The Work Clinic

Yahoo hotjobs has come up with a list of 10 jobs you can do from home. Here goes:

1. Management analyst

2. Web developer

3. Technical writer

4. PR specialist

5. Interior designer

6. Graphic designer

7. Caterer

8. Mental health counsellor

9. Massage therapist

10. Customer service representative

This is an odd list - or maybe it's just me. Doesn't 'mental health counsellor' seem very specific? And as for 'caterer' - yes, you can certainly whip up a batch of fairy cakes in your kitchen, but anyone catering on a bigger scale will require a professional kitchen. So you wouldn't really be working from home - just from a gigantic industrial kitchen that just happened to be next to your bungalow.

Whatever next? According to a survey by Adecco General Staffing, 60% of people would work without pay for a short time to save their workmates' jobs.

Those over 55 years old were most likely to agree while 18-34 year olds were least likely. Men, the poll found, were 5% more likely to say they would work without pay than women. Just one in five workers refused to consider a few days' free work.

Steven Kirkpatrick, managing director of Adecco General Staffing, said: "The survey shows chivalry in the workplace is alive and well. It also tells us how realistic people are being about the pressures their employers are under to reduce costs and survive".

This all sounds a bit unlikely. From where I'm standing (grumpy middle age) it sounds like one of those surveys where participants know which answer to pick to make themselves sound benevolent. And it's all well and good until you think about the logistics - how would doing someone else's work save their job? And should we be encouraging people to be doing work that they aren't necessarily trained for?  And how long is 'a short time'? Ten minutes? A month? 

Bah humbug. 

I'm not sure anyone needed to go to the trouble to explode the myth that the UK is 'meritocratic' - one look at the new government would have shot that theory to pieces.

But Social Mobility Myths, a report published by think tank Civitas today, tells the political establishment: "we cannot hope to develop good policies if we ignore the key influence on the phenomenon we are hoping to change."

According to report author Peter Saunders, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Sussex, four social mobility myths distort political debate and policy:

1. Britain is a 'closed shop society', in which life chances are heavily shaped by the class you were born into

2. Social mobility is getting worse, or has even 'ground to a halt'

3. Differences of ability between individuals are irrelevant in explaining the differential rates of success they achieve

4. Governments can increase mobility by top-down engineeering of the education system and forcing more income redistribution.

Much as I would like to agree with all of the above, I'm not sure I can. I have a horrible feeling that some people would prefer to see what they consider their 'social superiors' in certain jobs - particularly those involving government.  

A flashmob infiltrates the Westin St. Francis hotel in San Francisco and performs an adaptation of Lady Gaga's song "Bad Romance." The event was organized to draw attention to a boycott called by the workers of the hotel who are fighting to win a fair contract and affordable healthcare.

A survey by recruiters Milkround.com has found that 58% of graduates think employers should scrap their minimum 2:1 degree requirements.

Eva Malecki, Centrica's graduate recruitment manager, agrees with this, saying: "We do not have a 2:1 cut-off as we believe that accepting applications from graduates with a 2:2 or above will enable us to attract and assess a larger, more diverse graduate pool".

While this is no doubt true, won't this larger, sub 2:1 pool, include less able potential recruits? Rather than widening their graduates pools, employers are at risk of dumbing down their intake.

And why should employers be pandering to students' laziness? Surely there's something fundamentally wrong there.

Recruitment site Totaljobs.com has found that graduates have unrealistic expectations. I've said it before, and I'll say it again - who decided they needed to spend good money on 'discovering' something quite so obvious?

The recruiter's survey also found graduates to be unprepared for the tough job market. Well, I never. Having been a graduate, I think I can safely say that few, if any, graduates are ever prepared for much beyond watching Countdown and eating cold baked beans straight from the tin.

Some of the other alarming findings:

• 70% of graduates think they will find a job within 6 months of graduating
• 1 in ten believe they will earn more than £35,000 a year in their first job
• Just half of respondents had used their university careers service

Perhaps it's for the best that we have a national jobs shortage - imagine the fallout if these idiots were to make it into the workforce ....

With job cuts continuing to strike fear in all but the smuggest, a tiny ray of hope struggles through the gloom. According to recruitment firm The Synergy Group, Britain is experiencing a boom in the recruitment of 'traffic enforcement professionals' - that's traffic wardens to you and I. Phew, that's a relief!

The Synergy Group predicts a dramatic increase - this year - in the number of job opportunities in local authority parking enforcement and traffic management.

Even better, they conducted a national survey, in order to measure the public's attitude to this potential influx of traffic wardens. A bewildering 83% said that parking attendants are necessary to the smooth-running of city centres across the UK. But 53% want traffic wardens to be more understanding, and 34% want them to be more accurate in their work.

Strangest of all, 13% of respondents want more women patrolling the streets, as they're convinced the fairer sex is more lenient.

Kieran Ryan, managing director at The Synergy Group, said: "Traditionally it has been challenging to place candidates within traffic enforcement roles due to negative and unfounded stereotypes associated with the profession".

I'm not really sure what these findings tell us, but at the very least they present a new career option for all those unemployed graduates we're always hearing about.

Workplace expert Richard Donkin earlier this week likened the HR profession to supporters of Milwall football club.

According to Donkin, HR is disliked by the other functions. He compared HR with Milwall fans on account of the latter's infamous chant "Nobody likes us, and we don't care". Donkin also blamed the function for "lots of dreary management speak". Perhaps most scathing of all was his insistence that HR has an issue with its status, and an obsession with being on the board. He also claimed he hadn't seen much evidence of charisma in the profession over the past decade.

But not all of the panellists at the debate, organised by London HR Connection and the London School of Economics, were as negative about the profession. Ruth Spellman, chief executive of the Chartered Management Institute, inisisted that HR has come of age, and that it shouldn't be allowed to slip back to the day of apologising for people management.  But Spellman also said HR needed to be a lot less constipated. She said: "There's lots going on within the profession, but very little of that sees daylight."

Half of employees feel they are paid less than they are worth, according to a survey by the Institute of Payroll Professionals (IPP). And 6% say they are paid considerably less than they deserve.

According to the same survey, nearly two-thirds of employees would ask their employer for a pay rise if they knew that a colleague in a similar role was getting paid more.

Spotted this on Yahoo! earlier - I've tweaked some of the language to make it more relevant to a UK audience, but otherwise it's all the work of Karen Burns (see below). Hard to believe that people are actually this stupid ...

1. Arriving late.

2. Arriving too early.

3. Lighting up a cigarette, or smelling like a cigarette.

4. Bad-mouthing your last boss.

5. Lying about your skills/experience/knowledge.

6. Wearing the wrong (for this workplace!) clothes.

7. Forgetting the name of the person you're interviewing with.

8. Wearing a ton of perfume or aftershave.

9. Wearing sunglasses.

10. Wearing a Bluetooth earpiece.

11. Failing to research the employer in advance.

12. Failing to demonstrate enthusiasm.

13. Inquiring about benefits too soon.

14. Talking about salary requirements too soon.

15. Being unable to explain how your strengths and abilities apply to the job in question.

16. Failing to make a strong case for why you are the best person for this job.

17. Forgetting to bring a copy of your CV and/or portfolio.

18. Failing to remember what you wrote on your own CV.

19. Asking too many questions.

20. Asking no questions at all.

21. Being unprepared to answer the standard questions.

22. Failing to listen carefully to what the interviewer is saying.

23. Talking more than half the time.

24. Interrupting your interviewer.

25. Neglecting to match the communication style of your interviewer.

26. Yawning.

27. Slouching.

28. Bringing along a friend, or your mother.

29. Chewing gum, tobacco, your pen, your hair.

30. Laughing, giggling, whistling, humming, lip-smacking.

31. Saying "you know," "like," "I guess," and "um."

32. Name-dropping or bragging or sounding like a know-it-all.

33. Asking to use the bathroom.

34. Being falsely or exaggeratedly modest.

35. Shaking hands too weakly, or too firmly.

36. Failing to make eye contact (or making continuous eye contact).

37. Taking a seat before your interviewer does.

38. Becoming angry or defensive.

39. Complaining that you were kept waiting.

40. Complaining about anything!

41. Speaking rudely to the receptionist.

42. Letting your nervousness show.

43. Overexplaining why you lost your last job.

44. Being too familiar and jokey.

45. Sounding desperate.

46. Checking the time.

47. Oversharing.

48. Sounding rehearsed.

49. Leaving your mobile phone on.

50. Failing to ask for the job.

Karen Burns is the author of the illustrated career advice book The Amazing Adventures of Working Girl: Real-Life Career Advice You Can Actually Use, recently released by Running Press. She blogs at www.karenburnsworkinggirl.com.

We all love to whinge about our commute - personally, I like to reminiscence about the year I spent in Vienna, where my journey to the office involved a leisurely 20 minute wander through the Imperial Palace. But finally, it seems some of us are doing something about the daily trek.

reallymoving.com has found that proximity to work is the top priority for house hunters, with 58% giving this as the key factor in choosing where they live.

Oddly - as we don't subscribe to gender stereotyping on Work Clinic - the survey also found that men are more likely than women to say an easy commute is the most important factor when house-hunting. Make of that what you will.

Rosemary Rogers of reallymoving.com says "The UK has the longest working hours in Europe, and being able to get to their workplace easily is increasingly becoming a priority for the nation's home movers."

Hmmm - I guess the authors of the survey haven't seen the packed trains heading in and out of London's stations recently ...