Gumtree

I saw this on Gumtree a few months ago. Sadly I’m not qualified.

Models wanted for Sideshow Freakshow photoshoot.

I'm requiring models for my Foundation Degree project next year. 
I plan to re-create a modern feel to the term sideshow/freakshow sticking to the dark edged feel.
I require people who can travel to the area and no time wasters please. 
I need models who can evoke one of the following (I will be using make-up for various characters): 


Siamese Twins, Contortionist/s, Serpent Handler, Overweight, Albino, Bearded Lady, Strongman/woman, Small people, Vampire, Fire Acts and more. 


If you are interested or feel you have a talent to be considered for this photoshoot, please contact for more details.
Thanks. x

Not being female, I can’t do this either:

Ladies get your shoes shined....and get paid £10 per pair !!! 

Hi
I'm a tall well-built 28 year old guy who's deeply submissive and would love to clean and worship your shoes. I'm willing to pay £10 for each pair of shoes you make me clean. Money is not an issue for me and its a win win for you, as not only do you get your dirty shoes cleaned without getting ur own hands dirty, you also get paid for it. And it allows me a chance to do what I like. 
You can even loan me out to your friends to use thus making more money for yourself (i'll also pay for your referals) 
If you want we could meet up someplace outside and discuss this and if you are comfortable we can take it forward. I'm a genuine guy and this is a sincere offer, so please honest replies only. 
Its a very simple no frills way for you to make some easy money and it works for me too. 
Drop me a line if interested and we can take it further. 
Cheers 
JS

Gumtree is notorious for its weird job ads, but some of the biggest companies use it:

Male and Female actor/models needed for Channel 4 series The Joy Of Teen Sex.

We are filming for the C 4 show the Joys of Teen Sex on Monday 11th July in East London. It will require nudity & different sexual positions to be demonstrated. 
Contact me if you are interested in taking part. Please send me a photo of yourself and a full body shot. We are able to pay a small fee and travel/lunch expenses. It will be a 8hr shoot day. 

Always worry if someone is looking for an ‘open-minded’ employee:

Open minded cleaner wanted

i am looking for a cleaner for 2 hours every fortnight in my two bed house, normal chores, hoovering, cleaning etc, even sometimes shopping, after a couple of times i will get you a key, so you can do the cleaning anytime. 


the reason why i said an open mined cleaner is because i am a naturist and i walk about nude all the time at home, so sometimes you will see me, sometimes you wont, but you have to be prepared for that. 


i will give good money for the right person. £12.50 per hour so thats £25.00 every fortnight for just 2 hours work, and after a while you can do those 2 hours work when you want.

Gumtree seems family friendly compared with Craigslist, whose job board seems to be dominated by the sex industry. As well as the standard adverts for masseurs, escorts and porn actors, you see some more unusual requests:

Wanted: student for cheeky voice-recording project (your computer)
I'm looking for a female student between 18 and 22, to make a voice recording on their computer (its easy as long as you have a microphone) and send me the sound-file, which I'd pay for. It would involve simply reading out a cheeky, slightly erotic story that I'd send to you. Recording is for my own entertainment only :-) Applicants who can provide a basic photo, description and sample recording of their voice will be prioritised. Regional or rough/ladette accents preferred. :-) 

This one would be easy money:

Male and genuinely ticklish? Earn £100 per hour - cash in hand!

Very straightforward. Looking for ticklish young men to be tied up and tickled. No nudity, no sex - just tickling. You need to be physically fit and genuinely ticklish to take part in this slightly unusual gig. Pay is an excellent 100 pounds per hour - cash in hand. Repeat work also possible. Apply with recent photo (face and body) and description of ticklishness (how much/where) in order to be considered! It'll be safe and fun - and good money for you - so get in touch!

Some people use the job site to advertise their services. This one seems legit:

Very cheap male cleaner

Hi, I am a 36yrs old, tall White guy with a good body in Brighton who is willing to do your cleaning. It is £2 an hour for females and £25 ph for males. 
Regards, Mark. 

Cover Letters

After five months' unemployment, I checked my email 'sent' folder. I'd sent over 100 applications, and been offered five interviews. I needed a new strategy.

A friend of mine, Mr B, was the man to ask. His experience and qualifications, in bullet points, just about fit onto the two pages of his CV. He came back from uni on Friday, and started a well-paying job on Monday.

In contrast, I pad out my single-page CV with plenty of detail about the few jobs I’ve held, and pointless background statements like: “I’m a keen CD collector.”

I've got a copy. So what?

Mr B quickly spotted a problem: my cover letter should be longer than 27 words.

He sent me an example letter by a friend of his, Mrs X. Apparently, it had gained her plenty of interviews which ‘she really shouldn’t have got’. It was a page long, and full of meaningless statements along the lines of ‘I like your company and want to work for you because what you do is interesting’.

Still, it was quite impressive, and helpful. I finally recognised that my cover letter should explain why I want to do the job, and why I’d be good at it. I’ve updated the letter. It was a bland list of what I’ve been doing for the past year. Now it’s a very immodest mini-essay

I’m keeping it to half a page, though. There were about 70 applications for each graduate job last year, according to a poll. If all cover letters are like Mrs X’s, before getting to the CVs, employers would have to wade through 20,000 words, the equivalent of a mini novel. I doubt employers would want to do this, especially if the novella has 70 unconnected characters and no plot.

Since updating my letter, I’ve sent seven applications, and been offered two interviews. The ratio is improving!

PS: a recent donation to Oxfam included: free tourist brochures, a file of Met Office documents, and a tooth in an envelope

University

Is it still worth going to university, financially? University Minister David Willetts says the mean value of a degree is £100,000. That’s the average extra money a graduate will earn in their lifetime, compared with people who left school at 18.

This kind of logic is always suspicious. A statistical link between two things doesn’t mean one caused the other. As Stuart Sutherland wrote in Irrationality:

“The Thatcher government, anxious to reduce subsidies to students, repeatedly claimed that going to university increases earning power. It cannot be denied that graduates do on average earn more than others, but there is no good reason for regarding this as cause and effect. After all, university students have higher than average IQs, and they may be more determined than others; moreover, their parents tend to have good positions and to be middle or upper class so that they can often help their children to obtain good jobs.

“These factors are surely enough to account for higher earnings.The causal association between a university education and higher pay later in life is therefore not proven and the repeated assertion of this connection by British Ministers of Education demonstrate only that the British education system has not succeeded in teaching them how to think.”

It would take a cruel scientist to get reliable data on the true money value of university. He’d have to take hundreds of sets of identical twins, and randomly choose one from each pair to go to university. The other would be sent to get a job after their A-levels. By following the twins throughout their lives, one might get a good estimate of the ‘graduate premium’.

Thankfully, this study will never happen. This does mean, though, we’ll be left with no real clue as to the cash value of a degree.

Of course, some degrees are more valuable than others. A joint honours degree in two unconnected subjects seems particularly useless. Anyone for Derby Uni’s course in Dance & Movement Studies with Architectural Design? Law with Zoology? Criminology with Popular Music Production? 

Trafficker

Apparently ‘trafficker’ is an actual job title. Traffickers work for advertising agencies, helping organise campaigns, and making sure ads go in the right places.

Advertisers spend their lives trying to make things look good. Why would they borrow a job title from the most horrific, brutal branch of the sex industry?

While we're on the sex industry, an update: someone donated three dirty movies to Oxfam last week. One was called Xena: Labia Princess. Is there not a copyright issue there?

Interning

A Labour MP who claims to have “campaigned tirelessly for a living wage for all” is advertising for an unpaid intern to help her achieve this. Lyn Brown told the BBC she ‘“would like to pay everyone” in her office, but “did not have the resources to do so”’.

The BBC continued: “A Westminster source told [us] that the volunteer - who has already been recruited - will be a direct replacement for an existing, salaried staff member who is leaving for another job elsewhere.”

Many companies are replacing entry-level paid jobs with internships.  In a survey in April, 17% of company bosses admitted used interns as ‘cheap labour’. Only 12% knew this can be illegal.

The law is explained here. If you’re doing work, rather than just observing, you should be paid. ‘Work’ isn’t that well defined, but if an employer gives you tasks, and expects you to show up and do them well, you are probably working. It doesn't matter if you've agreed to work for free. There is no law allowing you to give up your right to minimum wage.

If you’re an intern at a magazine or paper writes an article, and it is published, this is clearly work. Last year, the National Union of Journalists surveyed its members. Of the interns who had work published, 80% were not paid.

There is some reason for optimism, though. In May, a website intern won £1,000 in back pay. Keri Hudson claimed to have ‘practically run’ an online review website called My Village, “training and delegating tasks, collecting briefs, scheduling articles and even hiring new interns”. After a while she was promised pay, but this later changed. For six weeks work, she was awarded the minimum wage and holiday pay.

Two years ago, Nicola Vetta was awarded at least £2,000 from London Dreams Motion Pictures, a film company which took her on as an expenses-only intern. She agreed to this, but after suing them for not paying her expenses, she decided to also take them to an employment tribunal for back pay. Ms Vetta was judged to be a worker, and so eligible for minimum wage.

The crucial principle was that agreements to work for free are not legally binding. If you're working, you're still entitled to the minimum wage. I was particularly interested by this point, as I’m an unpaid intern. Since February, I’ve been working at a magazine. They give me articles to write, and expect me to do them well. I do pretty much the same work as the other writers, who are paid for their efforts. 

Of course, I won't sue. I feel I've done well out of my internship. It's given me good experience, and, crucially, means I have something to do during the day. Since February, I haven't watched a single episode of Jeremy Kyle.

Volunteering

A spell of unemployment looks bad on a CV, especially if it coincides with a string of local murders. Experts advise unemployed people to do something useful with their time. This kind of insight shows how valuable experts are.

I work at Oxfam. It’s pleasant enough, and as a volunteer, I get the chance to buy things before they go out on the shelves. This may be mildly corrupt, but it keeps the work interesting.

Part of my job is to sort book donations, and chuck out anything in poor condition, as it wouldn’t sell. A colleague has slightly different criteria. He puts anything on Princess Diana straight in the bin, as he’s sick of her. Michael Moore is binned for being an ‘irritating prick’. Donated ‘misery memoirs’ are chucked straight away, as are Mills and Boon.

Once, we had to get rid of a nice bit of china. A volunteer was sorting a plastic bag full of donations, when there was a crash. “What’s that? Ming... Oh fuck.” Perhaps it was broken already. It wouldn’t surprise me, given some of the useless things people have donated. We’ve recently been given:

•        Used knickers
•          The G2 section of the Guardian
•          A pair of trousers with a suspicious stain
•          A locked suitcase without a key
•          Two books of sex-tips which smelt like they had been well used.

· 

Fire Starter

A Brighton-based accountancy firm called Crunch is advertising for a “PR/Journalist Fire Starter”.

The job involves “Researching, writing and distributing press releases to targeted media, collating and analysing media coverage, helping to organise events”, and similar tasks. There is no mention of setting fires.

The ideal candidate will have “experience as a journalist... experience of planning, developing and delivering end to end PR campaigns across a variety of communication channels, [an] understanding of social media and its PR leverage”, and so on.

The advert doesn’t mention fire-starting anywhere. Very few other PR jobs involve setting fires, and it’s hard to see how doing so would be useful to a firm of accountants. Isn’t the whole point of accounting to keep strict records of everything? I would imagine having someone starting fires in the office would be exactly what they wouldn’t want to happen.

Brighton has form in the field of confusing job ads; last year, the city council spent £14,000 on a recruitment campaign for four strategic directors (salary: £125,000 each). They spent seven thousand on creating a recruitment website called saynotostatusquo.co.uk. Its headline read “Status Quo fans need not apply”. The band’s manager called it a “direct insult to the capabilities of millions of Quo fans, many of whom are probably totally overqualified for these jobs.”

Cllr John Barradell eventually apologised, saying that “the question of musical preference will not be asked at interview; it is not relevant to the recruitment of these jobs”. He explained the title: “What we mean is that we want people who will come to the council with brilliant and original ideas about how to make residents' lives better.” Geddit?