History has a weird habit of repeating itself.
When I studied economics, we were told by our professor that not only the economy moved in cycles, but that events repeated itself, be it in different places and with different players.
When you look at what is happening in Europe you can see history happening all over again. The European economy suffers from over-inflated credit, financial and property markets. Japan suffered a similar situation in the late 1980's and they 'lost' a decade.
When you look at what happened in Japan we can see what might (will?) be happening in Europe.
Pensions
Governments and companies will reduce their funding of pensions and employees will have to pick up the bill themselves. Various governments have also increased the retirement age, meaning that people will have to pay longer into their retirement funds and start benefiting from them later.
More job insecurity
As the number of people in secure, permanent jobs will decrease, the number of people in part-time and freelance jobs will increase. Companies will want to remain competitive and this is one way of doing that. Germany for instance coped with the crises by reducing the number of hours people worked in order to save their jobs. In Holland more people became self employed in their own jobs enabling companies to be more flexible.
Technology will increasingly enable companies to do things faster with fewer people, meaning that middle management positions will increasingly disappear. This will also lead to lower pay and increased workloads as fewer middle managers will have to deal with more lower educated staff, doing more work.
Lower job satisfaction
All these downward pressures mean that there will be fewer jobs for graduates, something already obvious in the UK job market. It will result in more graduates taking on non-graduate jobs, pushing lesser educated people into even lower paid jobs. People will end up feeling not very satisfied with the work they do. On top of that the pay gap will widen as evidenced in the UK. Bankers are in a position to pick up (Or reject, be it under duress, Steven Hester @ RBS) million pound bonuses where the average worker sees the cost of living increase and their salaries not keeping pace. Another side effect will be that graduates will start emigrating to countries where they will be paid according to their educational level. Lots of Irish graduates are moving to Australia and a similar brain drain is going from Portugal to Brazil.
Is it all bad news?
Yes and no, it depends on how you look at things. If you're willing to move where the jobs are, learn another language, set up your own company, widen your experience beyond what you were trained for and be pro-active, you will be able to carve out a future for yourself. The main thing is not wait until work comes your way. It might never come.
So, research your industry. Which companies are growing, where are they based, what type of people do they need, are there new, fast growing companies? Can you form a new company with colleagues? Think outside the box, be willing to look at work in a different way and take new challenges in your stride.
The economic downturn might cause a lot of negativity, but there is always an upside. Look for the upside and you will have a thriving career. (But it might not be the career you originally set out for....)
Posted by Harmen Rijks on Jan 30, 2012
Finding a Finance Job during the Recession
With all the doom and gloom in the news about employment this week, thanks in no small part to the global financial meltdown, it’s easy to assume that jobs in finance are few and far between. We tell students that finance is a good sector to enter but this arguably only applies when the economy is stable.
Today’s financial climate means that many people are questioning their desire to enter a banking, finance or accountancy job.
Banks might have lost some wealth and power, but they continue to be incredibly important to the economy. Without business loans and credit the economy will stagnate so it’s in all our interests to ensure that the financial sector is functioning effectively. Is it silly to consider a career in finance when we are in the middle of a recession?
Continue Reading…
Posted by Lyndsey Doherty on Nov 16, 2011
We're getting reports again that people, especially in the Netherlands and Belgium, are being inundated with spam, allegedly coming from us.
However, the spammer uses 'eurojobsnet.com' or 'europjobs.nl' or other email addresses that are similar to our email addresses. These spam messages have nothing to do with Eurojobs.com.
Eurojobs.com only sends out a confirmation message after someone has registered on the site and that's all the email you would generally get from us.
However, there seems to be a Russian spammer who abuses our domain name and sends out messages that claim to come from us.
You can check who the real sender is by opening the extended header of the email message and then use that IP address to perform an IP address check. This will generally reveal the ISP the spammer uses. The ISP should address the problem caused by the spammer through banning him from sending email through the ISP. Please complain with the ISP as this is the only way to permanently remove this nuisance.
In order to stop these messages you could also:
1. Ask your email provider to implement SPF (Sender Policy Framework)
in order to distinguish between fake and real email
messages. Once this is in place a mail server can see if messages
actually come from the sender or whether it is spam.
This will stop the flow of spam messages immediately.
Eurojobs.com is SPF compliant.
2. Create a filter in your email program for the email address they used,
or use free programs such as Mailwasher
to filter spam.
3. If you use Thunderbird or Outlook, download the Thunderbird SPF extention or a filter such as
SpamFighter to verify if the sender of the email are who they claim they are.
4. If you are using BT/Yahoo or Ymail do the following:
Send an an email to abuse@bt.com
and copy the long (extended) header of your email into this message.
This contains information as to where the email originated. You will
probably get a nondescript, automated reply from BT stating that you
should ban the domain. Don't ban the domain as this means you will be
banning another victim of this type of scam and you will still be
blasted by spam.
(BT will only realise what they are advising when a BT.com address
gets spoofed in a spam message and they tell you to ban BT.com. Pretty
stupid advice!)
What BT/Yahoo really should do is implement the Sender Policy Framework
(SPF) properly, so the amount of spam reaching your inbox reduces
dramatically. SPF checks if the email comes from the authenticated IP
address linked to the domain. If not, the email is spam and should be
binned automatically.
If BT fobs you off, send them another email demanding they implement SPF
automatically rather than leaving it up to you to activate it.
BT/Yahoo SpamGuard (For what it's worth)
Keep SpamGuard turned on. To check if it’s on:
-
Click Options in the upper-right corner of your Mail page.
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Click Spam from the list on the left.
-
In the “SpamGuard” section, next to “Control SpamGuard,” do you see a
check in the box beside “Automatically send suspected spam to my Spam
folder”? If so, great! SpamGuard is ON. If not, turn it on by placing a
check in that box.
-
In the area above your spam options, click Save Changes.
Also in the “SpamGuard” section, you can specify how often you’d like
Yahoo to empty your Spam folder (They do it automatically once a month,
but
you have options to empty it faster), and you can indicate your
preference for showing – or blocking – images. Image blocking is another
effective way to fend off spam!
How can you report spam on Yahoo?
Easy! Don’t open a spam message. Just click inside the check-box next to it, then click Spam
to let Yahoo know it’s something you’d rather not ever see again. Yahoo pays a
lot of attention to spam you report to them. It gives them tools to disrupt
the latest tricks and techniques that spammer individuals and spammer
companies are using to try to evade the Yahoo filters.
Reports of spam originating from a Yahoo! Mail account (i.e.,user@domain.com)
receive their special attention. Since spamming is expressly prohibited
in Yahoo!’s Terms of Use, any account caught spamming will be canceled.
If you change your mind or think you made a mistake, just look for
the next message from that sender in your Bulk folder and click Not Spam to reverse your vote.
Report spam on other sites:
You can report spammers on iPillion.com
Continue Reading…
Posted by Armando de Castano on Nov 15, 2011
Information Security refers to the protection of our information from unauthorised access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification or destruction and it has never been more important. With more and more of us using the internet for banking, information storage, discussing our lives and actions via social media, it can be scary to think about how much information is held about us online. Even scarier is to think about who can see this information. Nearly all organisations collect and gather information about employees. Social media sites like Facebook and Myspace hold information about your sex, age, job, school, area, your friends etc, whilst many different sites will have your credit or debit card details if you have purchased something from them.
Identity theft is an increasing concern as just one slip in information security can lead to your details being leaked. It is unsurprising that we, as consumers, are becoming more and more wary about who and where we give out our information.
Just look at the recent case with Sony. In April, Sony admitted that it had lost large amounts of customer data, which could possibly have included financial information, after a major hacking operation into its PlayStation Network service. The company acknowledged that all 70 million users may have had their name, address, country, email address, birth date, PlayStation Network/Qriocity passwords and log-ins, and handle/PSN online ID stolen. Although this, it is believed, was done by hackers, this was just one example of the threat of personal information being leaked.
Sony has just recently announced that they have employed a former Department of Homeland Security official to head up its information security and privacy issues. This measure shows how seriously Sony has taken the leaks.
Working in this sector can be both interesting and rewarding. Information security jobs are amongst the most important in the world and can be amongst the best paid. Companies are taking a lot more care with these issues as a lack of information security will only serve to hurt both the customer and the company. Businesses won’t want the negative press that comes with a breach in their information’s security (like that of the Sony case) and people want to be able to trust the people who hold their information.
Continue Reading…
Posted by Lyndsey Doherty on Oct 31, 2011
A recent study by the Post Office has shown that over 50% of British people are considering or have considered moving abroad. With the recent economic downturn and the threat of things getting even worse this figure seems pretty realistic. We were warned by experts about a double dip recession and by the look of things they were right.
Unemployment figures are at a phenomenal height and figures from the Office for National Statistics show that in the 3 months leading up to July this year UK unemployment rose by 80,000 to 2.51 million. Perhaps most significant is the increase in youth unemployment which rose from 78,000 to 973,000. It therefore seems reasonable that more and more people are considering moving abroad.
Continue Reading…
Posted by Lyndsey Doherty on Oct 10, 2011
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