What is the National Minimum Wage?

In October 2010 the National Minimum Wage rates will increase from:

• £5.80 to £5.93 an hour for workers aged 21 and over
• £4.83 to £4.92 an hour for workers aged 18 to 20
• £3.57 to £3.64 an hour for workers aged 16 to 17

Apprentice for the first time will now be eligible for a minimum wage rate of £2.50 an hour

The new apprenticeship rate will apply to:

• apprentices under 19
• apprentices aged 19 and over, but in the first year of their apprenticeship

Need more advice on the national minimum wage?

The Pay and Work Rights Helpline number is 0800 917 2368

How much tax do I pay when I gain a job?

"If you're starting your first job

If you're a student and you've done some part-time work this tax year, you may have a form P45 from your previous employer. This gives details of your earnings and the tax you've paid. A tax year runs from 6 April to the following 5 April.

If you haven't got a P45, your new employer will ask you to fill in a form P46. It's important you complete this before your first pay day so your employer knows what tax code to use. They'll send the P46 to HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) so that they can set up a record for you and review your tax code.

Your employer uses your tax code to work out how much tax to take off your wages through the PAYE (Pay As You Earn) system.

What tax you'll pay

There are two main rates of Income Tax:

• 20 per cent on income up to £37,400 (basic rate)
• 40 per cent on income of £37,401 or more (higher rate)

However, nearly everyone who lives in the UK gets a tax-free personal allowance. This is the amount of income you can receive, spread equally over the year, without having to pay tax on it."

Source: www.direct.gov.uk

Happy Easter

Employment King would like to wish everyone a Happy Easter.

5 quick ways to increase your job opportunities

1. Contact your last 3 employers explaining to them that you are looking to progress your career and ask them if they know about any industry vacancies. Managing Directors benefit from inside industry knowledge, as long as you left the company on good terms, many will be happy to share this information with you and even give you a recommendation.

2. Sign up to Google and Yahoo Employment News Feeds; you can filter this to industry and sector information and vacancies, these links can be e-mailed to you on a daily basis. Most industries have sector websites and Industry newsletters, to increase your knowledge of the companies recruiting sign up to receive these weekly bulletins.

3. Let others know you're back in the job market, it's amazing the amount of people who gain job offers from information passed on to them from friends and family. This can be verbal or through social networking sites, such as Twitter and Facebook.

4. Many job search engine websites will allow you to sign up to industry job adverts, this will save you time with your job hunting. It’s good to sign up to at least 5 job search engines to help maximise your job hunting.

5. Look at other careers and/or job roles that match your skills, qualities, everyone has a wide range of transferable skills that can be used in a wide range of job roles. Once you can identify vacancies that are both suited to your experience and that you will enjoy you will find that you have a larger number of vacancies to apply for.

Need careers Advice?

Secrets of Employment

Secrets of Employment, has helped many job hunters to gain employment and careers advisers to support their clients into work. We are so confident that you will enjoy reading the e-book that if you are not fully satisfied with the product we will give you your money back.

The e-book is designed to move you forward quickly into employment, supporting you to overcome your barriers, including how to improve your confidence and how to sell yourself in your CV and during interviews. All our extensive experience supporting hundreds of people with their careers has been put into easy to follow steps and fun exercises that will work to keep you focused and motivated.

Buy Now

So, what to expect:

Choosing a Career-Personality Type

- Personality Type Test

- Matching Job Roles

Researching and Planning

- Values List

- Action Plan

Job Searching

- Job Timeline

- Where to find employment

CV and Covering Letters (build your own CV in minutes using our CV builder)

- How to complete a CV

- Sample CV

- How Write Letters

- Sample Letters

Application Forms

- Glossary of Terms

- Highlighting Skills

- Mind Map

Telephone Techniques

- Resource Anchoring

- Preparation

Secrets to Interviews

- Reducing Fears

- Preparing for Interviews

- Interview Questions

- Different Interviews

- Interview Confidence (circle of excellence)

- Arriving

- Building Rapport

- Shaking hands

- Eye and Language Accessing Cues

- Self-Reflection

Summary

- Future Vision exercise

CV Builder (after choosing a CV template, copy and paste from the list of personal profiles, employment history and hobbies and interest to create your own personal CV in minutes. All you need to add in is your education and qualifications - easy and quick)

- CV Templates

- Personal Profile

- Employment History Descriptions

- Hobbies and Interest

Good luck with your job hunting and career from the Secrets of Employment

Some of the worst and weirdest jobs in history

Many of us fall into our careers, only to realise that the career we are in does not meet our needs. As a careers coach I meet a large number of clients looking for a new career as they dislike their current or past job roles, feeling they have greater career potential. Many do, I once met a client who cleaned chicken droppings off eggs and is now employed as an accountant.

Discover your potential.

People often tell me about past job roles and I am constantly surprised with the amount of unusual job roles on offer. Throughout history, there have been many strange and horrid job roles people did and I have listed a few for you to read. After this you may change your belief about your current job and how “bad” it is.

The Mud Lark

Mainly young children; a mud lark worked on the banks of the Thames in the Victorian times collecting scrap metal and coal to re-sell. In the Victorian times, the Thames would wash the London sewage out to sea and the Mud Larks, would often gain infections after cutting themselves on the litter. This job worsened in the Winter months.

Whipping boy

Another job for young children; In the 15^th century, a prince would have a whipping boy- a boy who would be whipped as punishment for the prince when he was naughty or when he fell behind with his studies.

Knocker up

Before alarm clocks how did you when it was time to get up for work? A Knocker-up would come around in the morning carrying a large pole that he would use to knock on your bedroom window to wake you up. He would stay there until you were awake. But who woke him up?

Potato chip inspector

A more recent role, standing on a production line looking for over-cooked potato chips to dispose of.

Need careers advice?

Dog Food Taster

To carry on with the food theme; a dog food taster will taste dog food and write a review about it. I was told about this role from a colleague and still have my doubts.

The pure collector

“Pure” meaning Poo; The pure collector would find and collect animal faeces off the road and sell it to the leather works. The lucky ones put their collection in carts while others may carry their findings in a sack. The “Tanners” in the leather works would dip hides into a smelly lime solution and soak them with the animal faeces that the pure collectors had amounted over the course of the day. Many of the Tanners lived on the periphery of society as their stench left from their job was unbearable to the people of the town.

Crime Scene Cleaner

If squeamish do not apply-this job can be mentally disturbing, cleaning up after crime scenes; blood, loose remains and decomposing bodies.

Fuller

Similar to the Tanner job role, a fuller would dip wool often used in hat making into urine to get rid of the grease (Lanolin) to stop the wool from falling apart.

Learn the secrets of gaining work.

Snake miler

A dangerous job, collecting venom from snakes to make anti-venom.

Navy (Georgian Times)

We owe a lot to our Navy, but to be in the Navy in Georgian times was one of the worst jobs in history. Due to a lack of volunteers civilians may have found themselves waking up one morning travelling out to sea with the Navy after being banged on the head and smuggled aboard the night before.

To keep discipline, the Navy would hand out server punishment for any slight disobedience.

A Top Man would climb the rigging to the top sales know as sky scrapers, in stormy weather using no safety equipment.

Monkey boys would carry bags of gun powder to the cannons during battle.

Many sailors would die during battle, through cannons, splinters, gun fire, drowning and during on-board 'life saving' surgery.

Which careers suit your personality?

As you may well know most of these roles no longer exist. As industry and technology changes so do jobs and careers. Some of the jobs we see today will not be around in the next 10 years, as a job hunter and career-person you need to know what jobs the future holds and which of these jobs will suit your skills and qualities.

Make your own CV in minutes, learn how complete application forms and sell yourself at interviews.

I need careers advice

Careers Advice

How can careers advice help you? With the age of the internet it is easy for job hunters to find job vacancies and to find information on CV writing, completing application forms to help you gain employment.

Learn how to quickly gain employment.

A career advisor can support you with your CV, Interviews and job hunting, but a good career advisor will can do more than this. When with a career advisor they will help you explore your skills, qualities, strengths and personality and match these against a career you will enjoy and excel in, helping you choose a career that is right for you.

A careers advisor will look at the barriers stopping you gaining employment and help you overcome them; they will ask questions around your present circumstances and what you currently do to gain employment. From this a career advisor should be able to see what part of the job hunting sequence is a barrier to you, as an example if you keep sending your CV off to apply for advertised jobs and you never receive an interview, than it is likely you need to edit your CV. If you want a different result, do something different.

Do you need careers advice?

The advisor model will look at where you are now (and what you have learnt from the past) where you want to be and help you plan how you can get there.

Career Coaching

With most, you will already have a good idea of the career you want to gain, this may just be a dream, you may say to yourself “I can’t do this...I’m not good enough” this lack of self belief is a common theme with many of us. Without self belief, job hunters will remain unemployed for a long time or gain a job they don’t enjoy only to leave this job a later date. A careers coach (and advisor) will ask questions to help reframe your belief systems, by helping you realise your true potential.

As an example of a “solution Focused” technique used often in a careers advice and coaching sessions, answer this question “on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest, how likely are you to gain employment?”

“What can you change to be the next number up the scale?” “What else?”

As you have just found, these simple questions, among others will help you think about the solutions to overcoming your barriers and will help to change your beliefs about yourself. At employment king we use a mixture of techniques to help you achieve your dreams, changing Your Life, Your career, Your future. These techniques include NLP, solution focus and IAG.

How to move forward?

A career advisor and coach will first be someone who will listen to you, and look at ways to move you forward. Instead of telling you what you should do, a good advisor and coach will ask you focused questions to ensure your goal and the outcome from your goal will work well for you. The questions asked by a careers advisor-coach will help realise your ambitions and how you as an individual can achieve them.

Do you need a coaching session?

Examples of what a career advisor-coach can do:

· Matching job roles to your personality

· Complete Mock Interviews and help you prepare for interviews

· Increase your confidence and self belief

· Help you access your own resources to overcome barriers

· Tell you if your career will be required in the future

· Plan a programme of change with you

· Be honest with you, keeping your goals realistic

By reading this, you have already made your first step and your career coach will help you realise, than achieve your dreams quicker by giving you focus. With this new focus you will see yourself moving forward quicker than you can believe.

You can also coach yourself, The secrets of Employment is full of interactive techniques on choosing a career, goal setting, action plan setting and confidence building to help you with your future career.