16 Asian LEADER
15 Jan - 28 Jan 2014
BUSINESS & FINANCE
Employers plan
to take on more
new graduates
A
survey of 100 big
employers suggests
they are planning to
increase the number of new
graduates they take on this
year.
The study, by High Fliers
Research, says there will be
a 9% rise in this recruitment
- about 1,400 extra jobs.
Many of the jobs will go
to people who have already
worked for the organisations, either on work experience or placement, it suggests.
Previous forecasts have
been less optimistic.
According to the study,
the increase in what is
known as entry-level graduate employment is the biggest in four years among
this group of employers.
Average starting salaries
are £29,000 a year, with higher amounts being paid by
investment banks (£45,000)
and law firms (£39,000).
Among the highest starting salaries for this year are
at the European Commission and the supermarket
chain Aldi, both offering
rates of about £41,000.
The study says two-thirds
of the employers are offering
“paid work-experience programmes” for students and
recent graduates, with more
than 11,000 paid placements
this year for first and second-year undergraduates.
In all, 37% of this year’s
entry-level positions are set
to be taken by people who
have already worked with
the organisations in some
capacity.
The largest recruiters of
graduates in 2014 will be the
charity Teach First, which
takes on top graduates to
be trained as teachers. It
has 1,550 vacancies.
It is followed by financial
services groups PwC (1,200
vacancies) and Deloitte
(1,000 vacancies).
Martin Birchall, managing director of High Fliers Research, said: “This
very significant increase
in graduate vacancies at
Britain’s top employers
means the job prospects
for graduates leaving university this year are the
best they’ve been since the
start of the recession seven
years ago.”
A study last year from the
Association of Graduate Recruiters was less optimistic,
forecasting a 4% fall in graduate vacancies.
EU Issues new guidelines for migrant benefits
T
he European Union has
published new guidelines aimed at clarifying the
rights of migrant workers
to claim social benefits in
other EU member states,
amid a heated debate in
countries such as Britain
and Germany over welfare
payments to foreigners.
The issue of so-called
benefit tourism has risen
up the political agenda
ahead of elections for the
European Parliament elections in May, which are expected to see significant
gains by right-wing populist
parties such as the United
Kingdom
Independence
Party and France’s National
Front. These parties have
been benefiting from a wave
of anti-EU sentiment following years of economic
crisis in the region.
The lifting of limits on the
free movement of Bulgarian
and Romanian workers on
Jan. 1 has also stoked con-
Continued from page 17
This is where a time plan
comes in. You need to have
a very clear idea of what
needs to be done, how long
it will take, and when it
is going to be done. If it is
your first time using a time
plan you may want to keep
a time log for a week or two
first. With a time log you
write down in detail how
you spend your time. Do
this for a few days and you
will get a clear idea of how
you spend your days and
how long various tasks take
you. When you know how
long each task will take,
you can plan your day much
more accurately.
The 4 Ds of time
management
Now you can move onto
looking more closely at the
things you need to do each
EU Employment Commissioner Laszlo Andor,
cerns over a fresh influx of
Eastern European migrants
into Britain, similar to the
wave that followed the EU
accession of Poland and
nine other states in 2004.
The new guidelines, by
the European Commission, the EU’s executive
arm, clarify which country
should be judged to be a
worker’s country of “habitual residence” and therefore responsible for paying
social benefits. The criteria
include family ties, duration
of stay and where the person pays taxes, according
to the guide.
Presenting the guidelines
on Monday, EU Employment Commissioner László
Andor launched a robust
defense of the free movement of workers, which
he described as a “cornerstone” of the EU and one of
its greatest achievements.
“The more workers from
other EU countries a country has, the more solvent its
welfare system is,” Mr. Andor said.
Faced
with
growing
support for the euroskeptic UKIP party, Britain’s
Conservative-led coalition
government has proposed
restricting migrants’ access
to benefits.
Earlier this month, U.K.
Prime Minister David Cameron said he would try to
renegotiate Britain’s EU
membership to allow it to
withhold child benefit payments from U.K. workers
whose children live abroad.
In Germany, some politicians in Chancellor Angela
Merkel’s governing coalition have called for more
rights to deport people
from other EU countries
who have sought welfare
payments without previously having worked in
Germany.
Time management
day and deciding how to
handle them. For this you
will need the four Ds of
self-management.
These
are:
. Do it - Get it done, the
sooner the better.
. Delegate it - This task
doesn’t suit you; get
someone else to do it.
. Dump it - Not important.
Forget about it.
. Defer it - Something for
the ‘to do’ pile. Come
back to it later.
You should be able to file
any task that arises in your
average day under one of
the four Ds.
Time wasters
Now let’s look at time
wasters. Time wasters can
destroy any attempt at effective time management if
they are not identified and
eliminated. The biggest
problem is that they are
often very hard to identify
because they can be very
trivial.
These are some time
wasters to watch out for:
. Lack of or poor planning File things properly, write
down appointments, that
kind of thing. Basically,
you need to be organized
to use your time effectively.
. Procrastination - Many
people keep deferring
things when they are best
done immediately. Don’t
fall into this trap.
. Not delegating - You can’t
do it all yourself. Do the
things that you are good
at and enjoy. Someone
el