UK insurance giant Admiral has hit out at the falling standards of the job applications it receives due to young job seekers using ‘txt spk’ – text speak – instead of proper words.
The company, which is one of the biggest in Britain, said many youngsters addicted to their mobile phones are losing out at the very beginning of looking for work because they were unable to string a normal sentence together, the
Daily Mail reported.
Forms saying ‘U r a gr8 company 2 work 4’ and ‘Btw am out of work atm’ were examples hitting their job chances.
The Cardiff-based company was so serious about the matter it voiced its fears in evidence to the Welsh Assembly’s Enterprise and Business Committee.
An Admiral spokesperson said: “We do not ask for any formal qualifications, but we expect the spelling and grammar on the application form to be of a certain standard.
“A lot of it is like text-speak, there is no punctuation or upper case. So that is the first impression you get.”
The Welsh Assembly noted one barrier to some young job seekers was the drift from personal, face to face careers advice to online-based information.
This meant many able students were leaving education with little idea of how to construct a CV or how to deal with potential employers.
It also found many young people were leaving school without essential numeracy and literacy skills and that academic study was often misdirected given the employment opportunities on offer.
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