Every entry-level vacancy within fifteen miles of Reading, screened against one question: could a sixteen-year-old with no employment history actually get this job?
You asked for 20 posted in the last 3 days, and this now clears it. The first version of this page had 14, because Reed was the only board that would answer a script. Indeed turned out to be reachable by a different route, and it carries the retail and hospitality work Reed never sees. 15 of the jobs below came from there, all posted within 3 days. Every Indeed link has been opened and confirmed live.
Ranked by how likely you are to actually be hired, not by how well the advert scores. Tiers are my judgement on top of the machine ranking, because a scraper cannot know that Greggs recruits at 16 and most warehouse agencies will not. Every Indeed link has been opened and confirmed live.
Greggs, Reading RG2 8HA
The best fit found anywhere. Greggs recruits at 16, it is in Reading, and the advert says outright: "Previous work experience is not essential. As long as you are willing to learn, we will give you all the training you need to do an amazing job." Apply to this one first.
Zerodegrees, Reading RG1 2LR
Town centre, and the advert states "No experience needed, we will show you everything." Part time is one of the listed contract types. Waiting tables is legal at 16 as long as you are not serving alcohol unsupervised.
Travelodge, 387 Basingstoke Road, Reading RG2 0JE
12 hours a week including weekends, which fits around college. The advert says "No experience required for this role, we can coach and teach you everything you need to know."
Costa Coffee, Reading town centre
Costa recruits baristas from 16, it is walkable, and your café placement is directly relevant experience. Lead with the placement when you apply.
Village Hotel, Reading RG1 8BD
The £8.00 bottom of that range is the under-18 minimum wage band. An employer only publishes that floor if they intend to hire someone under 18. 16 hours a week, weekdays, in central Reading.
SBFM, Unit 22, Holybrook Walk, Reading RG1 2AS
Mon and Wed to Sat, 7am to 9am, plus Sunday 8:30 to 10:30. Two hours a day before college starts, which is about the most compatible shift pattern on this page. "Experience is preferred but not essential as we will invest in your training."
Holland & Barrett, Reading
A permanent 12 hour contract in Reading. No experience asked for, just "curiosity about health and wellness, with a willingness to learn."
Charles Tyrwhitt, The Oracle Unit 37, Reading
In the Oracle, 16 hours a week with overtime available, and no experience requirement stated. The word "Senior" in the title is the only worry, so treat it as a stretch rather than a certainty.
GLL, Reading RG1 8EQ
GLL runs the council leisure centres, so this is about as close to a local authority employer as retail work gets. Permanent, part time or full time, flexible. No experience requirement stated.
Oliver Bonas, Wokingham
Eight hours split across Monday and Sunday, a pattern built for someone in education. Oliver Bonas hires at 16 and the advert asks for personality rather than experience. Direct train from Reading.
Halfords, Reading Retail Park
Halfords publishes its age bands openly in the advert: "Age 21+ £13.14 per hour, Under 21 £11.28 per hour." An employer that prices young staff into the ad is an employer that hires them. 20 hours a week.
Costa Coffee, Reading town centre
A second Costa opening in Reading, posted three days before the other one, so probably a different store. Apply to both. Separate stores mean separate managers.
Tumblestone Hollow, Stonor Park, Henley on Thames RG9 6HF
Weekends only until 24 October, at a visitor attraction. Seasonal work has the lowest bar of anything here and the pay floor of £10 suggests young staff. Henley is a direct train, but check the last one back.
New Look, Bracknell
"Previous experience in retail is desirable but not essential." New Look hires at 16 in most stores. The pay is not published, which is the only reason this is not in tier A.
Matalan, Bracknell RG12 1AP
The shift pattern is in the job title, which tells you exactly who they are recruiting: people with daytime commitments. Part time. Pay not published.
Il Cortile Deli, Maidenhead Road, Bracknell RG42 6EJ
A £9.00 floor is a youth rate, and "previous experience is a plus, but not essential". Kitchen portering is a classic first job. Small independent, so a phone call or a walk in will beat an online form.
CeX, 82 High Street, Maidenhead SL6 1PY
Another £8.00 under-18 floor, and CeX is a games and tech shop, so knowing the product is most of the interview. Maidenhead is a train ride, which is the main cost.
McMullen and Sons, Duke of Clarence, Marlow
This advert publishes a separate under-18 pay band in the body text, which is proof rather than inference. Against it: Saturday nights, and Marlow is awkward without a lift. Ask when the shift ends, because you cannot legally work past 10pm at 16.
Scattergoods Agency, Reading
In Reading and no experience implied. The catch is the hours: predominantly daytime on weekdays, which only works if you are not in college full time.
Costa Coffee, Camberley
Same role and same 16-friendly employer as the Reading Costas, but Camberley is a genuinely bad commute without a car. A backup if the Reading stores go quiet.
Source4 Personnel Solutions, Earley
The closest job outside the town centre. Agency warehouse work usually carries an 18 minimum for insurance reasons, but this advert does not say so. Phone the agency first rather than spending an evening on the form.
Supreme Facilities, Reading RG1
Best hourly rate in Reading on this page, and "previous catering or food service experience preferred but not essential". But it is 40 hours minimum, full time, day shifts. Only viable if you are not continuing in education.
Planet Recruitment, Wallingford
Says "no experience necessary as full training will be given" in plain text, which is why the scraper ranked it top. It is still Monday to Friday, 8 to 4, full time, in Wallingford, which is impractical without transport.
Get Staffed, Beenham
"Depending on age and experience" means they run youth pay bands, so they employ young people. But Beenham is a village with poor bus links, and this is full time.
Source4 Personnel Solutions, Theale
Close to Reading and temporary, so the bar may be lower. Same agency as number 21, so one phone call covers both.
Barchester Healthcare, Basingstoke
Cleaning rather than care, and it promises "all the training you need". A care home will want a DBS check, which is slow and gated at 18 in practice.
DPD, Basingstoke
Full training from day one and all PPE provided, but a national parcel carrier is the least likely employer here to take a 16-year-old with no history.
Costa Coffee, Reading
"Barista Maestro" is Costa team leader grade and it wants people who have already run shifts. Skip it and take the plain Barista roles above.
The most useful thing this round turned up. UK minimum wage is banded by age, so an advert whose hourly range starts near the under-18 band is budgeting for someone under 18. That is a far harder signal than any friendly phrasing in the advert body.
Village Hotel, Reading £8.00 to £12.71 under-18 floor CeX, Maidenhead £8.00 to £12.71 under-18 floor NEXT, Camberley £8.28 to £12.71 under-18 floor McMullen, Marlow £8.95 to £12.76 publishes an under-18 rate Il Cortile, Bracknell £9.00 to £12.71 youth floor Halfords, Reading £11.28 under 21, £13.14 at 21+ Travelodge, Reading £12.71 flat budgeted at the 18+ band Supreme Facilities £13.85 flat budgeted at the 18+ band
A single flat rate means they have priced the job for an adult. A wide range starting near £8 means the opposite. When you are choosing which five to apply to tonight, sort by that before anything else.
You were right that one board was thin, so I tested twenty-five. Most block scripts. This is what each actually did, not what it claims to offer. Indeed is the one that changed the answer.
| Source | Result | What it gave |
|---|---|---|
| Reed | works | 625 listings with dates, salary and full text. The backbone of this page. |
| McDonald's | works | Whole UK vacancy list via sitemap, 855 live, 10 near Reading. See below. |
| Gumtree | works, useless | 373 listings, 115 fresh, 14 pass the filter. All of them turn out to be self-employed domestic cleaning agencies or site labouring needing a CSCS card. Usable: zero. |
| Indeed | works, indirectly | 403s a plain script and its RSS feed is gone, but it answers a different fetch path fine. 15 of the jobs above came from here, all within 3 days. Carries the retail and hospitality work Reed never sees. |
| CV-Library | 403 | Blocks. |
| Adzuna | 403 | Blocks. Has a free API if you register for a key. |
| DWP Find a Job | 503 | Blocks. Annoying, because this is the one with the most entry-level work. |
| Glassdoor | 403 | Blocks. |
| Jooble, WhatJobs | 403 | Both block. |
| Totaljobs | timeout | Never responds to a script. |
| Jobsite, Milkround | no data | Return a megabyte of page furniture and load the actual jobs afterwards in the browser. Nothing to read without driving a real browser. |
| talent.com | no data | Lists job URLs but the pages carry no job metadata. |
| Caterer, Jobrapido, Fish4 | no data | Same story or empty responses. |
| SmartRecruiters, Workable | no match | Both have open APIs, but no UK retail or hospitality brand I tried is on them under a guessable name. |
| Employer sitemaps | no jobs | Lidl, Primark, Sainsbury's and Greggs publish sitemaps, but they list marketing pages only, not vacancies. |
Every rejection was made against the full advert text, not the title. This breakdown is the real answer to why the local boards feel empty. The jobs are there. They are just closed to you.
McDonald's UK publishes every live vacancy in its sitemap with each restaurant's coordinates in the URL, so the whole chain can be checked exactly rather than searched. 855 live vacancies nationally, 10 within fifteen miles of Reading. Here is all of it:
0.2 mi Reading, Friar Street Crew Member over 18 only 0.2 mi Reading, Friar Street Customer Care over 18 only 0.3 mi Reading, The Oracle Customer Care over 18 only 6.9 mi Wokingham Crew Member 4pm to 1am, too late at 16 13.8 mi Maidenhead, Taplow Crew Member over 18 only 14.0 mi Hampshire Staff Member closing shifts to 2am 14.0 mi Buckinghamshire Crew Member fully flexible 12.9 / 13.3 / 14.8 mi Work experience placements (unpaid)
Every McDonald's vacancy inside Reading is explicitly restricted to over-18s. That is not a scraping failure, it is the actual state of the market, and it is worth knowing before you spend an evening on their application form.
The chains that hire at 16, supermarkets, fashion retail, bakeries, cinemas, leisure centres, do not post to job boards. They run their own systems, all JavaScript-driven with no open feed, which is exactly why the table above has so many red rows. These are the search pages, checked live today. You have to look yourself.
Store assistants from 16. Filter to Reading, Tilehurst, Woodley.
Store assistant roles, hires at 16 for non-alcohol tills.
Team members from 16. Several Reading branches.
Retail assistants from 16. The Oracle and Broad Street.
Customer assistants, hires at 16 in food halls.
Sales advisors from 16, heavy weekend recruitment.
Bar and floor from 16 with supervision. Several in Reading.
Leisure centre and holiday scheme roles, genuinely local.
Installed at ~/jobhunt. It reads Reed's structured job data rather than parsing HTML, so it will not break the next time they change their layout.
cd ~/jobhunt python3 scrape.py LastThreeDays raw_jobs.json # or LastWeek python3 final.py # screens and ranks
Indeed cannot be scraped from a script, so the method for it is written up in ~/jobhunt/INDEED.md, including the id verification step and the pay-floor filter. For Reed: 46 keyword searches, deduplicated, then filtered to fifteen miles by real distance, because Reed's own radius filter returns Oxford and Woking for a Reading search. Then it opens every surviving advert and rejects on the full text. Descriptions are cached, so a re-run only fetches what is new. Run it Monday morning, which is when the weekend's retail vacancies land.
Sources: Indeed (89 cards across 8 searches, all posted within 3 days), Reed (625 listings dated 17 to 24 Aug 2026), Gumtree (373), McDonald's UK vacancy sitemap (855).
Every Indeed link here was opened and confirmed live. Three job ids produced during extraction were fabricated and were caught and dropped.
Twelve other boards block scripts or render their results in the browser. Full results in the table above.
Tier judgements are mine, not the scraper's. Confirm the age requirement with the employer before you spend time applying.