The big “Strictly Private & Confidential” letter was given out on the 14th of January. Following it, yesterday Barclays Leeds announced it will be cutting 100 jobs from the mortgage area of business. 100 of our colleagues will face the axe in this cluster of retail banking. In total there will 4300 job cuts in Barclays.
It’s sad to see things fall apart this way. It was a expected news but few of my colleagues were under the quandary that Barclays won’t be effected by the credit crunch and because of this they were under a state of shock yesterday. It is always hard to digest the news of redundancy and there are many factors to it. People have emotional attachment to their work and colleagues. Moreover, you just get used to coming in everyday and doing your thing. Very soon all this will change for many of our colleagues.
The question which keeps popping up in my head is where will the 100 staff go? There are no jobs in the financial sector anymore and all the other sectors are not recruiting. This morning I have been looking at some recruitment sites and the vacancy listed are lousy. Most of the jobs are listed with nearly every recruitment agency which means that there will be a hell lot of competition on every vacancy. An example of competition will be that the other day I applied for a Sales Manager position with one of the largest blue chip companies in the U.K. I was invited to the interview but the date of the interview was after 3 weeks (surprisingly a very long wait). Upon inquiring the reason for this, I was told that there were 1200 applicants for 4 sales manager jobs. Wow, innit?. This credit crunch has become worst than aids. It’s effecting so many people so quickly and it is crippling the economy. On the other hand the government is running out of money to pay people who are on dole. It surely is a lose lose situation. Even if anyone does get into another job there are still risks involved of redundancy there in the future….. CRAP!!!!!!!!
Based on all this, my decision is to start a master’s course this September and probably study something in the health sector. NHS will can pay the course fee and I can apply for a maintenance grant. By the time the qualification is achieved the market will be much more settled and it might even land me into a different and more excellent career. I still need to give it a detail thought.
It’s only January ‘09 and already there have been around 10,000 job losses…..
It time to make the right choice NOW!
Sigh!!! I have got my first 1-1 for the consultation process…
Meri pehchaan Pakistan "My identity is PAKISTAN" 