The overall demand for staff continued to increase during February which means that the current period of growth has now reached five continual months. Generally speaking the volume of jobs available has seen it’s greatest speed of increase in 30 months. Both volumes in demand for temporary and contract staff as well as permanent staff were seen.
Grads looking to find jobs after uni can now attend a new finishing school so that they can learn how to present themselves at work.
The Fastlaners scheme backed by the Gov aims to give graduates from working class background a two week crash course in ‘life skills’. Based at Canary Wharf, it will cover voice training, interviews and work etiquette.
Find out more here : Fastlaners
BANKING giant Santander has launched a new graduate recruitment scheme which this year plans to take on around 230 people. The recruits will learn about a variety of areas including finance, telephone distribution, audit, human resources and, new this year, corporate banking.
The bank says all recruits receive formal and on-the-job training and are also invited to take part in Santander’s community programme, which uses charity challenges to develop team building and organisational skills.
Applications will run throughout 2010. Visit www.santanderukgraduates.com.
Totnes Jobcentre in Totnes in Devon are hosting a job fair on March 10, from 10am to 4pm, for the Dartmouth Apprentice restaurant which is currently looking for apprentices to train for up to eight months in front-of-house positions.
The Dartmouth Apprentice is an “apprentice restaurant” run by charity Training For Life, which aims to give diners great meals while helping young people get their careers in hospitality back on track.
The charity also runs the Hoxton Apprentice in London and opens a third, the Barking Apprentice, this spring.
Call 01803 356 229 or visit www.dartmouthapprentice.com and www.trainingforlife-city.org for more details.
With the Bank of England again keeping the base rate at 0.5% this lunchtime, many contractors whose mortgage is on a lenders Standard Variable Rate (SVR) could find themselves in a position where switching to a fixed rate would be a better option than staying on their lenders SVR.
With the Base Rate at an all time low and only likely to increase, now may be the time to consider a longer term fixed rate mortgage.
Recent research showed that almost 90% of lenders SVR’s are currently higher than the cheapest fixed rates. Therefore, if you are currently on your lenders SVR, now could be the time to look at your options.
Another consideration for Contractors with a high level of savings is that it may now be a good time to consider an offset mortgage to make best use of your capital.
Taj Kang, Associate Director at Contractor Mortgages Made Easy commented “If you want to consider your mortgage options as a contractor then utilising the services of a Contractor Mortgage Specialist will ensure that you are speaking to experts that understand the different ways that contractors are paid.”
In other news, Nationwide have published figures that reveal house prices fell by 1% in February compared to January, ending a strong run of nine consecutive monthly increases, and bringing the average price of a typical property during February to £161,320.
The building society said the drop in demand in January caused by the end of the Stamp Duty holiday and the icy weather seemed to have fed into February’s price drop.
Jonathan Cornell, communications manager at First Action Finance, said he believed that prices would enter a steady period before picking up in the second half of the year.
However, he added: “The end of the Stamp Duty holiday and the normal slowdown around the Christmas period led to less market activity and a lack of demand. I doubt that house prices will fall off a cliff and a slight drop means the market will be better off. It is also good news for first-time buyers because properties are cheaper.”
Turning to recruitment, the resurgence in the UK economy is creating more lucrative IT recruitment opportunities for the most highly skilled of IT Contractors.
With IT investment now once again on many businesses agendas, companies are looking to hire quickly to support their objectives, which can only be good news for contractors.
This is further backed up by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation reporting that there had been an increase in the availability of IT and technology jobs last month.
This article has been published with permission of Contractor Mortgages Made Easy - www.contractormortgagesuk.com
Contractor Mortgages Made Easy are a whole of market mortgage broker who specialise in securing bespoke mortgages for contractors
