Think back to the open day you went to at sixteen. Somebody’s parent asked all the questions. You mostly looked at the canteen. Going back as an adult is different. You’ve got a job, bills, maybe children, maybe a rota that changes every week. You’re not really asking “is this a nice place?” You’re asking [Read more…]
You’ve probably seen it by now. A job ad that looks like every other job ad, until the last line of the “about you” bit: confident with AI tools. If you work in an office, that line can land badly. What counts as confident? Do you need a course? A certificate? Is everyone else already [Read more…]
(Getting Taken Seriously at Work) Kai is 21. He’s an example, not a real person, but you may well know him. He left college with a Level 3 and took a job in a busy café at a garden centre. A year later, his manager asked him to run the Saturday shift. Saturday means eight [Read more…]
(Five Minutes That Could Be Worth Hundreds) Changed jobs this year? Then there’s a small code on your payslip worth checking. It takes about five minutes, and if it’s wrong it can cost you a couple of hundred pounds a month until somebody notices. What is a tax code? It’s how HMRC tells your [Read more…]
At 2am on Sunday 25 October, the clocks go back an hour. For a week or so it feels like a gift. Then you notice you’re driving home in the dark, and by December it’s dark before half past four. If you start early, finish late or spend the day under strip lights, you can [Read more…]
Did you ever change course? Or leave, work for a few years, then come back? Maybe you ended up in a job that has nothing to do with what you studied. If so, you have probably had the thought at some point. The people who knew what they wanted at sixteen must be miles ahead [Read more…]
You finished the thing. It went well, and it was a lot harder than it looked from the outside, which is exactly the problem: nobody outside knows that. Part of you would like to mention that. A louder part would rather spontaneously combust. So, you say nothing and hope somebody noticed. They probably did not [Read more…]
The first Monday back has a way of making things clear. Two weeks away, a bit of sun, and suddenly the job you have put up with since last winter looks completely unbearable. The overflowing inbox alone is an argument. That feeling deserves to be taken seriously. It is also a bad moment to act [Read more…]
Ask people what they use ChatGPT or Copilot for and you tend to get the same answers. Tidying up an email. Summarising a long document. Getting a first draft down so you are not staring at a blank screen. All useful, but all the least interesting thing these tools do. A UK survey in July [Read more…]
Start with the uncomfortable number. UK employers spend around £1,700 a year training each member of staff. Once you allow for rising prices, that is nearly a third less than they spent in 2011. The figure comes from the government’s own survey of employers. And it is not shared out evenly. Researchers found that graduates [Read more…]