One third of call centre staff are graduates

chewmylegoff

i refuse to believe that any of the call centre staff i have ever spoken to were educated to even gcse level.

Chris2685

Rainmaker_uk wrote: »

That means that everyone is hated as everyone seems to be going to University.

I feel very thankful that I was able to study (for free) at a red brick university spending my time alternating between the bar and ladies beds confident in the knowledge that there would be job opportunities aplenty after graduation - even for those who did 4 hours of actual work a week and spent the rest of the time having fun!

That said I learnt a lot at uni just not much about my course...:beer:

A lot of people do that still, just on the back of loans and parents paying for it. I know a couple of people who are just so into that loan culture, because of uni, that they have racked up 20k+ of debts, and just don't see the point in saving for anything now.

Personally, I worked my way through uni, the loans I took out went straight into my ISA/savings and some of that has just been used to pay for my wedding. Came out of uni with a 1st class degree, despite working 40 hours a week. I can understand that people doing science degrees, or other heavy lab degrees can't work that much to fund themselves, but a heck of a lot of others can, but they just !!!! the whole thing up the wall because mummy and daddy are paying. Maybe they were the smart ones in the end!

michaels

I seem to remember that CSEs were graded 1-5 not A-E with a CSE 1 being equivalent to a GCE pass (A-C)

Loanranger wrote: »

I remember having to explain to young people who had left school in the 80s that a CSE grade D was not regarded as a pass grade. No-one in school had bothered to explain this to them.

Generali

michaels wrote: »

I seem to remember that CSEs were graded 1-5 not A-E with a CSE 1 being equivalent to a GCE pass (A-C)

CSEs were graded 1-5. A grade 1 CSE = grade C GCE O Level officially.

That meant a grade 1 CSE would be considered a pass grade for maths and English, normally pre-requisites for getting a job in an office so taking CSEs wouldn't prevent you from getting office work.

olly300

amcluesent wrote: »

I think of call-centre staff as 'voice-operated keyboards'. They haven't a clue if they can't see a button that matches your problem and a script to follow. I prefer to go on-line myself.

In good call centres they expect you to diverge from the script to "personalise the customer experience." And you get to ring the numbers yourself. Unless you are doing inbound then you press for the next caller when you are ready.

Unfortunately most foreign call centres while they have English speakers they aren't fluent in English so understanding all the different UK accents is hard work. It's much easier for them just to follow the scripts.

olly300

chewmylegoff wrote: »

i refuse to believe that any of the call centre staff i have ever spoken to were educated to even gcse level.

They do it on purpose.

Loanranger

My comments are not anti graduate nor anti teachers.
It seems to me, and many others, that not every young person will benefit from going to university.
Going to university has become an automatic assumption that needs to be challenged if only because so many young people are leaving university without much hope of attaining a graduate level job.
This point was the essence of the initial post "one third of call centre staff are graduates".

I do not believe that the current system is sustainable whereby graduates are being churned out every year without good prospects of a graduate level job.
This needs to be challenged. My point was that for many roles the work is not actually at graduate level. I used the example of nursing and teaching but there are others such as accountancy. In the past these roles required 5 GCE O levels.
In the past ten years the currency has changed again and it's masters degrees to which graduates are being drawn. Masters degrees are usually quite narrowly focused and often vocationally oriented. Engineering is a profession that now requires a masters degree (M.Eng). Isn't this exactly the type of course that the polytechnics delivered so well?

Loanranger

michaels wrote: »

I seem to remember that CSEs were graded 1-5 not A-E with a CSE 1 being equivalent to a GCE pass (A-C)

Yes, my apologies, you're correct, of course.
I intended to write GCSE.

StevieJ

I wonder what other countries graduates do? Ah, I know they come here and work in call centres.

Figures show that Britain fell from joint third to 15th in rankings based on the number of university graduates being produced.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said the country's "competitive advantage" had been lost in just eight years, slipping behind Poland, Iceland, Portugal and Slovakia.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/7986244/Britain-plummets-down-graduate-league-table.html

Rainmaker_uk

Chris2685 wrote: »

A lot of people do that still, just on the back of loans and parents paying for it. I know a couple of people who are just so into that loan culture, because of uni, that they have racked up 20k+ of debts, and just don't see the point in saving for anything now.

Personally, I worked my way through uni, the loans I took out went straight into my ISA/savings and some of that has just been used to pay for my wedding. Came out of uni with a 1st class degree, despite working 40 hours a week. I can understand that people doing science degrees, or other heavy lab degrees can't work that much to fund themselves, but a heck of a lot of others can, but they just !!!! the whole thing up the wall because mummy and daddy are paying. Maybe they were the smart ones in the end!

Yes like I said I feel thankful - these days my uni years would be very different I think... Which considering it is not supposed to be a holiday might not be the worst thing