salary prospects

billysielu said:
The answer to your problem, is your degree doesn't buy you a starting salary.
It buys you earning potential over your entire career. Given time and experience,
you will overtake 90% of your friends who didn't go to uni. You'll need to hop jobs along the way.
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Truth. Hopping jobs is probably even more important if you dont go into a graduate scheme.

I think a lot of graduates come out confused about what to expect from their first job, i know i certainly was. 30k gets banded about a lot for graduate jobs, but the truth is that these are probably only applicable to a select few going into a select few industries. City jobs, top accounting or consultancy etc.. There's not exactly a vast amount of people that will be doing that.

It changes so much depending on industry, and i think people dont really differentiate between a graduate scheme and their first job. I think there's a difference. A proper scheme will pay more (i know a friend that will be starting on 27k after her masters.. but she's only going to work for a county council :confused: ), whereas 'your first job' won't necessarily pay anything over 20k. We all know more and more people are going to Uni nowadays, so a job for a graduate (note: not a graduate job) doesnt need to pay 20k+ or anywhere near the 30k some people are naively expecting.

And it does depend on the industry for your first job (not graduate job). Take the media industry for example.. welcome to minimum wage for your first year and then you'll probably have to move companies to get a payrise. And that's in London ;)
 
meghatronic said:
I hope you field isn't mathematics, as you said £30k+. And only 2 of those are. So that's not 'most', and you can't conclude competitive would be in that ballpark.
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Well, 3 of the 4 quote a figure in excess of 30K so that is most, and from having friends at those other companies I know that our salaries aren't far out. I'm not trying to be ostentatious, but in my experience a lot of global London based companies will start grads on > 30K.
 
Volcs said:
Well, 3 of the 4 quote a figure in excess of 30K so that is most, and from having friends at those other companies I know that our salaries aren't far out. I'm not trying to be ostentatious, but in my experience a lot of global London based companies will start grads on > 30K.
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No, two did :p

One was a range, and new grads with no experience, in my experience, start at the bottom.

Anyhow, I wasn't meaning to be antagonistic. You also have to bare in mind London based companies include London weighting.... so a £30k grad scheme based in London is really a ~£26k grad scheme.

Although an ex's best friend got a job at Accenture in excess of £31k.
 
Scam said:
Truth. Hopping jobs is probably even more important if you dont go into a graduate scheme.

I think a lot of graduates come out confused about what to expect from their first job, i know i certainly was. 30k gets banded about a lot for graduate jobs, but the truth is that these are probably only applicable to a select few going into a select few industries. City jobs, top accounting or consultancy etc.. There's not exactly a vast amount of people that will be doing that.

It changes so much depending on industry, and i think people dont really differentiate between a graduate scheme and their first job. I think there's a difference. A proper scheme will pay more (i know a friend that will be starting on 27k after her masters.. but she's only going to work for a county council :confused: ), whereas 'your first job' won't necessarily pay anything over 20k. We all know more and more people are going to Uni nowadays, so a job for a graduate (note: not a graduate job) doesnt need to pay 20k+ or anywhere near the 30k some people are naively expecting.

And it does depend on the industry for your first job (not graduate job). Take the media industry for example.. welcome to minimum wage for your first year and then you'll probably have to move companies to get a payrise. And that's in London ;)
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Excellent post
 
My first year out of Uni was on 29k, second year out is now nicely double that figure. Don't think there's many degrees that offer that kind of salary though. This seems a bit willy waving, which it doesn't intend to be but just to prove that it is possible.
 
Currently 19 on around £14,000
Next year around £35,000
Then over the next 4 years going to around £60,000

Tax free aswell, but living is expensive in the UAE. Maybe I would make more if I stayed doing an engineering degree at uni later down the line, but this job is much easier, though not as secure.
 
sandman06 said:
my real questions was supposed to be. at what salary does one become satisfied and sustainable.

considering the cost of living in the uk. again dependent on where you live.
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I don't earn as much as a lot of people in the thread it seems, but I earn plenty for me and my family, especially for the area we live in, so am happy. For the moment :p I quite fancy going back contracting at some point when the markets pick up again but who knows, where I am now is relatively secure as it's public sector.

Area plays a big part in it in my experience, my first job out of uni paid a whopping 17k all those years ago.
 
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[TW]Fox;14877332 said:
Thats a huge jump, what do you do and why do they employ people on such a low starting wage only to make a huge jump the next year?
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Well if he's out in the UAE who knows what crazy stuff they are doing :p

What are you doing now you're no longer a soap dodger? :)
 
[TW]Fox;14877332 said:
Thats a huge jump, what do you do and why do they employ people on such a low starting wage only to make a huge jump the next year?
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I'm training to be a pilot at the moment hence the low salary, once we are finished we have to pay back our training costs around £100,000 over the next 5 years.
 
has anyone thought of moving abroad once they saved a considerable amount. say going gibraltar or something setting up a business.

i mean the quality of life and cost of living is so much better.

i understand now there is a considerable british expat community abroad, ie UAE etc
 
I know several people who have graduated in the last 2 years and the lowest starting salary of them was £22k for someone who scraped a BSc (no honours) by going combined studies and ended up in the public sector. The rest are engineers or teachers and they started at anything up to £39k. My boyfriend had a graduate placement in the oil industry that started at £36k and would have gone up if he'd stayed beyond 3 months probation.

I don't believe graduate salaries are so low, unless people are graduating with useless degrees. Even teachers get over £20k after their probation year.
 
I graduated in 2002 and I have been a 1st-line tech since Feb 2003. Salaries have been as follows:

2003 - £13500 (aged 25)
2004 - £14200
2005 - £15000
2006 - £15600
2007 - £14700
2008 - £14700
2009 - £15000

The drop after 2006 was due to company-wide cuts. Funnily enough, we weren't too badly hit by the 2008 recession - we were hit before then.
 
teachers LMAO

I used to get people in my uni talking about becoming a teacher as like a backup plan. no wonder inner london schools are ****
 
Worked in IT all my career (London based) and if I remember correctly,

20yr-25yr=Graduated at 22 years old (1994) and started on 10K (perm), and at 25 was on about 35K (contract).

25yr-30yr=Went from 35K (contract) to 45K (permanent)

30yr-40yr=Currently 37 years old, closing in on 60K but prospect of redundancy looms next year :(
 
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