This job search is pretty frustrating. Oh, I know there's a lottery element involved and of course, I've touched more than once on the agency element and the fuckwittery that puts in your way of getting a result.
Mind you, I've had three interviews in the past month. The one just before Christmas which I thought went particularly well, brought the Dear John in the new year. I'm waiting on hearing about one I went for last week which like the first of the three, is a job I could do well and really make a difference in. They said I'd hear if I'd got a second interview by today at the latest and I am now thinking it won't be good news.
Yesterdays would not be the job of my choice, actually I think the guy deliberately undersold it to me, but I soldiered on. Talking about it after with someone afterwards, I said I'd seen no "buying signals", but on second thoughts, the fact he showed me round the works was a buying signal, because if I was on the duffers list, he wouldn't have wasted the time.
Had a frank discussion with an agency guy yesterday, very sharp cookie (the boss of the company). He's trying to get me an interview with a Birmingham company. Had quite a grilling on the phone in two conversations and he took up references by phone too. He was candid enough to say if I was refused by his client it would possibly be due to my age. Whilst he shouldn't say that, he did say that they might well be looking for a "whizz kid".
I do find this possibly the most frustrating part of trying to get back into work. I'm more than competent in the things I do. I'm not going to cost a fortune yet having applied for well over 200 jobs since the beginning of November, the combination of recruitment agency incompetence and being ignored because of my age, is really disheartening.
If I wanted someone to build me a wall and I looked through the yellow pages for a builder, I'd not really care how old the guy was. I'd be more interested to learn that he or she for that matter, had been building walls for X years and one example of a finished wall could be seen at such and such a location.
When I go for a curry, I'm less interested in the personality profile of the person who cooked it, than what's on the plate in front of me.
This leads me on to one of the most saddening parts of this rant. I know what's ahead of me and I know I need to do more than push over a cv to make someone notice me.
Taking that into account, in the past two years, a lot of my work (which I'm proud of) is out there in the public domain in the form of written work, photos and video work I've done.
So, I dragged the best bits together with a bit of narrative and made it into an interactive PDF and with some other work examples, popped it on to a business card shaped CD with a properly printed attention grabbing cover beautifully clad in a plastic sleeve. It all auto loads with a menu and everything.
Mailed this to several local agencies, with an upbeat letter and received absolutely no acknowledgement whatsoever.
A couple of weeks ago, I saw a job online which actually showed the name of the company (which was in my town). Decided that I'd actually write to them on paper and enclose my show reel CD. Not a fucking dickie bird in response. This was after I drove up to their premises (in OBC's motor which I'd borrowed) to find they hadn't even got a letterbox, so I mailed it conventionally with a stamp. This extreme lack of manners really does boil my piss.
Now these little CDs work out a bit expensive to send out willy nilly, so I added another angle.
I put the PDF onto a service a little like Dropbox. This allows me when making applications online, to draw attention to this content allowing the reviewer to download the file for perusal. I've added this link to about a dozen applications as part of my cover note. I check back in to the service which will show me how many times the file has been accessed. To date, the figure remains at zero.
Standing naked in Poundland (formerly Woolworth's) window is definitely on the horizon.
To keep the wolves from the door, I've been selling off my stuff. Sold three cameras, sold my Xperia tablet and last week decided to sell my out of contract Xperia phone. I wanted a quick, fuss free sale so I put it on E Bay.
I've bad experience of selling a phone on there before, so I carefully described it, stated plainly that I would not end the auction early, would not accept £ 800 for it to post to some far flung country and in the legal bit put UK post only.
Weekend brought the usual cretinous enquiries. How much to post to Australia, How much to post to Russia and if I come round and collect it, will you end the auction today. I'd started the item off at 99p bid, so he really was taking the piss.
Whilst I was out at my job interview yesterday, the auction ended and the phone fetched £ 92. A bit more than I expected, but by the time Pay pal and E Bay take their cut, that will eat about twenty quid.
Noticed the bidder had a zero feedback rating and on closer looking today they only joined E Bay yesterday.
Most people who get into a bidding war which appears to have been the case with my phone, pay within an hour or so of winning. Nothing from this cretin.
Dropped a polite message this morning, nothing in return.
I need the money for these items I'm selling to pay bills, I'm not Freemans fucking catalogue.
If this guy spews on the deal, I'll tear the little bastard a new arsehole as there were two other very keen bidders (with high feedback ratings).
I've seen people state they won't sell to bidders with less than a ten on their feedback on E bay in the past and often wondered why. Now I know.
A few years ago, I sold something and after the auction ended, I was told I'd have to wait for two weeks til the guy's pension came before he'd pay me.
A bit like going into Tesco, filling your trolley and then saying at the checkout, I don't get paid til the 25th, hang on to this lot will you...
I checked E Bay's rules and fortunately I can put in a dispute after 2 days, which should be made more substantial by the fact he's ignored my message.
As you can imagine, with bill payment dates coming due, this sort of pissing about I could well do without.
So today, is tenterhooks day on the one job I'd really like to land, decent pay too. End of the week for the one I attended yesterday and still waiting to hear from the agency fellow about the other one.
It's all go isn't it ?
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