initially). If the trial works out and the new employees helps to generate extra income then the employer may have a new job to offer and in my opinion that is what Jobbridge is all about.

SeanSouth

@Ace - As I have said now already several times and at nauseum, I do not defend the misuse of Jobbridge for dish washing jobs. I agree with everything you say about that. People should not be working menial jobs for nothing and all abuses of jobbridge should be halted. As far as Im concerned, this is a complete red herring and I have no wish to engage you on that

Don't throw the baby out with the bath water. The original idea of jobbridge for graduate work placements is a sound one and I think it can and does work very well for many.

Hermy

SeanSouth wrote: »

@Hermy - and that's the part you dont get.........Those "jobs" on jobbridge ARE NOT jobs

My point is they used to be jobs.
I'm looking at the entire list of jobs on the FAS website and I'm seeing positions that weren't previously advertised as internships that are now - thanks to JobBridge - being advertised as internships. This is having a very significant impact on the number of positions available to me to apply for. I want to have the optimism you talk about and get out there and grab some job with both hands but it's getting damn hard when I see the way JobBridge is being abused to my detriment.

BlatentCheek

SeanSouth wrote: »

Yes there are outrageous jobs on jobbridge but surely everyone has enough insight to stay away from those. C'mon, no one is going to take on an internship for washing dishes. Lets be fair and agree that people are being a bit sensationalist here. I'm talking about proper graduate internships with decent employers and nothing else. and as for your accusation that I'm winding people up, I will say it again below.

We've established fairly well at this stage that Jobbridge is not a scheme for proper graduate internships. It has been allowed to become something far more exploitative, presumably due to the government's desire to massage employment figures. I don't disagree with you in principle that there is merit in proper internships, I did one myself and gained from it as I said, but defending Jobbridge on such grounds is a losing battle.

SeanSouth wrote: »

If I was an unemployed graduate, lacking in practical experience and I was offered an opportunity to undertake a six or nine month work experience or training with no payment and no guarantee of a placement at the end, Would I take it ? Yes of course I would. Six months experience is a lot better than no experience. I would give it my best shot and see it as the best available stepping stone to the next opportunity. If that makes me a fool, then that's what I am.I assure you that I am absolutely serious and to finish off, I will tell you that if I had two candidates in front of me for a position and one had got off his bum and made an effort to do an internship, it would place him miles ahead of the guy who gave me a speel about "the wurker been screwed by jobbridge"

Jeez lads, Give me a break. You're putting me in bad form now.

"Tis sorry I am your worship, to irritate such a great man as yizzerself" to use the idiom you've applied to us.

Joking apart I don't think it's fair to give the impression that people who are unhappy with Jobbridge should be portrayed by you as feckless and illiterate. Young people in what is still a prosperous first world economy aren't unreasonable to expect a fair wage if they're willing to work hard and train hard for it. If you had to radically scale down your expectations due to factors entirely outside your control I imagine you'd be quite irate.

As an employer you should consider what the normalisation of unpaid work would mean for yourself; a far higher burden of the share of taxation to support the state and less people with the money in their pockets to buy the goods or services you sell.

Xenji

Jobs on JobBridge are replacing real jobs, it is a simple fact, which is exploited even more by the fact that it is a revolving door system of interns now with the cooling off period scrapped, the company have no incentive to hire an intern now, when after 6 or 9 months they can get a new intern in the next day and continue to save money and exploit hard working people who are begging for jobs. If a company is breaking even and is suffering losses than it is down to poor management and not dealing with the economic downturn properly and various other causes, but the cure to this is not to bring in some poor intern to steady the ship and try and correct other people mistakes.

Ace2007

SeanSouth wrote: »

Thats true however they work a lot of extra hours for which they get no wage and that is not different,its the same. Lets not have a pissing contest now....

Ace2007 wrote: »

So you think a doctor who gets paid a full wage, working over time for nothing is the same as someone who gets no wage working a full week for 9 months?

So for the record working overtime for free is the same as working full time for free.

Why do PWC and the likes pay their graduates for the first 6 months?
why do all companies not use the slave labour that is job bridge?

Hermy

BlatentCheek wrote: »

...the normalisation of unpaid work...

This is what concerns me because that's where it's headed.

SeanSouth

I think that after many posts I can summarise the difference between my views and others on here.

I think that the general view from other posters is that employers are making a choice to take on interns instead of employing individuals on a normal wage.
The inference is that the employer is pocketing the difference.

I believe the reality to be quite different. Businesses are struggling. The business environment is very harsh and by in large internships are the ONLY possibility of getting a fresh man in the door. Its not either / OR

What a lot of people dont realise is that there is a very low uptake of advertised internships. I posted two very nice positions about three years ago and only got one enquiry. If it was true that internships are replacing real jobs then employers would eventually end up advertising 'real" jobs when there is no uptake on the internship and I don't believe that's happening.

The changing job scene is much bigger than jobbridge. In older times you could always pick up a bar job but not anymore, the license trade is in turmoil
and many of the other "old" reliable jobs have also been displaced. Back in the 90s the sunday newspapers would be riddled with ads for sales reps which you will never see now. Goods and services are sold differently today. Jobbridge is in the firing line but I dont believe that Jobbridge is the problem. In fact I dont have the figures but if you check the number of current jobbridge placements, I dont believe it will be significant at all

SeanSouth

For the record PWC only hire the top University graduates and pay them very little and they are completely over run each year with applicants. Yes its a bit more than Jobbridge but you wouldnt be dining out on it either

SeanSouth

OK I got it now.

As of November 2013 there were 6500 people in internships. Only a dot in the ocean, I'm afraid

The total number of internships since inception is 28000

Xenji

If I knew of a company that was struggling and brought in interns to try and bring them out of difficulty, difficulty they brought on themselves, I would have no sympathy if the business went under. The retail industry do the most bitching about needing interns, but the fact is that if people had more real jobs they would have more disposable income to spend and the sector would not be in the shape it is in now.

Xenji

SeanSouth wrote: »

OK I got it now.

As of November 2013 there were 6500 people in internships. Only a dot in the ocean, I'm afraid

The total number of internships since inception is 28000

A drop in the ocean, with the level of unemployment we have in this country, honestly it is this type of thinking that is keeping this country in the state it is.

Ace2007

SeanSouth wrote: »

OK I got it now.

As of November 2013 there were 6500 people in internships. Only a dot in the ocean, I'm afraid

The total number of internships since inception is 28000

We can go round and round in circles all night,

Example, the HSE over spends it's budget, should they hire all nurse/doctors/new staff on job bridge, or is that different?

I previously worked in a company that the Irish section made over 10m in a year, the parent company worldwide made over 10billion, do you think it was fair for this company to "hire" interns on 6/9 month internships?

SeanSouth

You know what, You're right again. We have flogged this horse to death......Goodnight and good luck