Has anybody here ever been made unemployed before?

[Timofee]

I feel an unsanctioned release of rantalogical energies coming on. Brace yourselves!

No worries, job hunting is frustrating.

Most of the ‘bootstraps!’ advice in this thread seems to ignore the current economic climate and increasingly specific demands being placed on recruits.

I can certainly see how the long standing catch-22 of 'to get this job you need experience' and 'I need experience to get a job' would be particularly difficult in the current climate.

With hindsight my university was woeful in preparing me (particularly in terms of relevant experience) for working life and based on friends experiences and various rumblings in the press this seems a common thread in university education in the UK

Tailoring your C.V. to a company takes time and there are usually a dozen other hoops to jump through as well (psychometric tests, their refusal to accept the particular file format you've used, their refusal to accept a CV at all in lieu of a horrible web form, their demand that you give them the form and a strictly re-imagined CV, etc). Going through the same "Describe a time where you have shown leadership skills" question for the tenth time in a week is soul crushing. Even if you're copy and pasting the majority from answers you wrote several months ago.

Wow that sounds crazy. Places that insist on their own form to be filled out rather than a C.V. are deeply frustrating.

I find it bizarre that any places would be asking those kind of "describe a time..." questions up front, for me that is something that should only be done in an interview situation. As you need to have a back and forth with the candidate.

Unskilled entry level positions were massively oversubscribed and routinely used the word 'overqualified' when rejecting me. Even when I asked them to disregard the qualifications.

This is a particular hate of mine and demonstrates incredibly shortsighted recruiters. They're overqualified? Fan-frigging-tastic, that means they'll potentially be able to take on additional responsibilities and soon be able to progress within the organization which is to our advantage.

The only time I can see this being a (slightly) more valid concern is in fairly specialized industries where the isn't huge amounts of onward progression (but rather lots of people do pretty much the same thing their whole career but the dependable experienced guys get paid a lot more by the end. Based on my incredibly basic familiarity I'm thinking areas like Legal - cue a million people telling me I'm wrong...)

Temping agencies wouldn't give me any work. They'd happily have me on their books so they could say they had someone with my qualifications, but they never found anyone willing to pay a premium for them and had plenty of other people gasping for work too. I further suspect that a large number of agencies are scams, especially if they approach you first; when I contacted one to be removed from their books I got no response whatsoever. They have a number of my personal details but never did anything for me.

I suppose the thing with temp agencies are they're very dependent on local conditions, so where I live there's a great 'conversion' rate.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say they are scams - if they have a fully staffed office on the high street I'm pretty sure they're legit, plus I don't know what they'd be scamming you out of exactly?

In any area there will generally speaking be a couple of go to agencies which have relationships with the major local companies - its always worth asking friends who are in employment if they know who these agencies are. Failing that best bets are to go with national ones like Reed, Brook Street or Manpower but I suppose it depends on what you're looking for

As a final note: clearly no one has the answers and I don't think anybody in this thread claims to give anything more than well intentioned advice. Best of luck to you.

[Kamikaze-X]

Whilst your job when unemployed is to find a job, finding 200 per month is a completely unreasonable goal if you're (a) giving them the required level of care and (b) ensuring that you’re an actual good fit for the job by location, finances, experience, etc. Just clicking "submit my CV" on an aggregator doesn't count. There might be a happy medium, but I never found it.

actually, the 'submit your CV' thing on aggregators DOES work.

For example, Jobsite among others lets you put a bit of a blurb in the send box to send along with your CV to potential recruiters, and this is exactly how I got my current shipping clerk job.

Its how I also got 3 interviews and 2 callbacks in a week, as well as a job offer.

I would spend an hour per 5 tailored, original applications via Email or snail mail a day, have an hours lunch break, and then go on the trawl sites and fire off a load of targeted CVs with my little blurb. Key word there is targeted.

that job entry that is really vague and offers way above the odds, or offers you a supercar after 3 years if you sell your grandmother to the lowest bidder? yeah right.

That job that looks slightly underpaid, but does require qualifications or at least a modicum of inteligence? go for it. The low pay will put other applicants off, and it is much better to be looking for another job than siting on your arse all day in front of your PC at home clicking through the horrendous Jobcentre website.

[Nalano]

I don't think there's any nice way of saying this, but I'll try: Engineers and mail clerks have different job requirements and thus different job hunts.

[Fumarole]

I've been with my employer for sixteen years now, so I can't offer much advice other than to say that making finding a job your job when unemployed is the only way to go, as others here have mentioned. That and never underestimate the power of networking.

[Keep]

there are usually a dozen other hoops to jump through as well

"Describe a time where you have shown leadership skills"

The irony is painful.


Sharing the love:



"Now they shat upon my karma with such questions as 'What do you view as the pre-eminent macro-economic policy goal of the EU?' or 'How did that experience affect your mind-set, Mr Ahern?' The truth was it made me want to get drunk on snake-bites."