IT'S a funny old world. Have you ever woken up in a sweat, having dreamt that you are still at school or university doing exams? Horrible. Spare a thought then for present day students of economics. It goes something like this…

The United Kingdom saw an influx of something like 600,000 Polish workers when its borders were opened up to new EU citizens a couple of years ago. Press articles and news comment then flourished on the subject of British workers being denied jobs as they were “stolen” from under their noses by Polish nationals willing to work for less money.

THE average IT salary for the first quarter of 2008 was GBP34,217. CV Screen, monitored 11,000 advertised vacancies to come up with this statistic and tell us that IT salaries have risen by 4.1% in the past year.

UNSURPRISINGLY, recruitment in the banking and finance sector has slowed rapidly in the first quarter of the year. Online advertising firm Broadbean Technology report a steady decline in banking roles compared with 2006, when there were three times the number of finance jobs advertised.

Definition of harassment amended Statutory sick pay has increased Statutory maternity, paternity and adoption pay have increased Information and Consultation of Employees Regulations 2004 amended

THE Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has confirmed that where an employer terminates the contracts of its employees and subsequently offers them new contracts on different terms, the dismissals are not redundancy dismissals. (Martland and others v Co-operative Insurance Society Ltd.)

WHY are you the right person for that job? Is it obvious? Or is it only obvious to you? There are people out there who apply for virtually every job we handle and never get an interview. There are others who have only ever applied for one and got it.

Four legal secretaries are on the tube on a Monday morning. One asks the other three if they pulled at the weekend. The first one said, 'Oh yes, I pulled a partner, he was amazing, extremely confident, knew what he was doing but on the downside, he seemed to think 6 minutes lasted an hour.' ….