Career Energy

The number of women in top jobs is falling dramatically
Women who aspire to top jobs are hitting a 'reinforced concrete ceiling' which is blocking their promotion. Fewer are reaching positions of power in high-profile professions such as politics, the judiciary and policing than was happening just a year ago.
The finding by the Government's Equality and Human Rights Commission is the biggest reversal in the march towards gender equality in the five years since it started compiling reports.
Too many employers have 'old-fashioned ways of working', says the commission, with many bosses harking back to the days when men were the breadwinners and most women were stay-at-home mothers.
Twelve out of the 25 fields monitored in the study registered a fall in the proportion of women in top jobs.
It held steady in five, and increased in only eight. Although there are 14.3 million women in Britain's workforce compared with 16.9 million men, they are not represented in positions of power in anything like the same numbers.
The report showed a fall in the number of women running councils, health bodies, police forces, unions and other professional bodies. There were also fewer women in the High Court and the Cabinet.
Releasing the report, entitled Sex and Power, the commission's chief executive Nicola Brewer said: 'We always speak of a glass ceiling. These figures reveal that in some cases it appears to be made of reinforced concrete. We need radical change.'
The new push from the equality watchdog follows a series of Government- backed studies which have failed to find any evidence of discrimination against women at work or that their promotion has been blocked.
But ministers remain concerned that large numbers of women either give up work when they have children, or ease back on their careers in order to devote time to their families, sacrificing the chance of promotion and high achievement at work.
The commission's report said there are fewer women in the House of Commons, where just under one in five MPs are female.
However, the proportion of women directors of FTSE 100 companies has gone up slightly – from 10.4 per cent to 11 per cent.

Half of all workers regret their career choice
Given the choice, half of all workers in the UK would have studied something different at university and would have opted for another career, new research has suggested. A global survey of 115,000 people in 33 countries shows a high-level of concern about career choice and direction. One in five believe they chose the wrong graduate career.
Many also have concerns about the quality of their education. 67 per cent wish they had studied further while nearly half (44 per cent) believe their studies did not prepare them well for working life.

Top business talent is fleeing Britain
Britain has the third biggest exodus of top talent in Europe, with eight per cent of senior executives seeking opportunties abroad. Only France and Germany recorded larger migrations, with 14 per cent and 12 per cent respectively of their senior executives seeking a better life elsewhere.
The study by European recruitment website Experteer looked at the job moves of 13,000 executives in 2007/08. It identified Switzerland as a magnet for the continent's top business brains with a net inflow of 42%.
The UK proved an attractive destination among the highest-paid - but incoming talent was disproportionately restricted to the capital, with 57% of inbound executives choosing London.
According to the survey, the average wage for candidates relocating abroad was between €50,000 and €75,000 per year.
However when it comes to the largest pay packets (more than €150,000) the UK attracted significantly higher proportions of overseas candidates than other countries.

LinkedIn Warning about “Frolleaguing”
Business networking website LinkedIn has published a series of guidelines to help prevent users damaging their careers by mixing professional contacts and friends online.
LinkedIn claimed 47% of the UK's web users are mixing their social and professional lives by accepting networking invitations from "frolleagues" - colleagues who send friendship requests.
The social media company added that the "frolleagues" scenario is becoming so common that the Oxford English Dictionary is considering adding the term.
LinkedIn, which claims 1 million registered users in the UK, recommends that users keep a separate account for socialising so that business contacts don't mix with friends, and should only add a colleague if they know them socially outside work.
A survey conducted by the site found that 36% of workers feel an obligation to accept friend requests from colleagues, although 73% said they wanted to keep them separate.
Users need to be prepared to turn down requests from colleagues, must carefully consider the personal information they post online, and should explore and utilise the privacy settings on networking sites so that only trusted friends can access their profiles, according to LinkedIn.
LinkedIn also recommends that users need to do more to protect sensitive information such as birth dates, contact details and discussions about work, and be selective about who they allow into their social networking inner circle.
Just over a quarter of users surveyed by LinkedIn said they were concerned about their online reputations, yet many still neglect to make personal photos and conversations on social media sites private.
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Graduate Jobs Slashed
More credit crunch woes were reported as property and legal firms slashed their graduate intake by up to 80 per cent. The slowdown is also affecting graduate entry jobs in construction and management consultancy, and could "devastate" recruitment to investment banks from next year.
DTZ, one of the "big four" global property advisers, has cut its intake by more than 80 per cent from 130 last to only 25 in September.
Artiseal, Europe's leading provider of integrated commercial property services, has halved numbers from 40 to 20. Montagu Evans, a leading property consultancy has cut numbers from 10 to three.
According to research and recruitment consultancy Freshminds, some students have noticed the slowdown and are deciding to stay on in education or travel for a year to avoid being "first in and first out".
The news could not have come at a worse time for students, with a survey published last week revealing average graduate debt has crept up to £17,500.

Campaign To Bring Fresh Talent Into Hospitality and Tourism
A new UK-wide campaign to improve the reputation of jobs in the sector has brought together some of the leading hospitality and tourism brands in a multimedia and TV ad campaign.
The Sector Skills Council has persuaded major brands including Merlin Entertainment, McDonalds, Compass, Sodexo, and Baxter Storey to join a campaign aimed at persuading young people to rethink a career in hospitality, leisure travel or tourism.
Three other major UK brands - Living Ventures, Yo! Sushi and Gourmet Restaurants - have joined the ground-breaking TV and internet campaign. Each brand logo shares space on the end screen of the commercial - aired on Channel 4 and across youth TV channels.
The TV ad, featuring the brands of employers representing hundreds of thousands of hospitality workers, is believed to be the first of its kind in this country.
The ad drives people to an innovative microsite - greatplaces2work.co.uk - which has a 'YouTube'-style repository of videos of showing real people with great jobs. The site also features a self-analysis test helping young people to discover the skills and capabilities which employers value.

We’re all getting older
The UK labour market is being transformed through population ageing. For several decades now, the UK has relied on young migrant labour to compensate for its ageing population. But as fertility falls across Asia and Latin America, global ageing will intensify the world labour shortage and potentially create severe competition amongst recruiters.
But the UK is not alone. Population ageing is a global challenge. Over the next 50 years, the age composition of nearly every country is expected to move to one in which the old outnumber the young. In 20 years' time half the population of Europe will be aged over 50. So the recent announcement from the Office for National Statistics that the UK now has more pensioners than children under 16 places us in line with world trends.
The main cause is falling fertility. Current UN population forecasts suggest that Europe will hover just below the replacement level of 2.2 children for at least the next 50 years. However, longevity is also increasing. When UK state pensions were introduced in 1948, average life expectancy for male manual workers retiring at 65 was 69. Now a 65-year-old man can expect to live well into his eighties.

The number of students studying information technology at A-levels is falling.
E-skills, the IT industry’s council body, has called for a radical review of the IT curriculum at schools, in response to a massive drop in the number of school students studying the subject. Over the past five years, the number of students taking the subject at A-levels fell by 50 per cent, while since 2007 the number has dropped by 10 per cent. Universities are also suffering from a shortage in IT students; 50 per cent less people are taking the course in the UK now than in 2003.
The council claims the curriculum is at fault, and needs improvement to attract more students to the industry.
According to ATL, the Education Union, the shortfall in students studying the subject will lead to a serious shortage in IT skilled workers. Unless the government works at the roots level to encourage more young people to take up IT careers, it will have to work hard to attract overseas IT skilled workers to move to the UK.
Last month UCAS reported a 50 per cent drop in the number of applicants applying for computing courses between 2001 and 2006.

New Government Body to promote career opportunities in the manufacturing sector.
The Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform has announced a new strategy to improve the public image of manufacturing and help attract young people to the sector. Part of the £150m plan is to develop a new association called Manufacturing Insight to ensure school leavers are aware of the jobs available in the sector.
Business Secretary John Hutton said: For many years the industry's success has suffered from a lack of public recognition, and it is time we redressed this balance. We must attract more talented young people - the lifeblood of future success - into the industry and ensure that this talent is nurtured and developed.
The CBI's chief economic adviser, Ian McCafferty, believed the government's new proposals contained "fresh thinking". He said: "To achieve success, the government will also need to put in place a coherent procurement strategy that enables industry to invest with confidence for the long-term."
The government strategy, New Challenges, New Opportunities, developed in partnership with industry bodies, also recognised that manufacturing was entering "demanding times" but it said the government was committed to supporting employers get through them.