LAST CHANCE: Head for Points writer, London, £40,000 pa

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• Lukethetraveller says:

  5 Nov5 November 14:21

  Real shame, travelling is my life and I would love this type of job, however English is not my native language and with some very pedantic readers here, it wouldn’t do any good.

  • Alex Sm says:

    6 Nov6 November 10:15

    Anika was not a native speaker either and she managed very well with some editing and proofing supervision from Rob. I think this should not discourage people from applying at all. Also this might help to “internationalise” HfP English which sometimes is a bit too British 🙂

    • Polly says:

      6 Nov6 November 20:44

      Good point…

• czechoslovakia says:

  5 Nov5 November 14:55

  Would love the job, just no-where near good enough, being a *A kind a person.
  Good luck!

• Lady London says:

  5 Nov5 November 15:01

  £40,000 for rent? You mean you’d be looking for a place for…. £3200+ per month?

  Even living in/near or working in London there are ways of not paying that. Even with 3 dogs.

  If you wanted to make it work I’m sure you could. Getting round the mindset of professional often young(ish) travellers, who work or live in London, though, is a very peculiar thing as Rob says.

  • Russ says:

    5 Nov5 November 16:32

    I’m still not very clear on what a professional youngish traveler who works or lives in town is. Are we looking at the well moneyed through their profession i.e. finance, tech, pharmas who’re comfortable spending higher amounts on travel in general including hotel chain’s executive apartments? Or is this cohort now more likely to frequent a Moxy type hotel with the austerity thing that’s been going on?

    • Rob says:

      5 Nov5 November 16:35

      You are looking at a bunch of people who, in general, took graduate jobs in London after university and are now 10-15 years into their professional careers and have generally achieved some level of success but with a lot more to (hopefully) come.

      • Russ says:

        5 Nov5 November 16:43

        Nicely cleared up, thanks Rob and good luck with the search.

      • tom1 says:

        5 Nov5 November 17:54

        Out of curiosity, where do you get all your info about the visitors -from Facebook pixel?

        • Rob says:

          5 Nov5 November 18:05

          Come to our parties and you can meet 250 of them in one room.

          There is also date from Quantcast and Alexa page count pixels on the site, plus Facebook, and all of these give us aggregate data based what else they know about you. Quantcast claims a HFP reader is 4.2x more likely than the UK average to earn £70k+ for example. No idea how they get to this, but working this stuff out is what they do all day.

      • Julian says:

        6 Nov6 November 21:22

        Most jobs in which people fly regularly in Business Class tend to be senior roles in marketing, sales or at Chief Executive level.

        Also in order to earn enough Avios to regularly make long haul Avios redemptions in to Club and First Class again implies a very high level of annual card spend (apart of course from the fanatics who constantly cycle between different cards and earn large sign up bonuses each time).

        All that being so it hardly seems surprising to me that the average HfP reader has a much higher earning level than the average member of the UK population.

      • Shoestring says:

        6 Nov6 November 21:25

        Julian – you’d make an excellent HfP sub editor!

        Always the master of detail & I think you could learn (in time) to sharpen up your prose.

        A joy to read, I think you should consider applying.

      • Julian says:

        7 Nov7 November 16:03

        Shoestring,

        I’m glad to have one at least fan on the site given that I also seem to have connected with quite a few detractors regarding my somewhat expansive writing style. I do however retain and store normally pointless facts and data and recall them with ease (surely a key qualification for the job). Only a few commenters here are memorable for different reasons and Genghis (mainly as the most heavily addicted contributor who would clearly be a shoe in for this job were he not already apparently now earning far more money than the pay offered), oldharryrocks and Lady London (obviously the name alone stands out but the contributions are interesting too) are amongst them.

        Things going against me (aside from insufficiently concise writing style, although of course HeadForPoints articles are themselves relatively length) are clearly age (since I appear to be around five years older than Rob, which I think most bosses would find difficult with someone as old and opinionated as me) and possibly gender, although I am sure that Rob will select on merit all things being equal.

        May be I should give it a go therefore (only a few hours left to apply) but I think with a position like this one it will come down not just to the ability to do the job satisfactorily but also personal connection and rapport with Rob as determined by the interview for those who make it that far in the selection process. Employment gaps would also be an issue with me but noting that Rob has not immediately discounted someone who is not currently working (and actually sees advantages in that situation) then he appears to be more broad minded than most potential employers.

        I’m still wondering though about any possibilities on share options after so many years service etc in the event that Rob eventually sells the business on to one of the usual suspects for several tens of millions………………………………..

      • Julian says:

        7 Nov7 November 16:07

        Damn I see that a couple of typos made it in to the last post (at least I spotted them subsequently) but as usual there is no edit button.

        Were I to get the job I would definitely hope to try and persuade my boss of the benefits of a normal proper threaded web discussion forum where those contributing then also receive post update emails.

      • Julian says:

        7 Nov7 November 16:22

        Also if I take Rob’s CV at https://uk.linkedin.com/in/headforpoints at face value and his start date in the world of employment (September 1999) then he only appears to be either 40 or 41 compared to my 55.

        So I’m still feeling like the late 20s to mid 30s applicant (I’m also guessing that being female might actually be a potential asset rather than a hindrance given that Rob’s wife clearly didn’t impose any non officially advertised strictures in that area regarding the previous post holder) with some relevant writing and numerical analysis skills is most likely to be the person that Rob is seeking.

        However this would have been the perfect job for me to apply for back in 1993 after eight years in my first job as a numbers and data analysis geek (also talking to the national financial press about the numbers and associated monthly commentary that we produced) with a trade association for the collective investment fund industry (AKA unit trusts). Unfortunately the internet at that stage had scarcely been conceived and most of us with an interest in that area were at that stage using some quaint walled garden service known as Compuserve.

      • EwanG says:

        7 Nov7 November 16:31

        So you have applied Julian? Good luck!

        And I think you have more fans than you think. You provide intelligent, measured, appropriate and on topic responses, and you acknowledge these could be more succinct and that is the first step in improving these!

    • Shoestring says:

      7 Nov7 November 22:34

      Here’s one for you, Julian. I really wanted to be a Reuters reporter but they turned me down as an undergraduate. Not to worry, I got another 8 job offers, those were the times.

      Anyway, I later got to present business plan for 45 minutes or so to Chris Hogg (different chairmanship) and he basically said I was the main man lol, big on the congrats etc. What talent, what potential lol.

      So I could possibly really have been that hack that I should have been! If only he’d been on the panel 10 years earlier.

      • Julian says:

        8 Nov8 November 11:43

        So what career did you end up pursuing then?

        I always thought that Shoestring was a BBC series private investigator (detective) of 1979/80 (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoestring_(TV_series) Trevor Eve was particularly good in the role but apparently he feared becoming typecast – see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoestring_(TV_series) However it appears that members of the same production team were also responsible for the creation of the excellent Bergerac series. I can still remember the theme music for Shoestring quite clearly now but then I can also still remember the decimilisation ad jingles of 1971 when I was only 7/8 years old.

        Regarding the job I fear that I have not applied so far (one reason being that I unexpectedly had major commitments to attend to yesterday evening) and of course Rob may well dismiss me out of hand (as he is quite entitled to) for not meeting the official deadline. However I note the application process is only to email Rob telling him why one is suitable for the role, which does not on the face of it seem that arduous compared to many job application processes. Surprisingly he doesn’t even seem to ask for the customary CV, although no doubt he would not object if anyone attached one.

        I have more time than yesterday to try and write something convincing. However I do wish now that I had managed to apply for one of the tickets for the previous HfP parties in time (before they sold out in about two hours) as if I had actually met Rob I would already have a far better idea of whether or not he is somebody I could happily work with. Still that would clearly become obvious in the unlikely event of making it as far as an interview…………

        • Rob says:

          8 Nov8 November 12:01

          The last two parties sold out in 3 minutes actually 🙂

• Andy says:

  5 Nov5 November 15:31

  This comment thread makes me wonder if demand is there for more content based around the North, or if perhaps the Northern types are just a bit more vocal at times.

  • Mr(s) Entitled says:

    5 Nov5 November 16:05

    I think we are more vocal. This site, like most of the country, will be geared towards the M25. It’s hard to argue because that is where a critical mass of people exist. I’d love to see some more stuff focused on MAN, but that doesnt help people 2hrs north of EDI. It’s a tough nut to crack.

    I would also like to see some more stuff on earning avios with sunglasses. Once I’ve finished my 23hr day down the mine for £20k a year the sun doesn’t half hurt my eyes when I get back to the surface.

    • Russ says:

      5 Nov5 November 16:33

      🙂

• George K says:

  5 Nov5 November 21:03

  I think the point has been well made in some of the comments above, but I’d like to state with a certain degree of experience that a) the £40k salary for such a London-based job is probably the most competitive I’ve ever seen and b) that London rent is perfectly achievable around the £9-10k mark (and in many cases, much lower).

  I’ve worked in both trade and national/international media organisations over the past 20 years, with the former offering starting salaries in the low £20s these days – after years of stagnation. A couple of years ago, Time Out London had a column called ‘Quit your job to become a…’ and when Journalism was mentioned, the starting salary was listed as £18.5k pa (which was exactly the starting salary in my company about 12 years ago).

  There’re plenty (and without a doubt, too many) jobs in London that offer even below £20k (without even considering the gig economy phenomenon) so for those still in doubt, I’d like to state that this job has not only an above-average starting salary, but also an air-tight job spec (a rare sight as most job descriptions I’ve seen are usually thrown out the window as soon as you start).

  Best of luck to the candidates! There should never have been any cause for any complaints.

• mutley says:

  6 Nov6 November 09:15

  Rob,

  Your not on the list of notable former pupils, where did it all go wrong?!!

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