Yeah, maybe. As I said I'm not exactly clued up on the circumstances so am, to a degree, firing from the hip. It's good we're expanding the department but seems sad that I was earning more as a postie three years ago than someone with a degree starting a job with a high profile business.
As I explained the other day when the same was said about a different vacancy, the many applicants will have already spent a couple of years on placement at a number of sports clubs. So they will have a track record of design and delivery of programmes, they will have experience ‘relevant’ to the role, in their two or more years within elite sport.
A lot of roles like this in this type industry have a lot of people on the courses meaning there is often more trained than positions making it an employers market.
Imagine working for a master's degree, with two years of professional experience behind you, to get paid £20k.
My daughter is about to complete her 2nd year of a degree in Exercise and Sports Science at Loughborough University. Her 3rd year will be an unpaid work placement, then she'll do her final year and possibly another year if she does a Masters. She'll leave with an enormous debt. A starting salary of 20k is a joke, but at least she won't have to pay any of her loan off earning so little...
Well, those who can afford to spend a couple of years on UNPAID placements as their parents are wealthy enough...
I'm surprised that so many people are shocked at this. It's been par for the course since at least 2007, which is when I graduated. Any industry in high demand (publishing, museums, art, journalism, football are the ones I know fairly well) generally require at least a masters qualification and a long period of unpaid labour in order to gather enough experience for a poorly-paid entry level role. Even after all that they'll be massively oversubscribed. This is normal. At least with this one they're not having to live in London for all of that, as you would if you fancied a career in museums or publishing. Remember this job the next time you hear politicians from well-off backgrounds going on about equality of opportunity!
I don't think people are particularly shocked at the wage, but more pointing out how unreasonable it is. That was my intent anyway. The fact that this has become the norm across various industries just makes it worse.