Minimum Wage and Student Placements

[Noxvayl]

Good Day all, got a serious question I'd like resolved.

I am currently applying for a student placement but am in the odd position of being 27 years old rather than below 21 as most the companies expect. I am specifically looking at a civil engineering consultancy position that has an advertised placement position paying £12 675 for the year. As far as I can tell that is below minimum wage for anyone 21 and over, expecting minimum wage to be for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week with 52 weeks paid work in a year (6.5x8x5x52 = £13 520).

Is a placement classed as an apprenticeship in which case they can offer as low as £5 679(2.73x8x5x52)?

If not am I entitled to request that they at least meet minimum wage for my placement year?

As far as I can tell from the .gov website I am not entitled to minimum wage if I am doing work experience as part of a higher education course. Strictly speaking a placement is not part of my course, I can complete it without the placement. If I complete a placement it does give my degree a small qualifier saying that I did a year in industry though. So I am unsure if a placement qualifies as "work experience as part of a higher education course" or not.

There are placement positions I have interviewed for that offer significantly more which is why I am wondering how a company is able to advertise a job paying so little. It seems they are either expecting those being advertised to are below 21 years old, in which case it is a healthy increase on minimum wage, or they are expecting the position to fall under work experience in which case offering any form of payment is a bonus.

If someone can clarify my position that would be great. It would assist with any further applications I make and give me a better understanding of what my reply would be if I was offered the position.

[abaxas]

Ermmm... money isn't the answer here.. it's getting the right placement, networking and getting a job there when you leave.

If money is a concern, you are only hurting yourself.

[Noxvayl]

Ermmm... money isn't the answer here.. it's getting the right placement, networking and getting a job there when you leave.

If money is a concern, you are only hurting yourself.

And what if I have 2 offers from 2 companies I really like and the only factor differentiating them is money?

[rob4001]

Basically a work placement is a way of a company to get extremely cheap labour without the hassle of employment rights and contracts.

Could be worse though you could have the American internship where you'd be grateful for working from no money and not even your expenses being paid. It is becoming more prevalent in the UK now.

Use it to network and decide if you need to specialise further and gain experience.

[herulach]

I suspect your assumptions are wrong. I don't know if there are exceptions, but only paying for 7 hours (i.e. not your breaks) isn't unusual, nor would only paying 9 months (as I imagine you'd only work an academic year?)

[DanceswithUnix]

I wouldn't go citing "rights" in a situation like this. Work out how much money you need to get through the year, weigh up the options. If this company only misses what you are looking for on money, then it could be worth saying to them that you would be interested except for the pay so you feel you will have to go elsewhere.

Engineering jobs tend to be fairly simple in things like this. People vote with their feet if the money isn't good enough. If the company can attract the people it is looking for with that amount, then it is working for them. For the company, they aren't expecting amazing things from a year out student hence the pay isn't stellar, but sometimes things work out well and they come back in a full time job.

Heck, they might not even know what the going rate is for this sort of work and think they are offering good money. OTOH, it might be an indicator that they are cheapskates and worth going elsewhere as a work environment starved of resource isn't much fun. You have to try and make the call from any interactions you have had with them.

[Gerrard]

It actually works out OK at 7.5 hours per day (half hour unpaid lunch); a 37.5 hour week which is probably closer to the standard week I think.

£6.50 * 7.5 hours * 5 days * 52 weeks = 12675

[Noxvayl]

I wasn't going to cite rights, I was using this as an indicator for the type of work environment I would be in. Other opportunities have offered more and therefore I felt the lower than expected offer was evident of something else I might not like about the company, like them taking advantage of their employees which is common in engineering.

I am not looking for experience, I am hoping this placement could be where I work when I finish my degree so it is a long term decision and therefore the money is of little concern, but the intentions behind their advertised salary could uncover something face to face interactions wouldn't.

For reference the placement can last more than 12 months because it starts before August and can finish in September. So I may end up being paid for 13 months rather than 12 in which case I would ask for clarification that the offer is for 12 months rather than for 13 or 14 months.

[rallfo]

In your field, placements that would actually advance your career naturally command graduate-like pay as a way of attracting you to a future full-time position. Those other places offering you significantly more are showing they obviously take you seriously as a potential full-time employee that will bring value to the company, and so those placements are likely to make for more challenging and interesting work.

The places offering you the bare minimum wage obviously see you as cheap replaceable student labour and the role will likely reflect this. e.g. doing grunt work to make up man-hours on a short-staffed project which is often tedious and not that worthwhile.

Obviously there are exceptions but higher salaries do seem to indicate better placements.

Having had a well-paying placement also gives you a strong negotiating position for future salaries: i.e. I am already worth £X an hour.

[DanceswithUnix]

I am not looking for experience, I am hoping this placement could be where I work when I finish my degree so it is a long term decision and therefore the money is of little concern, but the intentions behind their advertised salary could uncover something face to face interactions wouldn't.

Advertised salaries are a starting point in any negotiation. If the company looks interesting then they are worth talking to, as talk costs nothing.

High salaries can be a warning sign too, does such a company have an employee retention problem? Asking how long people tend to stay at the company is often a good interview question, see if the interviewer starts looking nervous

Basically I wouldn't read too much into the advertised salary in any job this included. Read up on the company, look up where they are based, go talk to them. All interviews are good practice anyway.

[Noxvayl]

Cheers for the feedback, will make my week a little more interesting now.

As for previous jobs I applied for offering significantly more, I didn't get the last one (missed out due to enthusiasm apparently... ) and I have one interview tomorrow with up to £19 000 offered which is a really good salary for placements, that is why I wanted to find out more about the lower one to see if it was something I should expect or is below average. I am more confident in getting the lower salary job because the interview went really well, at least I thought so. So I thought I'd ask about the salary to find out if my reasoning was sound, pointing out my erroneous assumption about minimum wage helped

If someone else notices anything else I might be missing do please let me know... I am new to employment contracts and I'd rather learn now than the hard way.

[HalloweenJack]

paid breaks are not the norm - I work for Tesco and a 9 hour shift is 7 1/2 hours paid and 1 1/2 hours unpaid breaks

I work for 36.5 hours a week paid and since Tesco pay £7.39 an hour basic - that's £14062 a year minus tax and NI which makes it £12625 take home (my wife is the main wage earner - she`s a senior credit controller for a schools travel company and she specialises in AR , with AP experience ofc)

[Saracen]

Advertised salaries are a starting point in any negotiation. If the company looks interesting then they are worth talking to, as talk costs nothing.

High salaries can be a warning sign too, does such a company have an employee retention problem? Asking how long people tend to stay at the company is often a good interview question, see if the interviewer starts looking nervous

Basically I wouldn't read too much into the advertised salary in any job this included. Read up on the company, look up where they are based, go talk to them. All interviews are good practice anyway.

Trouble is, this can all be viewed more than one way. Yes, high salaries could indicate trouble, but can also indicate that they are a leader in their field, want the absolute cream of the crop, will be HIGHLY selective, and prepared to pay accordingly.

And low salaries could be a starting point for negotiation, but could also indicate that the company knows it's going to get far more (suitable and qualified) applicants than it needs, and can afford to keep rates low, at least in a 'probationary' phase. Going after higher rates in that situation may be enough, on its own, to put an application in the 'reject' pile, because it might indicate a candidate after money above all, and therefore likely to jump ship early.

IMHO, Nox, there's no easy one-size-fits-all answer to all this, and some of it you just have to learn by trial and error. It's certainly good to be thinking this out in advance, as you are. Be careful, though, not to overthink it.

Sometimes, whether it be to take a job or not take a job, your best guide is gut instinct, after the interview(s).

I had one job interview where my gut said 'no'. And so did I. I got chased a bit, the offer went up, and eventually I ended up taking it, on a package more than double my previous rate. But as the saying goes, if it looks to good to be true, it probably is. It turned out the job was something of a bait and switch, and I swallowed the bait. A few months after starting, I was told I was being moved, from the team working on what I'd joined the company for, to a different system that was of zero interest to me, and an utter career dead-end. So much for "double" the pay, because I refused point blank, and ended up quitting. As it happens, quitting was the best decision I ever made, because while looking for something permanent, I approached a couple of magazines about freelance work and ended up writing thousands of articles over 20+ years, travelling all over the world, meeting many of the big names in computing, and testing bucketloads of interesting, usually new and often pre-release hardware and software. Nonetheless, that it ended that way was pure luck, and in terms of the company that my gut said "no" to .... I should have listened to it.

[abaxas]

The best companies do not need high starting salaries to get people to work for them as people know it's about the career not where you start.

Opportunity is everything.

[Noxvayl]

On one hand you can argue that companies with low placement offers are secure in their position because they can afford to make such an offer and on the other hand you can argue that the offer is low because of some issue you might not have noticed. You can do the same for offers with a higher salary. I made this thread not to use the advertised salary as a guide for how to decide between the two but to help clarify my thought process and whether it was reasonable. I find the process daunting and so it can be easy for me to be defensive about what I am thinking about. I can't think of anything worse than reasoning your way into a corner without realising it, which was why I decided to ask before I did that to myself. Although asking opens up all sorts of perspectives I never considered, so thanks for that...

As Saracen mentioned paying attention to your gut I thought it worth mentioning what that gut feeling was for the last 2 interviews. After both interviews my gut said, "TAKE THE JOB, if you are lucky enough to be offered it". I can't describe it any better than that. The appeal for either position is varied and my gut feeling is partly swayed by my assumptions going into each interview. I had no idea what to expect with the first interview, one with the lower salary advertised, but I found the offices to be really nice and the interview was very relaxed with a director of the company no less. So it felt like a very warm and encouraging place to be, and the environment they have created for their employees is reflected in how they like it there. Placement students there that I knew from University had nothing but good things to say about their experience.

The second interview was very different, a much older company but one that is the best in its market segment. It naturally can afford a much larger salary but it still has a good co-operative spirit about it and the interviewers started the interview by making a joking reference to what I said. We all had a good laugh and that is something I have not experienced in an interview before, considering how nervous I was going into it. I didn't find the offices to be as impressive as the first interview but the interviewers did a great job of selling the company and made me feel like I'd enjoy working for them.

The roles are very different and so it is not as easy to compare the opportunities. The only real comparison that can be made between them is the salary they offer, everything else is worlds apart. The first one is a consultant that gets hired by clients and the other is a client organisation. Very different parts of the engineering world so I am thinking about them a lot because I have no clue how to make a choice. I am not in danger of overthinking, I have already gone past that line in the sand. I can't help it because it is the only method I know for trying to decide beyond making a large list of pros and cons which I find can be distorting.

I find this quote to be very true in times like this: "Fortunately, the act of composition, or creation, disciplines the mind; writing is one way to go about thinking, and the practice and habit of writing not only drain the mind but supply it, too." - William and Strunk, The Elements of Style. Creating this thread has helped drain my mind of the thoughts expressed with the knowledge that I can always revisit them later. It gives me the opportunity to think about the situation anew. There is no easy solution but at least I have now considered more than just my own perspective.

[Noxvayl]

An update:

Got one job offer, from the company offering 12 months of work for £12 675. Very happy with that and waiting on the other company, should hear back from them next week. I am assuming I was not successful for the other job, considering they indicated that they would get back to me by the end of the week and they haven't. I suspect that they had a more difficult decision to make than they expected, I was the first to interview.

So I've got myself a job for 12 months, whether my decision is made for me or not.