Journeys up the property ladder: ‘I know that I am just so lucky’

warehouse

Me an my then girlfriend, (now wife), purchased our first flat in 88, then prices dived and interest rates went sky high. After 8 years of paying through the nose we left that flat with an £8K loss.

Thing with the house market is that if you understand that long term you will profit then you stick with it, and over time the money you put in you get back many times over.

mayonnaise

westernpromise wrote: »

Can you answer that 11+ question, by the way? Without cheating?

I asked Carl and it's 50,500.

westernpromise

danothy wrote: »

No, you're seeing who applies. Offering a high wage doesn't limit the applications to the "cream", and being well paid doesn't make the job a good one.

Incidentally, yes, I know how to add up the first 100 integers, either by pattern or by formula (and hence more generally a sequence of the first n integers), as well as being familiar with the normal distribution, square numbers, and understanding why you might ask what 0.3% of a year is. But no, I'm not applying for a job, hence you don't see the decent graduates.

I'm not sure I follow why offering people strong prospects and an intellectually stimulating environment would tend to deter numerate people. So far, I've heard that the bad prospects and the excellent prospects equally would ensure I don't see numerate applicants.

I'd welcome suggestions on how I can attract applications from these elusive numerate graduates who can successfully multiply 10 by 52, while paying them badly. My experience has been that when you tell people the money's rubbish but the job satisfaction makes it worthwhile, they tend to laugh hollowly and leave.

westernpromise

mayonnaise wrote: »

I asked Carl and it's 50,500.

But it was a lot less when "boomers" were FTBs.

Carl31

mayonnaise wrote: »

I asked Carl and it's 50,500.

lies, i would have said half that

danothy

westernpromise wrote: »

I'm not sure I follow why offering people strong prospects and an intellectually stimulating environment would tend to deter numerate people.

The original suggestion was that you may not in fact offer that, despite thinking you do.

westernpromise wrote: »

I'd welcome suggestions on how I can attract applications from these elusive numerate graduates who can successfully multiply 10 by 52, while paying them badly. My experience has been that when you tell people the money's rubbish but the job satisfaction makes it worthwhile, they tend to laugh hollowly and leave.

I have no interest in telling you how to make your employment appealing to the kind of people you wish were applying. That's your job. But if I was in your position and not getting them applying, rather than assuming that they don't exist I would look inwards as to why I was putting them off. Particularly as you have apparently set the bar so low with regard to quality. It's far more likely that the sample you are seeing is not representative of the actual quality of a typical graduate than it is representative of it, or even representative of the cream as you seem to think it is. You should ask yourself why you are seeing that sample, not what is wrong with the population.

thequant

westernpromise wrote: »

No, they're very good jobs. We don't hire freshly-minted grads straight from university, but we do take them with a year or so of work under their belts. We pay them about £30k and if they're any good they go to about £55k within a year or two. I think £55k a year for a 25-year-old is quite good money.

If they're not good, then that doesn't happen, but they've got a good company added to their CV and the sector is lively, so they just leave instead for a pay rise.

The kind of arithmetic most applicants can't do involves questions like "What's the square root of 256, roughly?" In asking this, I figured everybody knows 12 x 12 = 144, and 20 x 20 = 400, so an educated guess at the root of a number between 144 and 400 would be somewhere between 12 and 20. Not a bit of it! When I first asked a few of them this they hadn't a clue. So I made it easier by asking what the square root of 144 was, instead. When they still couldn't answer that either, I was forced to conclude they either didn't know what a square root was, or didn't know their twelve times table.

A candidate with a A in A-Level maths which had allegedly included statistics was once unable to tell me what percentage of a range of normally-distributed values falls more than three standard deviations from the mean. When told it was 0.3% and then asked how many days 0.3% of the days in year are, she didn't know that, either. I never did find out what she did know.

I have even given up asking 11+ Numeracy questions, because even those are beyond most graduates. An example of such a question that graduates cannot do is "Without using a calculator or a pencil and paper, what is the sum of all the numbers between 0 and 100?" My daughter answered that question correctly in an 11+ interview, but I have yet to meet the non-maths graduate who can answer it correctly in a job interview.

It matters because somebody may have all the right orderly habits in the world and may check their work meticulously, but it's all for naught if they don't notice obvious errors.

I should add that I'm a mere English graduate so it's not like I'm asking non-specialists to attain a special level of expertise. I just expect them to notice that £10 x 52 does not make £5,200 so that they don't make themselves look foolish trying to make something of it.

I oh so know the feeling here, go through it all the time when interviewing graduates.

Re your question, there is no excuse for not getting the answer to that one. Quick way to calculate it, is to recognise 256=2^8, therefore the square root is 2^4=16

Crashy_Time

warehouse wrote: »

Me an my then girlfriend, (now wife), purchased our first flat in 88, then prices dived and interest rates went sky high. After 8 years of paying through the nose we left that flat with an £8K loss.

Thing with the house market is that if you understand that long term you will profit then you stick with it, and over time the money you put in you get back many times over.

Seriously doubt anyone buying in London recently is going to get their money back "many times over" :rotfl:

mwpt

Crashy_Time wrote: »

Seriously doubt anyone buying in London recently is going to get their money back "many times over" :rotfl:

Is this post from 2012? Or 2010? Or 2008? 2007? 2004?

And the people who didn't heed your wisdom and bought in London just before the crash in 2007, I wonder how they're riding it out?

westernpromise

danothy wrote: »

But if I was in your position and not getting them applying, rather than assuming that they don't exist I would look inwards as to why I was putting them off.

You're making my point for me.

I am not demanding some specialist and rare level of mathematical skill. I am looking for 11+ levels of numeracy. I am looking for someone who can guess the square root of a number.

You are telling me that among current graduates these are rare skills that need to be sought out; that they are not to be universally expected among graduates.

Well, I graduated in English and I could answer this kind of question, then and now.

Do you want the really bad news? These low-level numeracy skills (and literacy skils toom in fact - also quite rare) are available in abundance among a certain type of graduate applicant. Graduates in the humanities, graduates in social sciences, even graduates in music.

Have a guess what type of applicant I am talking about. Clue: it's relevant to house prices.