Life Skills (Barclays)

estebanrey

estebanrey

estebanrey

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Do these adverts depress everyone else, like me?


I mean, are young people these days really that stupid that they need the most basic, common sense stuff like this explained to them?

Also, have Barclays considered that most of these young people might place their 'rep' and cliched 'urban badboy' personality above getting a job? The kind of people that think being intelligent is a bad thing who sadly seem more prevalent these days.

Some of the ads seem to defeat their own message....


A video teaching teenagers how to speak correctly using an actor that misses the s off of 'sometimes' (0:07) and pronounces 'than' as 'dan' (0:26). Forget the 'erms' (which are actually quite natural pauses in speech provided they don't precede every sentence of course) and start by dropping that 'street' accent and you'll probably do a lot better.

My favourite one though is this....


If I'm staring at my feet, I look nervous and to be honest a bit daft
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No mate, that Kid 'n' Play haircut from early nineties makes you look a bit daft :D

Oh and in before "kids these days"
 
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estebanrey said:
I mean, are young people these days really that stupid that they need the most basic, common sense stuff like this explained to them?
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yep and a lot of older people too

when i ring up a material supplier of mine, a bloke answers and says hello good errr morning/afternoon and i have no faith in him from then on
 
Come on, this is Barclays that are posting this. They can't have intelligent staff, how else would the bigwigs fleece them?
 
Totes, amazeballs… Who came up with this?

estebanrey said:
No mate, that Kid 'n' Play haircut from early nineties makes you look a bit daft :D

Oh and in before "kids these days"
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Everytime I see this one I always think of Will Smith's son.
 
Yes, they're depressing. The number of people out there lacking in these basic skills is sad though.
 
Totally agree with the comment about the second lad saying "Dan" rather than "than"

That would put me off of employing someone far more than saying "erm". I've seen numerous highly intelligent individuals on TV use "erm" including Stephen Fry.
 
estebanrey said:
A video teaching teenagers how to speak correctly using an actor that misses the s off of 'sometimes' (0:07) and pronounces 'than' as 'dan' (0:26). Forget the 'erms' (which are actually quite natural pauses in speech provided they don't precede every sentence of course) and start by dropping that 'street' accent and you'll probably do a lot better.
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Yeah that one is a bit silly/hypocritical...
 
STOP TALKING LIKE LONDON YOUF EVEN THOUGH YOU ACTUALLY ARE LONDON YOUF OR SNOBBY MIDDLE CLASS BETTER THAN YOUS WON'T HIRE YOU.
 
OhEsEcks said:
STOP TALKING LIKE LONDON YOUF EVEN THOUGH YOU ACTUALLY ARE LONDON YOUF OR SNOBBY MIDDLE CLASS BETTER THAN YOUS WON'T HIRE YOU.
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Not sure if serious but...

I'm not arguing people's accent/slang isn't highly influenced by where they grow up but plenty of people I know have what's known as a 'telephone voice'. I don't believe that people, wherever they grew up, don't know the difference between how they would speak to their mates and how speak a bit more professionally.

My boss for example has a thick Geordie accent, so much so that our foreign staff genuinely can't understand him most of the time. But when he has phone a customer his voice changes dramatically. You can still tell he's from Newcastle but it is a lot softer and his words are more pronounced.

He doesn't whine that he can't use expressions like "I divn't narr" when speaking to customers, he has common sense and drops into 'professional voice' mode like, I believe, everyone can do and should know is common sense.
 
The telephone voice crumbles so quickly.. and when it does it's embarrassing.

I spoke to a young (probably black) 'youf' in the HSBC call centre when looking for a new business account a few years a go. I'll be honest, hearing his voice devalued the entire organisation and I decided against doing business with them straight away.

You don't get anywhere in corporations unless you know how to talk and behave. Good on Barclays for trying to do what the government should be doing!
 
zegna said:
I spoke to a young (probably black) 'youf' in the HSBC call centre when looking for a new business account a few years a go. I'll be honest, hearing his voice devalued the entire organisation and I decided against doing business with them straight away.
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Because he was trying to speak professionally or HSBC employ young black people from the street?
 
Interesting comments and timely too. My standpoint is they are very good and play into a problem that exists very well and hit the mark very well at the audience at which they are aimed. I believe this because I have asked them this very evening (and before) as I was presenting student achievement awards and as the guest speaker providing my views on how students can prepare better for employment. I have started to spend quite a bit of my own time with local schools helping them to better prepare kids for work. I have faced the challenge of badly prepared students entering the workplace and you can either sit on the fence, throw stones and moan about the schools and parents, or you can get off your ass and try to help and share some insights.

I question how many people who have a view on this thread have worked within the education system as a private sector business person or who have been recruiting young people for work and facing the fundamental skills gaps that still exist. Sure, people should be able to stand up straight, wear a suit, polish their shoes, comb their hair, use good English but the fact is most don't. The amount of interview threads on this very forum where people seek guidance should clearly show that.

If all you take form these adverts is the image and language you miss the point, frankly.
 
estebanrey said:
If the point is saying 'erm' occasionally is more detrimental than not pronouncing words likes 'sometimes' and 'that' correctly I respectfully disagree with the point.
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But that isn't the point they are tying to make, you are missing their point as I said. I care less that a young person may mispronounce a few words than I do about a monosyllabic response littered with noises as the person is answering the question without giving it reasonable thought. Getting both aspects right would be a preference but then small steps as one is an example of habit one is an example of thought process and coherence.
 
I thought both of those videos were quite good!

Some young people unfortunately don't have much guidance from their parents or apparently anyone. I saw a CV of a 16 year old recently with horrendous misspellings (e.g. courier instead of career). Any reasonable parent would have had an interest in glossing over this CV and pointing out that mistake, so either the parents couldn't be bothered or didn't know better. Both are as bad as each other.
 
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