BA MSc - Unemployable?

A new beginning

2010-07-05T12:36:00.000-07:00

Well it has taken a while as I have got settled into my new role but tonight I have finally created a new blog. If you are interested in my thoughts and ideas, or just what how my life is going then I would love to see you there.

http://trialsntrivialisations.blogspot.com/

I hope that this blog is truly at an end and that my unemployment troubles are over. If you stumble across it some time in the future please do not hesitate to contact me if you so desire. I know how hard it can be and am happy to chat/share insight.

Alternatively enjoy my journey through 6 months of rejections, bearacrucy and learning.

To work

2010-05-23T13:23:00.000-07:00

Well tomorrow is my first day in my new job. It also signals the end of this blog. I will start a new one shortly but the title and purpose of the blog no longer fits with my life.

I hope that those who have read have enjoyed doing so and maybe even gained something from this experience. Also should someone stumble across it in the time to come I will be happy to discuss any posts or views and offer any advice if wanted.

Otherwise thanks for sharing the experience with me. Now I must embark on an entirely new one.

Anthony

Annoying to the last

2010-05-21T03:10:00.000-07:00

No-one can be sure what the affect of the new government will be on the job centre and its approach and overall performance. I for one cannot possibly see how it can be worse.

I have blogged many times about the failings of the Job Centre, my run in with the staff there and the uselessness of their job search facility. Well now I can add another service to my list of abysmal showings. When you go back to work you are given a number to call, presumably to end your benefit in a simple and easy way. I put aside half an hour for this, expecting it to be long enough.

I called the number to find it engaged, repeating this process many times over a period of around 20 minutes. At one point I did actually get through only to confuse some poor girl in Winchester's Environmental department, a short and embarrassing conversation revealed I had misdialled by a digit.

After about 20 attempts finally the phone was answered by an automated robot..telling me the Job Centre was closed and urging me to call back during its opening times of 9am-5pm on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Now correct me if I am wrong, it is FRIDAY. So why is the centre giving me such a retarded message. I have decided given I have spare time before my meeting with my employer later, that I will go down to the job centre, even though it is not my appointed time and see if they can succeed where their hopeless phone service fails.

I cannot wait to be rid of anything to do with the Job Centre and hope that the new coalition seriously reforms it to actually be of some use.

What I learned : Hints and Tips

2010-05-20T02:03:00.000-07:00

The job of finding employment is an arduous one and certainly far from easy while we continue to be suffering in a recession. Over the course of the last 6 or so months I have got some things right, made many mistakes, but ultimately followed a path which has gained me work in my chosen sector. I like to think then that these hints and tips may be able to do the same for others in my situation. Without further ado:

3 Important Tips

1. Set a maximum of 2 Criteria- At the start of searching you will be probably have fairly narrow criteria. You will have a job you wish to do, an industry you wish to work in, location, pay, benefits, prospects. Soon it becomes clear this is unrealistic. Rank the criteria in order of importance and work out what is the most important thing to you. Some things may be forced up on you. I.E - location, if your tied to a rental contract, but by picking a wide, but targeted approach you have a better chance of finding the right job.
2. Experience is Key - A sad truth but in all but the graduate programs(and even some of them) experience is the key to success, not academic qualification. If you have experience then you stand a much better chance. If you don't do whatever it takes to get it. Temping is the best option, but also will not hire non experienced workers, work trials, working for free is always an option but the best I believe is to volunteer.
3. Volunteer - Probably the most important factor that has helped me find work has been my volunteering with the Solent Credit Union. I had not even thought of volunteering till a friend suggested it, don't assume that the right role is not there for you. Again, repeat step 1 and search for the best place for you. I looked for marketing and ended up with the S.C.U. I knew nothing about them at the time, but now am passionate about their success. It does not necessarily matter if you know the charity, there are hundreds of worthy courses out there in need of skilled workers, and unlike paid work, they are often not as picky. If this is something which interests you check out the do-it website.

And some hints

1. Identify your key sites - Most of job searching is conducted online now and there are literally thousands of sites to choose from. Do not expect to find the ideal sites for you straight away but rule out ones that do not hit the right buttons and keep searching. If you are not finding the jobs you need, try new sites and eventually build up a portfolio. For any budding marketers out there I advise the following:

Graduate Jobs South
Only Marketing Jobs
Daily Echo (Fish4jobs)
Jobsite
Jobserve
CV-Library - A brilliant discovery in the last few months
Gumtree
Marketing Job Boards

2. Identify who will receive your application - Covering letters can make a real difference but they are time consuming and it is a good idea to keep templates for various jobs which can be adjusted. With many jobs though, the recipient is an agent representing the company. In my experience they do not read covering letters and I had a higher success rate when I stopped sending them with the C.V. Instead applying was a simple three click process in many cases and made applying for all sorts of jobs much easier.
3. Proof read any communications - Whether true or not it has been suggested that C.V's and applications are often thrown in the bin for grammar or spelling mistakes. This would seem a bit extreme but careless errors will not make you a stand out candidate for the job.
4. Be Confident and relaxed - An interview tip here. My best interviews were relaxed affairs, including the one where I got the job. Try and be relaxed and confident and honest. If you cannot answer a question state so, don't get hung up on the fact. The few rigid interviews I had were much harder and ultimately left me disliking the company anyway. Adhere to the criteria set for you but don't panic or worry. There are plenty more jobs in the...job sea? For more on interview techniques see this older post
5. Consider which benefits you are eligible for - The benefits process can be downright depressing and frustrating but don't rule it out because of pride. In particular look at Council tax and Housing benefit. Put up with the Job Centre for as long as you can. In the 6 months I was there they only did one thing to help me, and that was because I had reached the 6 month mark.
7. Consider anything which will enhance your employability - Keep an open mind and take any opportunity you can get your hands on. Think outside the box as well, if you have the money to do so learning to drive is one of the things which makes you more employable and gives you a greater reach for jobs.
8. Post your C.V on every job site you come across - Okay you do not have to religiously use the job site but if your C.V is there employers/agents can find you. I had a little success down this avenue but as always anything which makes the job easier has to be worthwhile.
9. Be cordial with agents but don't expect a lasting relationship - If your C.V begins to look impressive you will begin to receive calls from job agencies. Be polite and willing to discuss any role although also be ready to turn down opportunities. Agents will often come with jobs they are desperate to fill even if they are clearly not what you are interested in.
10. Beware the scams - Beware Scams and jobs which mislead as to what they actually involve. If possible try to avoid even applying for them. Asking for you to be self employed should flash a warning light as should salary being based entirely on OTE. (On Target Earnings) For more on marketing specific ones see here or here

Well there we go. A gigantic post which has shown some of the main things I have learned and wish to pass on. Happy hunting!

What to do with a spare week?

2010-05-17T09:51:00.000-07:00

Well job is all confirmed and I start on Monday 24th. I am looking forward to finally taking my first steps in paid work and eagerly await the challenge.

This has left me with a spare week and I admit to being at a little bit of a loss as to what to do with it. A certain part of me wants to spend the week doing very little, playing Dragon Age, relaxing and socialising. Another part thinks that I should be more productive and make the most of the free time for good rather than pure procrastination.

At the moment neither side is winning. Having agreed upon a compromise of some relaxation, some chores/work. So far today I have done the food shopping, looked up article ideas for Fubra and matched my socks. (No longer will I wear odd socks...not until I do the washing again at any rate!) I have also played some dragon Age and watched the latest American Dad.

I plan to write two more articles for Fubra, (thus meaning I can be paid) Undertake some Research for my job, have a driving lesson and tie up loose ends including benefits. I have more training Wednesday night and a meeting on Friday but other than that and the above, my week is entirely free. I also intend to write several more blog posts, including what I have learned and advise for others in my situation.

Any ideas or advice? What should I do with my last week till I begin full time employment?

One Step Closer

2010-05-13T02:54:00.000-07:00

Well after the third attempt I finally managed to get an answer out of learning links who have offered the position to someone else. I am not surprised as the job description including a lot of design elements, something I have little experience with. In the last two days I have been offered (and turned down) two other interviews and it seems highly likely I will take the job with Super Fun Days Out. It has been nice to have a few days where job searching has not been at the top of my priority list and also to realise that I have reached a point now where even just sitting back relaxing, I am receiving invitations to interview for jobs. It has led me to analyse why.

I noticed a sudden change about 2 weeks ago. What was special then? Very little, I made one little alteration to my C.V (to include the social networking training) and a few more jobs appeared. Oh and we entered May. This suggested that either in May everyone suddenly becomes job happy and desperate to help graduates, or that my volunteering role had hit the 3 month mark. 3 months of experience suddenly made me interesting, whereas 2 months, 30 days left me reeling in obscurity. It is an odd system when this is the case. I did not become a better marketer on the 30th April, nor did I level up. It was an entirely unremarkable day on my calender. I can sort of understand why 3 months experience becomes attractive but it has to lead to criticism of the process, after all the potential and skills of an individual does not change on that single day, even if in the eyes of the employer, they are suddenly eminently more attractive and ready to enter the world of the professionally employed.

Hopefully this can only mean good things, and if the 3 month contract on offer ends at that point, that I won't be left floundering and lost for long.

Job Offer

2010-05-11T05:28:00.000-07:00

Last week I went for an interview with a young company based in Southampton. The company in question advertises fun days out. (from zorbing to paintball to clay pigeon shooting and white water rafting) It is a small organisation run by dedicated shareholders and they are looking for someone to come in and manage the roll out of a range of new services to their existing customers. The role is an internship, initially running for 3 months with the potential for a full time longer role to be put in place after that period.

I was impressed with my interviewer (The C.E.O) and the company and although the role involves more sales and telephone usage than I would like it was certainly an interesting one. However, not wanting to hedge my bet on securing a longer term job I asked to see the business plan and projections which would give me an idea of the liklihood of securing a long term role. That for me is after all key. I do not want to end up back unemployed in 3 months time.

This morning the C.E.O rang me..at 8:40, after some confusing questions he offered me the job and suggested we could pen to paper at the early part of next week. I thanked him for the offer but felt it was only fair to notify him I was waiting to hear back from other companies about other roles both of whom should get back to me by the end of this week. He agreed albeit relunctantly to put a deadline of Saturday to accept the offer.

So now I have 4 days after which I will hopefully be employed. It is possible that he may choose to pull out and offer the role to someone else, which would be very disappointing. But I simply felt I had to keep my options open. The other roles potentially on the table are not set contracts and therefore provide stability. If I take the job I would need to find somewhere to live in Southampton until the end of August but most rental contracts run for a year. Potentially then, I could be tied to Southampton for another 10 months after the role finishes, something not to be entered into lightly. On the other hand given my increased success in gaining interviews recently, I would hope to be unemployed for a much shorter period. I also have to consider then, what the role could do for my C.V and the role offered will not verse me in new software or provide me with any major new skills, where the others involve training.

I am expecting that I will take the job, having failed to secure a role with Learning links, but whatever the outcome, at the end of this week I will have a decision to make, and then hopefully, the search will finally be at an end.

You couldn't make it up!

2010-04-29T12:24:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday I recieved a phone call while I was with the Credit Union. It was a company I applied for a while ago, offering me an interview on Thursday. The same day that I was due to be interviewed by no limits. This meant I needed to be in Portsmouth at 3 after the 11:30 interview in Southampton. It also threw off my usual preparation as I could not focus on just one organisation. After an evening of training I finally got down to planning my day around 10pm.

The day started badly. Stomach Ache and slight naseua are never the best thing to wake up to. However, by the time I set off for New Limits things had cleared up a bit and I felt a bit better. I arrived at No Limits with around 5 minutes to spare.

After a brief fight with the door I made my way in. I was met by a young woman who informed me the other interview had overrun and offered me a seat. I took the opportunity to quiz her about the organisation and we chatted amiably for 10 minutes or so.

After about 15 minutes the managers emerged from the interview room, took my name and then apologised as they did not realise they were meant to be interviewing me, apparently there had been some mix up and rather than interviewing for one specific role they had people for three different roles. Confusing!

I accepted this of course, was directed to the interview room, offered a drink and waited a bit longer. I talked with one of the interviewers about working with the Credit Union, my origins while I waited for the other to get the job description and begin the interview. At 11:55 my interview began, with the standard question about the company and role. It was followed by a mention of Lizzie, although the name rang a bell with me, the fact I had not heard it, sent the alarm bells ringing with my interviewer who embarrasedly informed me I was possibly in the wrong place. All initial interviews were conducted by Lizzie in the adjacent building owned by a different charity, apparently the two are not in any way directly linked but one is funding the other to employ people. After some frantic phone calls I was sent in the right direction only to be informed there was no longer any time for me to be interviewed and that I would be informed of a new date and time at some point in the future. I took it upon myself this morning to ring and organise myself though, just in case.

As I left I was bemused at the whole situation. It was amazing it was able to happen at all.
1. I failed to understand the interview was not with the organisation. I took a phonecall and wrote things down but got confused.
2. No Limits did not know who they were meant to be interviewing and thus were ready to interview me.
3. One of the interviewer asked "You're Anthony right?" He had met me the day before, but normally when a interviewer says this, it means they are confirming you are the right person.
4. Lizzie made no attempt to contact me or work out where I was, for an interview, where if I failed to attend I lost my benefits.
5. Each party was unaware of the others confusion.

This left me 3 hours till my next interview with a company in Portsmouth. I found my way with no difficulty ending up with about an hour to wander round the historic dockyard before finding my way to the company offices, 100 yards away. The interview was my first in a while and I was a little rusty to start with. The company started by asking, not telling, me about what I knew of the company. I had done some research but it had been minor due to the short notice and other interview. Another question involved breaking the rules of interviewing as I was asked to give my opinion of both their website and brand. The Marketing manager who would hire me, was himself unhappy with it, and I was lucky that I threw caution to the wind and criticised it, albeit tentatively. I feel the interview went reasonably well but that my lack of experience in design may let me down to a candidate with a similar background.

So ends the week and already I have something for every day next week, including 2 interviews. Busy times, hopefully leading to full time employment. I will cover funding in a different post.

A Massive Week

2010-04-26T05:18:00.001-07:00

I have lost the will to blog recently. Its been down to a number of things but today I want to update you on what for me, is the biggest week since I finished University.
Short of today, which I get to take off with the added joys of a stomach bug, my calender is full. My fingers will remain crossed for the entire week, but if just one thing goes to plan, I have cause to be happy.

Tomorrow I return to the Job Centre, to phase 2, New Deal. I don't expect much but it will be interesting nonetheless to see what is suggested, what I am offered and whether 3 weeks after my dispute, I find myself in another. I will welcome any offer of training which gives me something useful and spurn any suggestion that is no more than a time wasting exercise. Fingers crossed we can have a good discussion and come to a good agreement.

Wednesday and I have a meeting at SVS (Student Voluntary Service) to use funder finder. Along with Phil, I will search for someone who might be interested in funding the S.C.U to support me. If successful I at least have a chance of sticking around in the role, if we cannot find anything, then my path is clear, and any major involvement with the Union will end in June, along with my stay in Southampton. I also then have a training course in the evening, which will provide me with further useful skills.

Thursday signals an interview with No Limits for a role only available to the unemployed. I hold the qualifications and skills they need and even experience in the voluntary sector. I just hope I can convince them I am worthy of a chance.

So fingers crossed. This week is pivotal to my future. I only hope my long search is finally at an end.

Importance of clear communication

2010-04-10T05:02:00.000-07:00

Communicating clearly is an important skill. It regularly turns up on job specifications and being able to both verbal and written communication can be immensely powerful ways of expression. I have always prided myself on having strong communication skills, particularly written. Yesterday I wrote a post however, which was not clear, and gave the wrong message. I feel it necessary to clarify the meaning behind the post since the responses did not match the intent.

Yesterdays post was mostly written from the recruiters perspective based on my experience of them. I realise rereading it that this was not clear. My questions as to why an over qualified person would go for a low paying, low skilled job were not my questions, but the questions that a perspective employer might ask and the thoughts that might be running through their mind. It was not personal belief written directly from my opinion and I was not belittling such jobs, nor was I stating I was too good for them. I was instead suggesting that recruiters for such roles might look at my C.V and background and question my motivations and the likelihood that 1. I wanted the job and 2. that I would stick around. As I said this is from my direct experience in applying for such jobs.

In other news I am not going to be applying for the school job since it is term time only and does not start until June. The amount it pays would also not be enough to cover any potential rent. Given I may not even be in Southampton in July it seems counter productive.

The Admin Question

2010-04-09T03:30:00.000-07:00

Further to yesterday's discussion with the job centre I have just applied for a 16 hours a week clerical position in a school. I have applied because it is 16 hours and pays. I could still do the volunteering role and earn nearly enough to live off. But I dont think I will get the job.

This was something the advisor said was putting up barriers. I call it being realistic. Because short of lying at the interview (and even then it would be barely believable) I am going to harpoon my own candiacy.

The question an employer asks when you go for jobs in which you are over qualified is of course why. You can state that its good experience, you just want to be working or even that you want to work in a school, but that wont be the end of it and they will press you. The employer wants someone loyal. They dont want to fill a job only to need to fill it again in a few months and you represent a risk.

The duties are after all basic. There is no benefit to having someone with business experience doing the filing, inputting data and supporting the admin staff. They know you wont be around for long. You know it, they know it. Ambition in these roles is not necessarily a virtue when what the employer wants is someone steady and reliable. So here comes the million dollar question.

Say, six months down the line you are offered a marketing position in another firm would you take it?

You're trapped. They know it's what you are ultimately after and where your ambition lies. Even if you say no, its obvious you'd want the position and would resent having to turn it down. Its a no win situation. One pulled on me twice so far in admin interviews. If you say yes it shows you represent a risk, that you will leave sooner rather than later down the line. The amusing thing about this is the more impressed with you they are, the more they are likely to worry about losing you.

This is from experience btw. Advice on how to bypass this issue is welcome. I admit its something I struggle to get my head around.

End of the line?

2010-04-08T09:21:00.000-07:00

I am expecting this post is going to split views and could lead to outrage on both sides of the fence. Before I explain I would like to state that although I welcome any input, in this my mind is made up and I can be a stubborn git. I believe I have been treated unfairly and intend to fight the perceived injustice as hard as I can.

I have been claiming JSA now for nearly 6 months since finishing my masters degree in Marketing Management. In that time I have been unsuccessful in my attempts to find a marketing job and to help improve my employment prospects I have taken on two different roles. Firstly I am working in a voluntary role with a local not for profit organisation and my experience and approach has led to my appointment as Marketing manager within the organisation. Secondly I am working as a freelance writer for Fubra Limited who own a wide variety of sites. I have at various intervals broadened my job search to include other fields, further distances and lower wages all in the hope of kick starting my career in marketing.

My job searchers agreement states I should look at roles in marketing assistant, marketing executive and admin areas. It is this third, admin area which has led to the dispute. I have always looked for roles with the approach of asking what they can do for me. If a role will add to my skill set or build upon existing skills then I have applied. Today I was told that this approach was not flexible enough and I should be looking at all admin jobs regardless of what they involve or their job prospects. I can see little reason for this, other than its inclusion of the third item on my job seekers agreement list. The advisor I spoke with basically suggested that my main goal should be to come off JSA and therefore look at any role I can do. My argument centred around where you draw the line. If I do a job which largely involves making tea and coffee in an office (thus admin) what difference is there to my future if I instead chose to stack shelves or work construction. Neither would help me, both would get me off of JSA. We could not reach an agreement and she suspended my job seekers allowance.

My issue is this: I am currently getting the experience I need to kick start my career and going into any admin job regardless of duties would merely be taking a step backwards. I am unwilling to do this. It cost £6,200 to get my Masters and I won't throw that away just to satisfy the job centre. I am however, willing to consider any role which will benefit me in improving future prospects. What is more is I have not broken the terms of my job seekers agreement. The agreement states:

"Take at last 4-5 steps a week to look for work. Apply for a min of 4 advertised vacancies a week, if none available make 4 speculative approaches to employers. Keep a written record of jobsearch and bring to each review. Use internet www.jobcentreplus.gov.uk, phone adviser; 0845 6060 234, use Job points. Has been informed of work trails. Read ES40 for more info. "

I am not some employment dodger eager to live off benefits. I have been applying to at least 4 jobs each week, sometimes up to 10 and thereby fulfilling the criteria set out for me. I believe I should have the right to choose which jobs to apply for and am justified in turning down low skilled/menial admin jobs I would have been able to do straight out of school. I invested in education and I think it is unreasonable to be asked to ignore it.

At the time of suspension I was asked to write the issue as I saw it and my argument as it were. I was given pen and a piece of paper. I was given no further means to contact this "higher authority" which I believe to be unreasonable. I also think it is unfair to be made to write your argument there and then when you are still under the emotional stress brought about by the fact you have just had benefits suspended. I was very angry and although I did not convey this in my writing, I certainly did not structure my argument or include all the relevant points as well as I could have given the time.

I can see things from their point of view. The advisor pointed out, rightly, that I been unsuccessful in my marketing applications and therefore have to be more flexible. This I was willing to accept and I stated a desire and willing to apply for any job which helped me walk (even baby steps) along the marketing path. What I took issue with is that the job centre would sooner see me working at McDonald's than being supported to help begin my marketing career. I believe this to be out and out wrong and if it does indeed come across as the case I intend to make a noise about it as I feel strongly it is the wrong approach. I was egged in to getting a degree and vocational skills in the form of a masters by the government, if they then want me to just to pretend it doesn't exist that simply isn't fair.

I expect that my review will lead to me being taken off JSA and thus having all support withdrawn. Its a measly £24 anyway. Nonetheless I will continue to argue my point with anyone who will listen and fight for a change in the way graduates/professionals are treated. It has been suggested to me that I write to my local MP about this, something I intend to do. I have no idea whether this will actually help or result in anything but what I simply refuse to do is lie down and take it.

Shifting Focus

2010-04-06T04:12:00.001-07:00

It can be a hard thing to do. We all get set in our ways and to begin to change things can be a real challenge. I had noticed that in the last month, despite the fact I am now arguably more employable, I had been getting less success with my applications, less responses and less interviews. This didn't make sense, until I realised something important.

My approach was wrong. I was keen to state how although I was inexperienced I was willing to learn. My C.V catalogued my positions of authority at university and how they demonstrated useful business skills. My covering letter explained how a group project had given me harsh deadlines to produce a large project.

All of which are irrelevant now. I have been working in a marketing management role for 2 months +. I have produced articles for deadlines on a website, I have been to meetings, written a strategy, liased, networked and carried out day to day marketing duties. Stating that I learned all these useful skills at University is actually hampering my progress. What I should say is I have demonstrated all these things, practiced and used the skills I have learned. I am not prepared for working in business, I am working in business. I cannot imagine the strange impression I have been given employers. "This candidate manages all marketing for a small organisation, yet all he wants to talk about is how his university societies taught him to deal with regular meetings and how a group project gave him team experience." Something does not add up.

I may have only been in the role for a few months, but my experiences in it trump the academic, I just wish I could have been quicker on the up take. My C.V is now dramatically reduced and my covering letter template for ever changed. If there is any general lesson to learn from this it is that as situations change you have to really consider every little aspect which you are showing employers. Does it reflect you now, or you of the past and what can you do to represent yourself better.

So, what will you teach me?

2010-03-25T09:50:00.000-07:00

After 6 months of unemployment the Job Centre pledges to place you in a job or provide meaningful training which will further your career prospects. With this day soon approaching I will soon be subject to this pledge. For many, I imagine, this will make the big difference and help them find work.

Me, I am dreading it.

It has all the hallmarks of another fight with the Job Centre as they either try to place me, or train me in something utterly irrelevant and pointless. For the most part the pledge is for simple untrained workers, so till training, construction work or telesales training may be the approach taken. I will not pretend I know everything but its going to be interesting to see what basic training is suggested to me and I am offered. I have already learnt in my Masters all about marketing, admin, negotiation, presentation, report writing and computer usage. I know how to do data entry and have had experience answering telephones. Just what will they try and teach me..its going to be interesting to see.

It got me thinking. In an ideal world, what skills would I be given. What keeps appearing on job applications? Being able to code in HTML has come up a few times, QuarkX - a program used in sales, or perhaps best of all Adobe Creative Suite, which has appeared many times as desirable.

If I was provided training in any of those it could make a big difference to the success of my job applications. I just cannot help but worry that in reality I will given a skill I will never use again, but there is nothing wrong in hoping.

A little lost

2010-03-22T08:02:00.000-07:00

Another day drifts slowly past which has been utterly uneventful on the job side of things. It has now been a week since my last succesful communication with a company. I have applied for many jobs, some of which are quite realistic but have heard nothing.

It has me confused. My C.V now includes experience, my covering letter draws upon it, but my success rate has dropped. Perhaps I am now going for more jobs believing I have skills and experience but in reality this is not how the companies see it. Or maybe some big internet wormhole has been eating my emails.

I am used to rejections, the odd agency phone call and interviewing only ultimately to be disappointed. Nothing is unusual. It makes little sense, and I am not sure what can be done to rectify it. Maybe companies are becoming increasingly tired of writing rejections so now just ignore unsuccesful applications, or maybe I have been wrong about the jobs I thought looked realistic. Its hard to know for sure, but at least in my approach I will keep plugging away and spend a little more time on my jobs.

Money well spent....

2010-03-18T04:47:00.000-07:00

A few weeks back, maybe longer, I reviewed a number of job sites. At the time I ranked job centre plus at 3/5, a really useful resource for job hunting.

Since then it has never stopped falling in value. As I eluded to then, it is soon to be replaced by the direct gov simple search. Since then as if to make the transition seem a good thing the job centre search has been erratic and useless.

In the past month I am yet to find a single position using it. The frustrating thing though is I have to conduct several different searches to actually work this out. It is just a broken waste of space. Some examples of its failings.

- A search asking for jobs no further than 40 miles outside Southampton, offers jobs in glasgow, east riding of yorkshire and northampton
- A keyword search of marketing returns english lecturer, kitchen fitter and cleaner
- I am yet to find a way to actually turn up marketing executive roles without use of the keyword

Since I am being forced into visiting the job centre weekly anyway I am very tempted to give up and let the job centre "find" jobs for me in itermittent weeks. Not that their own internal search function seems to be any better.

What is most distressing in all this is that Job Centre Plus is planning to replace the above with direct gov job search. A search for marketing will warrant the following choices of which you can pick 3:

e-marketing
farm sales and marketing
marketing and public relations
marketing for non profit organisations
marketing manager
selling
telesales

It would be fair to assume that this is because these are the jobs that are available, after all there are more marketing jobs in sectors other than charities and farms. Wrong. Selecting marketing and pr, marketing for non profit, and marketing manager will return 90% sales and account manager jobs, with not a single job in any of the 3 selected options. It does not even state none of the above were found, these are apparently relevant jobs.

*Sigh*

The site may be bright, its future certainly isn't.

An update on the positive

2010-03-17T03:41:00.001-07:00

Although I am yet to find a full time paying job, 2010 has not actually been a bad year for me. The end of 2009 was just one failed job application after another. I spent way too long wasting time and watching as the days went past.

2010 and I joined the Solent Credit Union. I discovered an organisation with massive potential and a few people keen to drive growth, but mostly floundering as a large fish in a small pond. My work there has included delivering a marketing strategy which I was amused to hear many members of the board have not actually read. Nonetheless the Marketing team has and we have set some realisable goals and deadlines which will take the organisation forward. Perhaps the most important of these is the decision that we need a premises, something we are now taking steps to doing with a meeting scheduled on Friday with the manager of the East Street Centre. I have enjoyed my various tasks and challenges with the SCU and can now see the potential should the chance arise to pursue marketing in the not for profit sector. There has been tentative talk of putting together a funding proposal which would allow me to stay in the role with the SCU.

February also gave me the chance to interview with an awesome organisation called Fubra. I felt I had put myself across well and had a very real chance of scoring the marketing executive role. In reality it was the same old story, with an experienced candidate beating me to the post. Fubra did however make me a trial job offer, the chance to become a copy writer for their portfolio of sites. This has mostly involved writing short news/blog articles on the relevant sites with each earning me £5. The trial involved writing four blogs and I completed it earlier this week. Given it takes me under half an hour usually it's not a bad little bonus. Not to mention I can now add the skill of copy writing to my C.V and provide examples of my work.

March and I have finally got round to learning to drive. I have only had one lesson and it has proved a daunting experience, although fun. Hopefully, I will not take too long to pick up the basics and thus lessen the dent in my savings.

The future holds more driving lessons, the continuation of implementing my strategy at the SCU and now I am officially a writer for Fubra I could if I chose to write a larger article for a bigger pay out. Short of the lack of a job, the future actually looks pretty bright!

Making the effort

2010-03-16T05:19:00.000-07:00

One of the most time consuming part of job hunting is regularly updating your profiles on the bazillion sites you have chose to upload them on. The fact is as a job hunter you may as well put yourself out there in as many places as you possibly can. There are numerous job sites, some even seem to have the exact same jobs.

It has been suggested that it is good practice to update profiles/C.V's every few days as it puts you to the top of employers listings in a search. I tried this at first but for one thing just slightly editing my C.V to generate hits did not seem to work and for another I felt there were better uses of my time.

In the last few days though, I have been given good reason to update my C.V. It has taken me around an hour and a half jumping around the various sites and updating and uploading my C.V. The sites suggest that the purpose of this is to get employers to find you. As of yet I have never actually been directly contacted by an agency, employer or job I actually want. I have had to find the jobs. Nonetheless since I have nothing to lose, when I do have reason to update it still seems worth taking the time and making the effort. After all, all I need is one break, if it comes direct from an employer then the choice certainly becomes justified.

The amazing thing is that because there are so many sites I find new ones every now and then to upload and use. Hopefully one will prove to be the diamond in the rough and have not only good jobs but employers looking for people like me

Getting off the fence

2010-03-12T03:33:00.000-08:00

I am both lucky and cursed in that I have already chosen a career direction. In one sense it is good to have a target and in another it's bad to be so limited.

For many people deciding on which career path they wish take can be the hardest part of the job seeking process. At each stage of our lives we are forced to make (fairly) uninformed decisions about what we want to do next.

Yesterday I applied for a job entirely in P.R. It was a departure for me and my knowledge of what was involved and what was required was not as strong as when I apply for marketing jobs. I therefore decided to use My Job Search which has an extensive database of job descriptions and roles.

Within each is a list of the skills and interests required as well as an interview with someone in that job which helps to provide further insight into what the role involves and helps build a better picture of just what the job is about. It was particularly useful in aiding me in writing my covering letter as I drew upon the skills I knew the company would be interested in.

Particularly if you are one of those people who are still sitting on the fence, unsure exactly about what to do then I strongly advise you to take a look at it. Also if you are applying for a position you know little about it is worth reading the relevant job page before submitting an application. Below is a screenshot, which gives a good idea of just how many job descriptions are available:

Once you have decided which role best suits you, you can then use the search function to search for those jobs and the site will search 514 different job databases for you. The site has a simple search function whereby you can input a job and location. As with most job sites you will have to pick out the sales jobs claiming to be marketing and sift through a lot of irrelevant positions. A salary checker is also available which can allow you to hone your search and thus provide a higher level of positions which are likely to be of interest to you.

So if your are still sitting on the fence, My Job Search can be an excellent resource for you. It is in particular this database of career descriptions which makes it stand out from the other job search sites.

The Job Centre- There to help?

2010-03-11T07:28:00.000-08:00

I am becoming increasingly frustrated with the Job Centre and in particular their insistence that after 13 weeks of job searching in alternate weeks to signing on I have to sit with an advisor, look at jobs I could find myself and then leave.

You may remember I had requested that these end given their utter pointlessness. At the time the guy was very understanding and said after three weeks he would ask his superior.

The answer was of course no.

What is more the jobs he keeps showing me never actually involve even the smallest element of marketing, instead being mostly admin based. As I explained applying for a permanent admin job is just not realistic. But on Tuesday my advisor wanted to give it another go. This gave me a chance to really vent my frustration at the whole job centre process.

We have now been in an economic downturn for nearly 2 years and yet the job centre has made no attempt to adopt its practices to graduates/unemployed professionals and even experienced managers. They all get the same experience as someone with 3 kids, no education and 20 years of life. I think we really have gone to far down the equal opportunity and fairness path. Because when it comes to the job centre, we are not all equal and should therefore be treated differently. I regularly bring a list of between 6-10 jobs I have applied for. I search every few days and am also volunteering and copywriting. Being bought in to the job centre every other week to look at jobs I am not going to apply for is basically laughable.

The way that the job centre works they would sooner see me working in a low paying admin job I could have done straight out of school, rather than volunteering, gaining experience and trying to realise my potential. These things in fact gain me no extra credit, if anything they are viewed as a distraction.
If necessary i will have the same argument with the advisors each week and win. If they think that I spent £6k to study a Marketing Masters just to spend my life in a basic admin job they are sadly, sadly mistaken. If they ever actually decide they have an interest in helping me I will welcome it. Until then I will attend each Monday meeting, ready for another fight.

Post Mortem

2010-03-09T06:12:00.001-08:00

You have left the room leaving your smiling interviewer behind. The exit is approaching as you manage to put one foot in front of another. Your mind is focused, focused on carrying out an immediate post mortem.

At least you do when things have gone badly. Yesterday was a blip really. A blip of confidence, a blip on practiced interview technique, a blip on exiting an interview with your head held high.

Finding the place was easier than expected. I did in fact arrive just under an hour early. Fortunately there was a cafe nearby which I could wait at. I had a cappucino and read newspapers. Waiting, waiting...

I have found the longer you have to wait for something the more nerves get to poke their head in and scream at you. Travelling does not count as waiting so much as when you are sitting in a nearby place which serves no other purpose to you than to be a place to pass time. Also this is probably a personal thing but the cappucino really didnt help. It made me mouth dryer, leaving a lingering unpleasant feeling.*

Heading to reception I was then sent upstairs, where I had to wait again. I read the book I had with me, except I didn't actually read if you know what I mean.

Ushered into the tiniest office I have ever been in I was then cross-examined by the C.E.O and my potential future boss. I was thrown immediately on to the back foot when I saw that on the desk lay the doomed covering letter, the covering letter written to convince GJS I was needy. (See Crossed Wires)

I stammered, stuttered, repeated myself. I tried too hard. The room was hot despite a fan. It was an unpleasant experience and when I left I felt as if I had escaped.

The immediate feeling afterwards was one of lethargy. I tore to pieces my answers, looked for things I had got right(which were few and far between), and thought about what I should have said. But I did so with little convinction. It took several hours after the actual event for me to recover, it was quite unusual, as was in fact, going to pieces in the interview.

The post mortem revealed a mess, one of my worst performances so far but as for the reasons it found none. The questions were no harder than others I have undertaken, the atmosphere less harsh than many, the interviewers kind and supportive. The frustrating thing is that the company are committed to providing feedback on candidates who failed to get the role. In my case the feedback is mostly wasted. Its the equivalent of carrying out analysis purely on an anomaly and its frustrating that such a good opportunity has been wasted.

Crossed Wires

2010-03-05T02:54:00.000-08:00

I think a misunderstanding has just cost me potentially 5 different roles. You may remember a week or so ago that I posted about the never ending internships, my hope that as they were designed for people just like me I would get one and the desire to hear back.

I heard back. The rejections began to start arriving. One company provided feedback and thus started the cascade. After exchanging emails several times with GJS I recieved detailed feedback on my covering letter and then it dawned on me and suddenly it made sense why I was being rejected and why another department in the same company had picked up my C.V and offered me an interview. It was down to the purpose of the covering letter. The following was the description on the GJS site:

If you are interested in finding out more about this exciting opportunity please register with the GJS website, or simply log in and attach your CV with along with a covering letter explaining how you think you will benefit from this experience.

I clearly read too much into this. Misread the intention and tailored my covering letter to convince someone at GJS I needed this internship and would struggle without it.

In actuality I was not meant to do this. I was meant to write your standard covering letter explaining why you are good for the company and the role. This meant I had intentionally undersold myself, played down what I had done up to now and painted myself as an individual in desperate need of some experience.

It may surprise you to know this is not what most companies are after. I wrote for the wrong target audience and for the totally wrong purpose and although I have learned of my mistake and can ensure I do not make it in future, I cannot help but feel for the outstanding applications it's just a case of waiting for the rejections to roll in.

Waiting..

2010-03-04T02:55:00.000-08:00

As I have alluded to before, most of job hunting is waiting. Waiting for the right opportunities to appear, waiting to hear initially, waiting to hear after interview. Right now most of my time is taken up by waiting. I have about 6 job applications out in the field and 1 interview next week.

That was strange. I was called by a representative from a company I had applied to via graduate jobs south internships. They were not ringing to tell me I was succesful in applying for the internship. Nope, they wished to offer me the chance to interview for another internship which involved extremely similar duties just in a different part of the office. I was also informed that I had been unsuccesful in applying for the other internship and that GJS would be in touch with me soon. That was on Monday, maybe I am missing something. Not that it matters I know now and have another opportunity to prepare for.

I am also waiting for another article idea to be approved in my part time copywriting capacity, the company usually get back to me pretty quickly and its been over 24 hours. What is more is I have to only suggest blog posts until I complete trial so am intentionally only submitting one at a go.

I guess last week was so busy that in comparison this week seems like I am just watching the tumbleweed roll past. In other news I finally get to meet my Marketing team tonight for the SCU. Fingers crossed it all goes well. As for the day, guess I'll just spend it waiting.....

Who are you?

2010-03-03T02:16:00.001-08:00

I have been writing this blog for many months now and have amassed quite a number of posts on various issues all within the same general job seeking area.

At various times people have posted to discuss comments, either here or on facebook where these entries are published as notes.

And I am curious. Who are you reader and why do you read? One of the issues with online writing is you are not sure who your readers are and this is something that greatly interests me.

So I ask you, put a short comment on this with your name and why you read. Let my curiosity be satisfied.

Advice from a veteran (of many lost battles)

2010-03-01T03:29:00.000-08:00

As I strolled out of the interview on Friday, a smile on my face, I realised something. I am becoming a veteran of interviews, all be it for jobs I have failed to get. Analysing my answers and the process of the interview I realised how much I had come on since my first interview early last summer. The mistakes I had made and avoided repeating, the better answers, the preperation experience and the different interview approaches. There are many guides out there on the internet about what not to do and what to do. Below are 10 things I have learned. More will follow each Monday. Aren't you lucky?

As I said, and the title insinuates, I am still unemployed. Some of this advice, goes against what is commonly suggested and other bits support it. You may therefore take the advice with a pinch of salt. Its the equivalent of taking military advice from the French. Ha, see what I did there? Anyway, in no particular order:

1. Relax - One of the hardest things to do in an interview is relax. Sit back, take your time and be attentive. If you cannot answer a question do not panic. If you stay relaxed you present a visage of being calm under pressure. The best feedback I have had from interviews has come from when I have just sat back and been open, honest and treated the interview as more of a conversation than an interrogation.

2. Don't be afraid to ask questions as you go - This is seen as a big no-no in most guides but I have found it works well. So long as they are short and relevant to the point that the interviewer is making they are generally recieved well. It shows that are you being attentive and are genuinely interested. This beats five minutes of silence any day.

3. Avoid negativity - Everything must be shown to have an upside. Don't let your pessimism take over. If the journey was long it gave you more time to prepare. If you don't like admin, say you prefer other tasks. Negativity presents you as a negative person and negative people are not who you want normally.

4. The Journey- Plan, plan, plan! You can usually trust trains, and if they are really late then you cannot be expected to plan for that and won't be penalised. Buses on the other hand it is often better to make sure you can get a later bus and still make it if necessary. Also it does not matter if your journey was total hell, do not tell the interviewer, you can allude to issues just dont spend long on them. The interviewers reason for inviting you was not to hear about your journey.. unless your applying for a quality tester on public transport of course.

5. The Job description - Bring it with you. You do not need to memorise it but be aware of its contents. It is a massive error if you accidentally state you don't like something which is part of the job. If your aware of what is involved you can tailor your answers to the opportunity.

6. Don't prepare answers - Learn about the company, decide on strengths and weaknesses but do not pre prepare regurgiated answers. Its easy to do in a phone interview but questions in face to face rarely come as you expect them and unless you are a brilliant performer you will just look silly.

7. Seem interested - you want to work for the company. Listen with real intent when they explain about the company. Be willing to engage with any points they make and do not be afraid to get on to an off topic discussion. If it is something you can talk about with authority and it interests the interviewer it will only enhance your chances.

8. HONESTY - Don't lie, don't exaggerate and don't bullshit. It just is not worth it. Take yourself out of the truth and you have left your comfort zone. You may contradict yourself or suggest something out of character. Remember you have probably written a covering letter and they have your C.V. This gives them an idea of what to expect. If you overplay the significance of things you may find yourself lost. Even if you manage to get past this stage, there is the reference and then employment. Don't wreck your long term chances.

9. If your mind goes blank - Admit it. Apologise. Interviewers know that the process can be intimidating and will usually give you time to recompose yourself. Its best if you can avoid it altogether but trying to speak with a blank mind only results in disaster.

10. Be careful blowing your own trumpet - Again this goes against the traditional suggestions. It is usually suggested that you should focus on your own achievements and what you did and not what others did. This is true but taking too much credit for group work only results in you looking like a poor team player. It says to the interviewer that you like to take credit for other people's work. Clearly not a good thing! You do want to give an impression of your skills, competences and generally how awesome you are, but modesty is always respected.

Feel free to disagree but these are 10 of the things I have learned and will continue to practice at all future interviews. As I said more next week

Rinse and Repeat

2010-02-25T06:29:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow signals another interview. A surprise interview at that for a position where I was lacking several skills and of course experience. Given the ability recently of organisations to find me and not wanting to make a bad impression I won't write their name, instead just saying they are a major U.K I.T distributor. The biggest company I have interviewed for yet. They even have had in the past a graduate program. This, I admit has me a little worried. I have been turned down by tiny companies for a lack of experience, it seems unlikely that a major one would want to take a risk. I also suspect the competition will be high. All in all tomorrow is likely to be a wasted trip. Its the opposite effect of having your hopes high, when they are low you go in knowing you have nothing to lose. It is harder however, to motivate yourself to prepare properly as in your mind you have already failed to get the job. I just hope to be given a fair chance. I once went to a company in Basingstoke for all of a 20 minute interview. It was clear the guy was not impressed and I was in and out after just a few mundane questions. This admittedly was when I was a little bit less experienced with interviews, but still the thought hangs, I don't want to have spent £15+ just to make up numbers for a firm who have no intention of employing me.

As for the preperation process it is a case of rinse and repeat. Printing off maps, planning the journey, researching the company. It's a tedious necessity which is also time consuming.

The never ending internships

2010-02-24T04:34:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago I admit I was actually excited when the first of the internships appeared. Designed specifically for out of work graduates and therefore a place where experience is less likely to be a differentiator they were perfect for me. I was told to submit a covering letter and a C.V which I did.

Two weeks later and I have now applied for six different marketing internships all in different guises. Some have attached research, administration, design and P.R. Some are three months long, some are twelve. Some involve working in Southampton, others are as far north as Hook. The thing they all have in common. They are produced by GJS based in the same office in Southampton Solent University.

Can anyone spot a potential issue yet?

Writing a covering letter is time consuming. Most jobs require covering letters to accompany C.Vs so if you have any sense you have templates. After all if you are after jobs in the same industry what you want to say is likely to be very similar. One of the particulars for the internship is what you think it will do for you. Regardless of which internship I end up on, I hope it will do the same thing. The result is I have now attached six virtually identical covering letters and the office that receive them are probably sick of me. The thing is I don't see what else I could have done. An intelligent approach would have been to have one letter explaining why any internship would benefit you and what skills you hope to gain.

I still have not heard from any of the positions yet but if more keep appearing which will provide me with useful skills and carry the coveted "marketing" in the title I will keep applying until the GJS have a small pile of my applications. Yes I prefer some over others but any of them would make a massive difference to me and my chances of forging a career in marketing and therefore I will keep applying.

May the internships never end. Although it would be nice to hear from one or all of them soon.

Peer Reviews don't work at University

2010-02-19T08:11:00.000-08:00

A slight departure today to a topic which is more relevant to current students. I am in a sense using this post as a warm up for my (potentially) paid writing and it is an issue I have seen effect friends recently.

A peer review by nature suggests bias. Your peer is likely to have an opinion and they gain/lose nothing by their decision. Peer reviews in the form of recommendations are common on linkedin. I can recommend so and so as he did an excellent job with me. I always think this loses some of its strength if the same person then reviews him back. Yes, he may have done a good job, but in giving him a dazzling review you are increasing the liklihood you will get one back.

At University the idea that any piece of work, that even 1% of it is marked by peer review is prepostorous. I can only assume that it is meant to be a demonstration of maturity, impartiality and supposedly a chance for you have to have your say. In reality it is simply nothing of the sort. It turns academic work into a popularity contest and I am flabbergasted that any lecturer still views it as a good idea.

After all there will always be people who vote highly for their friends, regardless of what there friends have actually done. Therefore the more friends you have the better you will do. People with grudges against each other are likely to mark harshly and even the person trying to be the fairest and most impartial will struggle when marking their boyfriend/girlfriend/best friend. There will also be bargaining, questioning,

"what did you give me?"
"if you give me an 8 I will give you an 8"

I remember all this from school when nothing was at stake. At university when the outcome of your degree and possibly your livelihood is in focus, to expect everyone to mark fairly is quite simply naive.

As someone who never strode the lines of popularity, any chance for peer review was something I dreaded. I knew I wasnt being marked on my actual performance on a task, but on a hundred other factors which were utterly unrelated. Even if someone tries to be impartial they arent going to be cruel to their friends and they certainly won't fail them.

Ultimately if noone votes fairly and the actual content of the work becomes irrelevant then all peer reviewing actually is, is an exercise in futility.

Changing the mind set.

2010-02-18T03:18:00.000-08:00

One of the hardest things I have found to this week is change my mindset. In a sense being unemployed you get used to a ridiculous amount of flexibility. You can try to regulate what you do by routine but ultimately you can do what you like, when you like so long as you keep searching for jobs. After several months it seems hard to revert to anything else.

Its like the summer break. You have months of nothing and then have to gear yourself back up for the start of term, only when your unemployed this is amplified.

I now have things I could be doing. I could if I wished to wake up early and get straight to work, either on drafting blog posts or continuing the marketing strategy. I now have two areas I can focus a lot of time on but motivating myself to do so is a challenge. Its not that I struggle for self motivation, its just that I have become complacent and used to having more free time than it is healthy to have. Another issue is that I am stopping myself from actively pursuing hobbies when I know I could, and possibly should be working. But instead of working I am just killing time by checking random websites, watching iplayer and generally doing very little.

I think I need to accept its the start of term and that from next week I have to stop from just going through the motions and really begin the actual work.

Another visit to the job centre

2010-02-17T02:56:00.001-08:00

I am really beginning to familiarise myself with the place.
Yesterday I was given a choice, arrive 20 minutes before appointment and kill time, or arrive 2 minutes late. I picked the latter, pancakes is just not something you can easily pass on. In reality the bus was 10 minutes late meaning when I dashed into the job centre I was pushing the 15 minute mark.

I rushed upstairs, handed over my form and waited... for 45 minutes. Whether it is something the job centre does intentionally I do not know but I was seriously unimpressed. I have been late once in 15 weeks and yet this made me susceptible to being stuck at the back.

Whilst passing the time I took to watching others. I understand that life can be hard for some people who are unemployed and that are used to a different culture and upbringing, but that still does not excuse them from having a little respect.
Two guys waiting for their appointment were talking loudly about fighting, they both wore hats and were obviously after the gangster look. At four different points, their phones rang, ringtones on full volume. At another they fell around on the floor laughing. They were a general annoyance to all around them, and also the job centre staff trying to get through appointments. Yet no staff said anything to them.

If it was up to me I would kick them out. Tell them to come back when they are willing to treat the Job Centre with a little respect. And yet here I was being forced to wait 45 minutes because I had been late.

When I finally got to the desk to be seen it was embarrasing. The guy handed me the sign on sheet virtually straight away. Since I had questions I asked if he had read my job record sheet to which he stated not yet. He then answered all the questions with the help of the forms by his side, including a leaflet on volunteering. It seems that you can volunteer for as many hours of volunteering as you like... wait for it...so long as the number of hours you do doesnt effect your entitlement to benefit.

Possibly the most pointless sentence I have seen in a long time. It gets better, "for more information contact job centre plus. You can also ask about a leaflet on volunteering"

Wonderful advice there for the volunteering leaflet from Job Centre Plus
* SIGH *
Not their finest week in my eyes.

The Elusive Right Opportunity

2010-02-15T03:46:00.001-08:00

One of the key challenges as an unemployed graduate is finding the right opportunity for you. I view it as unlike most job searches, where you merely look for something your vaguely interested and think you can do. Instead you are looking for something which supports your existing background and which may lead to a succesful career. I have said before how I am now involved in the SCU although my strategy developing as come to a halt as I have not heard anything since sending a draft to my contact there. As well as rejecting me Fubra have offered me the chance to be one of their freelance copy writers. Evidently impressed with my writing style and ability to research they think I would be an excellent addition to their freelance team. I am of course interested, good experience, money and another addition to my growing C.V are too many positives to turn down. One thing potentially stands in my way.

The Job Centre

I have not yet taken my new volunteering role or this offer to them for consideration. Their rules and guidelines state you cannot do more than 16 hours of part time work a week. Similar rules exist for volunteering positions. I am expecting a battle to convince them that whilst juggling a volunteering job and a copywriting job I am still actively searching for jobs.
But then the jobs they put in front of me on a regular basis clearly are not the right career step. This comes back to my earlier post on the job centre quandary. In my opinion, those of us who are unemployed graduates are different from other first time job seekers. I want something which is the right chance for me to show my skills, not a sideways step that merely delays me breaking into my chosen career. The SCU and copywriting positions are excellent experience for someone in my position. They should help me find that elusive right opportunity. The average admin job put in front of me each week, simply wont. I just hope tomorrow the job centre have the foresight and understanding not to limit either potentially career advancing chance.

One hell of a challenge

2010-02-12T04:24:00.000-08:00

You may have noticed a drop in the number of blog posts recently. This is because an opportunity has finally come through. On Monday this week I was confirmed as a volunteer in Marketing for the Solent Credit Union, a co-operative organisation for savings and loans mostly used by people the banks rejected, it is a sort of cross between a charity and a business.

My official title is "Marketing Officer", my actual job is somewhat vaguer. I have a Marketing "team" of four individuals, two of which I am yet to actually meet. How they work and what they actually do also seems to a mystery to me. All my interractions have been with the vice president of the organisation, a super pensioner, who seems to be vice president, marketer, leading a take over, volunteer co-ordinator, general helper and full time employee. Like me he is a volunteer, but it seems to me at least he is "The Solent Credit Union." That is not to say I am suggesting the many other volunteers do not do anything, Phil just seems to have an impressive remit.

Phil believes the SCU need a marketing officer as their current marketing is a mess. From what I have seen so far this is not far from the truth. The promotion, website and customer interractions all need improvement if the Credit Union is to actually maintain consistent growth and continue to be a force for good in the community.

On Wednesday I got to travel with Phil to the offices of the Coastal Credit Union in Bournemouth, an organisation not unlike our own, but fields ahead in terms of members, promotions, quality and growth. We met with two paid staff members to discuss marketing ideas. The CCU has done fantastically but this has been in no small part down to luck. One of the members believed so strongly in the cause that he remortgaged his house to buy the CCU a premises from which to work from. This and the fact they have 5 paid staff including a CEO can help explain why they are so far ahead of us in all terms. The meeting for me was challenging, I wanted to appear confident but not brash and overconfident, whilst at the same time I did not want to appear like I did not know what I was doing in front of people with decades more experience than me. I am currently writing a preliminary marketing plan/strategy for the organisation but realistically have no idea how good or useful it is. Something I will have to discover when I distribute it on completion. The fact is though the CCU have resources we don't and that is at the root of the problem.

We need skilled volunteers. We need young enthusiastic people who understand web design, marketing, graphics designing, promotion and lobbying. Until we have the resources its hard to really improve. I found out for instance our website has been created in microsoft publisher. We had information to add in to the news section but the person responsible couldnt get it to work.

This is ultimately frustrating. Without belittling the actions and achievements of the current volunteers, we need new blood, with new ideas and that for now is going to be my priority.

Should anyone be interested in volunteering or the areas above. Feel free to contact me for a chat and then I can direct you to the relevant person. The SCU has enormous potential, I just need help realising it.

In other news just got a rejection notice from Fubra. Apparently although they were impressed with my written and research skills, as well as with this blog, other candidates had more relevant skills.

*sigh*

The search goes on.

The Job Centre Quandary

2010-02-11T05:02:00.001-08:00

A day late, as yesterday proved to be quite busy. More on that tomorrow as I try to catch up.

On Monday I had to attend the job centre for what will become a fixture in the in between weeks which I sign on. I was not entirely sure of the point of it when I went so was not exactly sure what to expect. If you are on JSA for more than 13 weeks I am afraid it is now compulsory, a new iniative from the government.

I arrived on time and unlike when signing on was immediately ushered to a desk to talk with an advisor. He preceeded to look at jobs for me using the job centre database, incidentally something I can do myself from home. Flagging up several admin jobs we got to discussing what I was really after. This resulted in the quandry.

I am after a marketing job. I have a marketing masters which I paid a lot to get. I am currently volunteering in marketing. Its fairly clear the average admin job isnt for me. Clear to myself, clear to him and clear to the employer.

Let us say I go to an interview for an admin position. A common first question is why do you want the job. Experience, I will answer. When pressed it will soon become clear I view the job as a good way of gaining short term experience and that I have no intention of sticking around for any length of time. I could lie but its not in my nature to do so and so when I put this to the advisor he saw the problem.

This then allowed me to follow up with an honest question. What was the point of me being there. I could search jobs at home in exactly the same way, by travelling to the job centre I paid an unecessary bus fare and took a huge chunk out of my day.
The advisor was quick to admit that in my case there probably wasn't much point, but that others struggled to find jobs and they had make great breakthroughs. This led to the obvious and instrinsic flaw of the program being exposed.

The job centre has to be seen to treat everyone equally.
Everyone is clearly not equal.

In the case of the guy before me, the advisor had found him jobs he had not considered and sent him on his way, having really aided him in his job search

In my case he had wasted my time, and he knew it. The other frustrating thing is that despite the fact we both knew this we have to continue the charade for a few more weeks. Then if it continues to be pointless he will ask his boss if it can stop.

Until then we will both just have to pretend we are achieving something.

Not enough hours in the day

2010-02-09T09:26:00.000-08:00

Well that was some hiatus. It was not helped by a post getting entirely swallowed by the internet demons. So much has happened its hard to know what to blog on exactly. Fridays interview seems the best part I think.

Interview with Fubra - Friday 05/02

The further you have to travel the more that can do wrong. To be honest the day did not get off to the best start when the bus I meant to catch went missing. For more on this see this. This meant that things would be tight at the station. I would have 8 minutes to buy a ticket and get on the train to Woking, assuming of course the bus wasnt held up in traffic. Preparing myself for the worst but unable to get the bus to speed up I was quite agitated. Fortunately traffic was low and we sailed (not literally) into the station with 12 minutes to spare. The station was busier than usual, I soon found out why.

A lorry had hit a railway bridge on the line I needed causing massive delays.

Suddenly I find myself among the many business men trying to reach London. This led to the rather surreal scenario of being crowded on to a two carriage local train heading just two stops. My two change journey had just become three. The rest of the journey was uneventful, but the delays meant that far from reaching Aldershot 40 minutes to the good I arrived with just 10 minutes to find the offices. It was only at this point I gave in and rang the company to inform them I might be late.

A short walk across a field and I was there. A fantastic office set in an old manor house. For reasons unbeknown to me I forgot how to speak on a phone and stuttered my way through asking to be let in. I can not properly express how glad I was that this temporary attack of ridiculous nerves left me and I was led to a Mac where I was told to complete 4 questions, including a mock email, a 150 sales pitch for left over xmas trees and tactics for a failing cinema. It was brilliantly refreshing and the most fun I have had within an actual interview. These tasks were followed by a face to face interview in comfortable swivelly chairs. Something about the experience allowed me to relax and I was able to field all the questions, leaving the building pleased that I had given a good account of myself.

Halfway up the hill I realised something. Something was missing. Turning around I saw my interviewer running up the hill behind me holding my laptop bag.

D'oh!

Red faced I thanked her for returning it to me and headed back to the station. Special mention at this point has to go to the little cafe at the station. I was famished after my travelling and realising I had a few minutes till the next train ordered a sausage baguette. It was one of the best I have ever had. Everything about it was perfect. A good end to a challenging day.

On reaching home I was exhausted. 4+ hours of travelling. I reasoned that I would tire myself out travelling to Aldershot all the time, on the other hand hopefully lorries wont choose to crash into bridges each morning I go to work, 3 hours a day is manageable for a few months at least. Then I can move.

I will hear from Fubra later this week. Fingers crossed and hopes up. Its a great job and I cant see what I could have done better in the tasks or interview.

Tomorrow: The Job Centre Quandry!

Preparing for an Interview

2010-02-02T03:55:00.000-08:00

It has been a productive quiet morning. I have spent most of it reading a book on search marketing strategies in preperation for my interview on Friday. SEO is certainly an interesting and unusual aspect of marketing, one where I certainly have a lot to/I can learn.

Another aspect of prep is the travel arrangements. Often these can be fairly simple but occasionally they require a bit more planning. Uusually I like to leave room for error at each stage, unfortunately this is not possible for Friday as I effectively make three changes, one of which is entirely out of my control. Its always useful when planning to figure out how much it will cost to attend the interview. In this case its going to wipe out a weeks worth of job seeker allowance and then some. Travel costs can be frustrating, particularly if things go badly. For one job I went for a few months back I had to travel to Basingstoke for an interview. It only cost £10 return, but the interview lasted just 20 minutes before I was standing back on the platform heading back to Southampton. It was clear I wouldnt get the job, £10 wasted.

But ultimately if you are interested in the job the cost is worth it. The time also. Because should you actually get the job then that cost will be repaid after just your first few hours working for that firm, along with all the other costs to get to interviews you may have paid. Unless you are in serious financial trouble (in which case you can get help from the job centre) its always worth just grinning and bearing it. Of course some companies do pay expenses, I am just yet to find one outside of the big 4 accountancy firms.

Some more (short) reviews

2010-02-01T04:10:00.000-08:00

As a job hunter it is very difficult to avoid any resource which may help you get a job. Today I am therefore giving brief reviews of a number of sites I check each time I carry out a job search, just in case they might provide a useful opportunity and I may get lucky. Some are certainly better than others, but should you be on the graduate job trail these reviews may help, though it is important to remember, they are just my views and you may in fact totally disagree.

Hot Recruit - 1/5

Hot Recruit is a job site I was put on to by someone else, I almost wish I had never found it. Quite probably my least favourite job site it has a number of spectacular issues and random oddities.

Pros:

- Simple Job search feature, simple to use at any rate
- Ability to set up email alerts, see applied jobs etc. Most sites have this as well I just felt one pro would have been overly harsh

Cons:

- Home to 90% of the fake marketing - really door to door sales jobs. Finding a real job in amongst the options is a needle in a haystack
- Utterly bemusing search criteria. If you search for Southampton it gives you a number of options including Southampton Common. How many jobs, realistically will there be on Southampton Common. This is more an oddity than a major con, but really, what!?
- Yet to find anything remotely suitable for myself. Given the number of jobs on other sites I have found, this either means the jobs don't use it, or its search just fails.
- On the first page of a marketing search I get offered the chance to apply to be a weight loss coach. If anyone can tell me the progression from those two jobs I would be impressed
- Out of date. I was being offered Christmas jobs in January...enough said

Conclusion

I only check this because its in my job seeker bookmarks. If you want a job in hard door to door sales then this is your site. Then again you can find the jobs on many other sites as well. Similarly it claims to offer a wide range of seasonal jobs, I just never found them.

Only Marketing Jobs - 2/5

This is only useful to anyone searching for marketing jobs. Well, slightly useful. I would have expected Only Marketing Jobs to turn up regular opportunities but this simply has not been the case.

Pros:

- Once a search is completed, you have a chance to narrow down or expand criteria by clicking on side bar links. This allows you to really find only relevant jobs
- Simple and easy applying feature which uses a pre saved C.V to send to organisations
- Colourful..

Cons:

- Does not seem to have many relevant jobs to starting out/graduates. Also it works by finding keywords the job poster has used, so in my job results this morning was a 45-50k salary. As expected, it was not looking for an entry level graduate.
- Spam Email. An irritating feature of many sites is their desire to spam you, not even with jobs, just emails telling you how great they are. I wouldn't mind if they actually were!
- When searching you have to select specific marketing fields, there is no "All" so finding the relevant jobs initially can be a challenge

Conclusion

Its okay if your looking for a marketing job and you can always block its pointless spam. I am yet to find and apply for a job through it, which doesn't say much for a specialist site sadly.

Direct Gov Search 2/5

You may recognise the name of this as it was tagged into the post on the job centre plus site. I was informed this morning it will be replacing it from the 31st March, this to me is not a good thing

Pros:

- Easiest search function of all. You can write what you are looking for and were in a sentence and it will return the relevant jobs
- Nope that's it, for now at least. I imagine if I am still searching in April I will need to be better acquainted with it.

Cons:

- Because of the ease of the search function you do not get the same depth in the search results. You cannot specify how far from Southampton or filter out results you have already seen. That requires an advanced search, which looks a lot like the job centre one..
- Unattractive- really minor that.
- Job return from a search is a real mixed bunch.

Conclusion

It just is not as good as Job Centre Plus. Searching is easier, I get that. But the process and return is worse for the moment at least. Job Centre is also playing up so perhaps they are trying to make the transition easier by making Job Centre worse. "I'd go direct, gov!" now appears to be a command rather than a suggestion.

Volunteering Part 2

2010-01-29T07:50:00.000-08:00

A few weeks back I met with the Wheatsheaf trust with a view to aiding them with their marketing, and in doing so gain some valuable "experience" and skills which would make me more employable. That didn't work out unfortunately so I went back to the drawing board as it were and looked for other organisations.

As it turned out another organisation, solent credit union were looking for someone to get involved with the marketing side of things. I got an email late last night asking if I would like to meet a representative for an informal chat this morning.

I did so, feeling the more professional for my long black woolen coat arriving at a local community centre which seemed to be mostly empty apart from a few individuals, evidently running a pick up point for the credit union. Phil, as he introduced himself began to take me through the history of the union and we chatted for around an hour, infringing upon the staff who were preparing a lunchtime meal as I was given an excellent overview of what a credit union does, the state of things, the future and what I could do.

The upshot is they would like me to come in and turn around their self confessed "bad marketing." I would be part of a team but effectively act as a consultant, as someone from outside looking at the organisation. There is a budget to spend and the ambition to expand the customer base and therefore the overall amount of money the organisation makes.* Its basically a marketers dream. Though as someone inexperienced in the actual processes of marketing I am approaching with enthusiasm but also trepidation.

I am now meeting with Phil again next Wednesday where I will sign the many many forms necessary to begin volunteering. The step after that being to meet the board and the marketing team and then begin volunteering.

Clearly I would prefer a paying position but whilst I continue to search this seems like an excellent opportunity. A little break and a possible ladder.

This means my next week is now quite busy. Job centre- Tuesday, charity meeting - Wednesday The dreaded dentist - Thursday and Interview with Fubra - Friday.

Certainly a nice change from the norm.**

* The way credit unions work, they dont exactly make money, they keep other peoples, but the principle is basically the same.
** With the exception of the dentist of course

Job site review: Job Centre Plus

2010-01-27T03:28:00.000-08:00

Job Centre Plus - 4/5

Job Centre plus is an extension of the Job centre, a place I have to attend every two weeks. When I first went there and talked to a representative he bought up the website and stated somewhat nervously, "But you probably won't find the sort of jobs you are looking for there."

This has proved to be untrue. In fact job centre has provided me with a number of opportunties and if you are looking for immediate work and have not used it I cannot recommend it enough.

Pros:

- Wide range of jobs available. One of the traditional beliefs is that the job centre only carries menial, low paying, lowest common denominator positions. Although it does indeed have simply poorly paid hourly jobs you can also find ones with wages that far exceed my expectations for some years to come.
- To assemble its jobs it draws from a wide range of sources such as other agencies, job sites and local employer partnerships. Sometimes this requires you to leave the site to actually read about jobs or apply but it provides a good base from which to do this
- Because it is linked with the job centre you can search at the job centre on an interractive console whilst waiting to sign on. Its a small but neat thing. Also you can search and call positions whilst in the job centre, but this is something I personally don't use. I have the means to search at home.
- 5 part job interface which allows you to search keywords, postcodes and gives you a number of options at each point. This means you can look at positions they are only relevant to you...in theory.

Cons:

- The job centre has the strangest con of all the sites. If you produce a job search it will only show you 100 matches, even if 542 were found. Depending on how you decide to order the job search will determine which jobs you can see. I may be at fault in that I cannot see how to get the other 400 odd jobs but it should be simple
- I question the reliability of the job search criteria. Last week when I went to the job centre I was handed two potential jobs by the job centre employee. Both suited by needs but neither had appeared on my job search. I also had to intiially fiddle around with criteria to actually find the marketing jobs
- When I first used it I simply wrote "Marketing" in the keyword box and put my postcode. This skips several stages, which are necessary if you want to find all the jobs. If you put a keyword be sure to put which fields you want to work in as well
- At each stage you are allowed 5 options, across the whole page. Although this includes "All" it can be infuriating, for instance I am interested in marketing research and business commerce, however I am less interested in animal/fish/land or construction mangers. However, to fit all the things I need into the search I either have to select all, or miss out on several useful fields.

Conclusion

Job Centre Plus is an excellent resource for finding jobs. Tying in with your twice weekly visits to the job centre it provides a plethora of jobs from many different fields and areas. On any given job search I expect to find at least one relevant job from here, which puts it way out ahead of most of the other sites I will be reviewing.

First of the job site reviews: Graduate Jobs South

2010-01-26T09:41:00.000-08:00

One of things I have discovered whilst job searching is some sites are certainly better suited to my needs than others. Over the next few days I will review the various jobsites I use for a number of factors such as : likelihood I will find a relevant job, amount of spam, relevance of positions, the job search function and other less important factors such as appearance and tone. I have certainly developed favourites over the last few months, but some jobsites are more useful than others even if they fail for many other factors. Today, the first site, a site which as a graduate based in the south it makes sense to sign up to.

Graduate Jobs South: Overall Rating 3/5

Pros:

- Two of the main pros of graduate jobs south are in the title. "Graduate Jobs and South" as a graduate living in Southampton this site seemed like the most likely to find me a job and the perfect place.
- Simple interface and the ability to set up job alerts
- Lots of other information such as interview prep techniques is also available though I have not made much use of it. One guide on interviews is much like the next
- Job Search feature reasonably detailed and useful
- Once you have set up a job search you can simply look

Cons:

- Not regularly updated. That is to say relevant jobs are few and far between
- "Graduate Jobs" used loosely. A number of the positions are looking for second movers, experienced employees. This is not however how they sell it at job fairs/through careers
- The jobs I applied for via it rejected me based on a lack of experience. This not a con in itself but if you are up against experienced individual who are over 25 it may not exactly be a "graduate" job. But then outside of graduate programs its hard to find jobs just for recent inexperienced graduates
- Erratic recommendations. I am not sure what among my choices makes me suitable to be an inter-faith counsellor but when you get a ream of unsuitable jobs it can be quite frustrating.

Conclusion:

A good site and one of the sites I regularly use. Occasionally throws up a gem but often only has jobs which are posted on numerous other sites and therefore not only targeted at Grads.
-

Don't get your hopes up

2010-01-25T07:05:00.000-08:00

Its a strange old phrase that one. Everyone uses it, I did so only this morning. It is also in my mind totally obsolete. When you really want something or are looking forward to something it is natural to get your hopes up, its basically unavoidable.

This phrase often goes hand in hand with "expect rejection/the worst" and then it wont be as disappointing. Won't it? I have admittedly found that if I have done badly in an interview then I am not that disappointed when I get rejected, but its difficult to fool yourself. If you think you have done well, telling yourself you did badly simply is not going to work. I am unfortunately often wrong, this is where the problem lies because rejection does hurt a lot more when you do not expect it.

I expect too much, that is certainly true. With each new opportunity I suddenly see the potential, jumping all the stages in between as if they are mere formalities. Last week I applied to a graduate program, I offered all the skills they wanted and even the ones under the desired column. I wrote an application and was even practicing pyschometric tests in preparation for the next stage.

On Sunday they sent me a rejection, no explanation.
I was crestfallen, with other jobs it was experience that proved the let down, but on a level playing field I did not even reach stage 2? Where do I go from there?

I later rationalised that as my application was late they had already filled the position, or maybe there was something they did not like. Ultimately it did not matter, the only thing to do was to pick myself up and as my Dad put "keep on trucking."

Because what it comes down to is this. You can get your hopes up, you can be massively disappointed but all you can do is get yourself back up and out there and carry on. Sometimes there is a lesson to be learned and sometimes you just leave an experience in the past but in the end you just have to keep on going, applying for jobs and hope that eventually someone hands you a chance.

It is Monday now and my hopes are back up. I have applied to a company called Fubra, they are a young internet company, seemingly with a vibrant, friendly community of workers. They even have an X-Box 360 in the break room. I have had a good saunter around their site and I would love to work for them. The position is as an online marketing assistant, an ideal job title. No mention of a need for experience and once again I fulfil all the criteria.

Now I just have to wait and if my hopes are fulfilled that would be awesome, if not I will just have to "keep on trucking."

Pet Hates of the Job search

2010-01-22T07:02:00.000-08:00

By now I consider myself experienced in searching for jobs. I have spent countless hours and know basically what I am looking for.
Whilst job searching there is something which infuriates me beyond anything else and that is door to door sales jobs pretending to be anything else.

Taglines such as :

Kick-start your career in marketing today
Make 2010 your year
No training necessary
Change to a new successful career

Its utter bullshit. What these jobs actually entail is hard door to door sales. Nothing else, no office work and in most cases no actually salary just OTE. A lot of them even require you to be self employed. How the hell do they get away with this. No element of marketing actually features. The fact these jobs exist annoys me. The fact they are allowed to spread their lies on major job boards and job sites is beyond repproach.

THEY LIE. OUTRIGHT.

Why, why are they not cracked down on. There is such a thing as false advertising, surely they must be culpable. But I have even come across them on official government sites. They are everywhere. Now I know where to look I am not fooled, but I bet other poor graduates are.

What is particularly frustrating is although I am well aware of their con I cannot filter them from job searches because of their various lies. They are also everywhere which means searching through pages of the same crap.

Silence

2010-01-20T05:13:00.000-08:00

It has been an odd week all and all. Last week I was full of optimism and had found a number of good jobs to apply for. This week I am watching the tumbleweed roll past.
Middle of the week and still have not heard anything from any job I applied for. Its strange, normally you get an automated rejection, or something suggesting when you are likely to hear next about the job. Nothing is in my experience fairly unusual.

Its not like there are many new jobs appearing either. Nothing in the right area at any rate. So tomorrow I shall look for a new take on the Thursday job search.

London. Arguably it is commutable. A long commute with journeying needed at both ends but doable. Tomorrow I search London for jobs, I throw out applications and if I manage to get a job it just means I need to move in 5 months.

If that heralds nothing, just have to hope I can scrape through in the graduate programs. At least I am against similar competitors in those.

All Quiet on the Western Front

2010-01-18T03:29:00.001-08:00

Last week was full of such activity. I was working on job applications/job searches from 10-5 easily. I applied for six different jobs, some of which looked pretty promising. Snow was on the ground and a lot of the country was practically at a halt but still my search went on.

The snow has gone. A new week, new hope. My usual Monday job search to surely herald more results. Emails from the jobs I had applied for. Responses to my enquiries.

Nothing.
I understand its early in the day of the first day of the week but I still wasnt expecting it to be quite so dead. I am done at 11:30, having risen later than usual.

Guess I just have to wait and hope. One of the jobs at least must get back to me at some point.

My Problem with Graduate Programs

2010-01-14T05:14:00.000-08:00

Last year I applied to just one graduate program and failed at the telephone interview stage. This was largely due to the fact I held many issues with graduate programs, the application, their design and the fact they were sold to us as the only viable option of finding employment.

One year on, well you know the story.

This post will outline a few of those issues and why I have to now simply ignore them

The Application Process-

Unlike other jobs, because of the sheer number of applicants, most programs consist of numerous stages. My first issue is with their application forms. A simple C.V and covering letter will not suffice for a graduate program, you have to go through pages of application to basically state what was on your C.V in the first place and answer a few generic questions. If you are succesful then you usually face a telephone interview.

I hate telephone interviews. I am not a telephone person. Talking when you can see the other person is much preferred. But to save time and money you are interrogated by phone first. Most telephone interviews I have heard people speak of are said to be very easy and friendly. My only one to date was frankly harrowing.

Should you pass this next stage you will be asked to complete verbal reasoning and numerical tests. Fail and its all over.
This just seems unfair. I am sure the skills needed to complete the tests may be important in the peripheral of the actual role but they are not usually key. The last time I really did any amount of numerical work was 2003. That is 7 year ago and you are going to assess on my ability to recall and answer mathemetical questions. I have an A at GCSE, surely that demonstrates when I need to I can work numerically.

Should you pass this round you are invited to an assessment centre. I have not attended one of these before so cannot really comment. Needless to say you repeat the verbal and numerical tests to prove you have not cheated. These are often sold as a friendly chance to meet the team and understand the job. I do not doubt of course that you are being assessed from the moment you enter to the moment you leave, whether you are presenting, taking tests or merely eating lunch.

After this in some cases there an interview. Usual rules apply.

At any of these stages the company can turn round and say "thanks but no thanks". All that time, all that effort totally wasted and as a student still not entirely intune with the real world just yet, it can be crushing. But its okay because there are others when you can do the exact same. Its not like a job application where you go for an interview, maybe a second interview and are then told whether you are successful or not. This process can take months, interfering with anything else in your life.

But that was not what put me off graduate programs. What put me off was what was involved in the programs themselves. In particular the suggestion you needed to work in each bit of the business to decide which suited you. The fact that HR was based in Dorset, Sales in Aberdeen and Marketing in Manchester was irrelevant. You were expected to complete 3 months in each. At least this was the case for many of the programs I looked at. There were many attractive qualities as well, the gradual training, mentorship, salaries and general attempt to make you feel like you belonged.

1 year on and here I am applying for two different graduate programs. One has a six part process and the other a three. Both have the dreaded tests, but the end result is more pleasing. A chance to train at one location, in one area. All the positive qualities and very few of the negative. One suggests that the process will take a maximum of four weeks, also agreeable.
Neither are anywhere near Southampton, but sadly you cant always have it all.

Cautious Optimism

2010-01-13T04:09:00.000-08:00

Today I am fairly optimistic. Opportunities seem to be appearing left, right and centre some of which even carry the hallowed word "graduate" and ask for no experience. It could be too good to be true but hopefully one will pay off and I will be amongst the gainfully employed. The most impressive and attractive one is based in Abingdon. (not an easy place to get to) But learning to drive has been on my agenda for a while now and I have not ruled out moving away from Southampton in the summer, though I am tied to a contract until then.

A quick thanks to my friends for keeping their eye out for relevant opportunties. I appreciate the time, no matter how short, you take to think of me.

Tomorrow is the big job hunt day, I think I have found enough things to be working on applications from 9-5! But for today, relaxation, enjoyment and mabye a little gaming

Conflicted

2010-01-12T04:42:00.000-08:00

Today I made a difficult decision. It was an obvious one which arose from a conflict raging since last Wednesday. I decided to inform the recruitment company I would not be attending their assessment tomorrow.

I knew all along the role would basically be a sales one, calling prospective candidates, "selling" them a job, even making a commission from doing so. But what dawned on me whilst lying awake last night was this: I could not go from Recruitment to Marketing without starting back at the beginning and in all likelihood several years down the line I would not want to do that. Ultimately if I went for and got a job in recruitment that would be my career and another dream down the pan.

Back when I was younger I wanted to be an actor. I come alive on stage and feel a real passion for peformance. As I grew older I realised that you either make it or you don't as an actor and as a career plan it was not all that realistic. Despite this, when I applied to University I applied for a mixture of drama and history, refusing to let the dream die. This was flawed, I know that now. I would have been better served to have applied just for History, but I got lucky and Uni of Southampton took me on. I got involved with the Theatre Group but studies came first and thus that dream petered away.

After History, which is not itself a career path. Marketing became my aim. I really enjoyed marketing, I found it a challenging, interesting and ultimately attractive area of business to go into. It became the new dream and one I am not ready to give up just yet.

I think what it comes down to is I want to have a career in Marketing. I am happy to do something else at first if it enhances my chances of eventually getting a job in marketing, almost regardless of what it involves me doing.

Yet despite all this I am conflicted, I filled out the pre assessment day forms and if they had paid travel expenses I might even of gone just to see. I think though, this time I have made the right call and will have to hope that I won't regret the decision

Square One

2010-01-11T05:05:00.000-08:00

As I have discussed before, I am a man who likes to have a back plan. Not through lack of optimism but merely because it is better to play it safe.

When I emerged wide eyed and eager, fresh from my masters I thought, find a graduate marketing job, but should for any reason that prove too difficult, find agency work to get some of that much needed experience.

You can chronicle my back up plan to that, and then the next. The question I am asking today is just how many back up plans are needed?

After a plethora of options were exhausted I came to volunteering. Far from ideal but would provide me with that much coveted, impossible to achieve, experience. I contacted the volunteering website and was provided with the opportunity to meet with a charity with regards to aiding them with their marketing plan.

I mentioned last week that the meeting showed me how I lacked the practical in the marketing, but apparently it also highlighted to the charity how they didn't really know what they needed in way of a volunteer. Thus this morning I have received an email informing me they have decided to close the volunteering position until later in the year when they have laid the foundations of both the project and presumably therefore the role they wish the volunteer to carry out.

Square one

I could liken the hunt for jobs to snakes and ladders sometimes. (ignoring the fact that in snakes and ladders no snake actually goes back to square one) Firstly you roll the dice and advance tentatively along the board, there are different combinations you can roll to advance, each representing a different potential path. You may even get the chance at a second roll, avoiding the ladders unluckily of course. The fact is you always find the snake that returns to square one. If you could just get past the second row then even if you fall again the worst you can ever fall to is square 6, but as a graduate its square one, repeatedly and when on square one there is always that likelihood of finding that first looming snake with each roll of the dice.

I need to get past that snake. The easiest way is with ladders. One such ladder is contacts, and its possible that I may have just found one that will help me leave square one once and for bloody all. Until then I will just have to keep the rolling the dice and hope I find the right combination that gets me past the snakes and into the rows above.

Crossroads

2010-01-08T06:19:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was my meeting with the Wheatsheaf Charity with a view to me doing some volunteering for them primarily in the marketing area. It was a very relaxed laid back meeting but was a real eye opener.

The MSc I recently completed, although full of theory has not really prepared me to actually do marketing on a day to day basis. I dont even know entirely where to begin. We discussed a number of projects which they are working on and I was asked if I could design websites, promote young peoples ideas to people in power, help market an event and although I was able to give very basic ideas, giving a clear outline of what I would do if it was entirely my responsibility was impossible.

These past months I have been striving to find a marketing position but in reality having not experienced marketing on a day to day basis or any other business role for that issue I have no idea what I am doing or what I really want to do.

As I came back from the meeting I was called by ARM (Advanced Resource Managers) offering me the chance to attend an assessment centre for a trainee graduate position in their company. I didnt as such apply for the role and previously had not really considered recruitment as an area to get involved with. On the other hand it would train me from a grass roots level and just because I start in recruitment does not mean 2-4 years down the line I cannot change. The assessment centre is next Wednesday and I will attend.

The charity representatives said they would email me today about where I can start getting involved with their organisation, I have yet to recieve that email but fingers crossed it will arrive later and I wont have to chase them.

So it becomes a question, a choice. Recruitment job that pays vs Marketing job that doesnt. At the moment I am fortunate to be able to go after both

Increased efficiency or Unnecessary Bureaucracy

2010-01-06T02:52:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was another visit to the job centre. It has become routine now, walk through the door, hand your cellophane wrapped booklet to the man leading to the doors upstairs, go to the first floor, hand booklet to another man, go to zone C, wait for your name to be called.

Except not anymore. For reasons I can only assume have been shown to increase the efficiency of the practice/staff the job centre has made some minor changes to the process.

1. Instead of just going to the door and handing the booklet, you now have to queue at the front desk with anyone else with a general enquiry so you can be handed a small yellow card, which must be handed in to allow you access to upstairs.

2. Zones A-D are now Zones 1-4. Zones 3-4 have moved upstairs. This took me a while to figure out as I sat in my usual place since no-one had informed me. I waited 10 minutes for my appointment till someone called my name only to send me upstairs.

3. Zones 1-2 are for 25+, Zones 3-4 are for 16-24. This I suppose is to counter the growing number of unemployed young individuals. Ridiculously however people were clearly ending up in the wrong place. Despite the apparent obvious difference the people at the door were not informing them. This led me to be sitting upstairs across from a young guy with two children and a man with a long grey beard. Which one seems the odd one out? Surely the man at the door could have told him he was in the wrong place, thus saving him time. Instead it took until his name was called for him to be told he was on the wrong floor.

Overall the experience took 10 minutes longer than it used to. There is an oft used saying which might need to applied here: Don't fix it if it isn't broken!

Back to it

2010-01-04T02:26:00.000-08:00

It has always been difficult finding your rhythm after the Christmas Break. The world stops, opens some presents and eats some Turkey and then there is just under a week till they stay up late, drink champagne and see in the New Year. As a student I struggled to get any meaningful amount of work done over this period, as a job hunter I didnt stand a chance.

I looked anyway, but who would post a job the week after Christmas, the answer as expected was no-one.

So now it is the 4th, normal life resumes. People go back to work, students go back to University, Kids are back at school. Jobs still have not been posted yet, it is after all for most the first day back at work although I expect a trickle to follow later in the week.

Back to the job centre tomorrow to explain why I have not applied to any jobs the last two weeks. Hopefully they will be understanding and not complain that my booklet information on the agreed applications.
Then on Thursday I have the meeting with the Wheatsheaf Trust, hopefully the turning point. For now though I do not see much I can do, and I was bought Assassins Creed 2 for Christmas!

Bepuzzlement 2

2009-12-15T05:49:00.001-08:00

Well am now meeting the woman from the charity on the 7th January. I thought it best to ask if there was anything she wished me to bring to the meeting at which point she emailed to ask me to bring my digital rendered images.

My digital rendered images are landscapes. I am very proud of them, in fact should you wish to have a look they can be found here: www.cariassus.deviantart.com. I cannot immediately see their significance to marketing/charities in general however. I guess it shows that I am creative and the evidence to support that. I realise it has been a while since I last "created" something. Perhaps I should seek to add to my gallery in the next month so that not everything there is over a year old.

Also got the strangest job info yet today sent to me through "letter". A fuel liason officer in afghanistan.

Yeah..I am not kidding. I cant think of a many less appealing jobs and to top if off I was not qualified anyway!

With regards to Bepuzzlement 1, never did here from the chambers again despite the surprising phone call. Very odd.

Something Positive

2009-12-14T08:38:00.000-08:00

Its funny, looking back. I was never really a positive person. My reason behind always wanting a back up was the pessimism that something always goes wrong, Sods Law seemed to know me better than most and school gave me a feeling of hopelessness day after day without fail.

Amazing really I have emerged as an optimist, telling others they need to look on the bright side. Last weeks blow was hard to take. It was not unexpected, it was not out of the ordinary, it was simply confirmation of what I already believed.

I dearly hoped to be proved wrong.

I consider it a turning point, even if it was entirely unremarkable. It showed me that I had to get experience somehow, that continuing to apply for jobs without it would be as productive as banging my head against the wall. So I chased the volunteering people. I exchanged emails with a woman named Joanna and seemed set to volunteer in an office for the Juvenile Diabetic Association..and then that fell through. Joanna was very apologetic and said she would look for something else for me, mentioning an admin position in her very office.

What I got was an email late last week mentioning a charity was looking for a marketing volunteer. Not just admin but marketing, the thing I had searched and searched for. After exchanging emails with the charity I was informed they are working with a marketing consultant from london, working on a mission statement, strategy and branding. Buzz words. Words that jumped from the screen and reignited the hope.

I am meeting the charity on the 11th January where I will hopefully arrange to volunteer and begin to implement and work on the marketing plan put forward by the professional from London. Working in marketing. The only downside is not getting paid, but its a small one. Finally it seems I am getting somewhere and if all goes well then I will get the marketing experience I have so craved.

In the meantime I will continue to search for full time jobs. It may not come to anything, but its possible I might just find a weak spot in the wall and break through to the other side

Time to think

2009-12-09T04:24:00.000-08:00

Today is not a good day to blog and I think I need to take a step back and reassess pretty much everything. Got the expected rejection from JPA, again stating a candidate had significantly more experience and that had I had similar experience it may have been a different story.

I feel like I am stuck in a rut and that finding a way out, something I expected to be difficult is proving nigh impossible.

I will post a more significant, longer entry when I have thought over what I am going to do, but for the moment I need to reflect and figure that out.
Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this blog and those who read it. I hope I have been helpful and interesting and I will be back soon.

Experience is the key

2009-12-08T03:47:00.000-08:00

I have given this a lot of thought and this has led to me to pursue my latest possible opportunity. This entry is in part in response to a comment made by Jacky and part by own musings on the subject.

As I have hazarded before, experience is everything particularly in a recession. Everyone is in the business of playing it safe whether it be in business ventures, employees or finances. They are likely to ignore the diamond in the rough, the promising candidate, the risky but brilliant individual in favour of someone who will do the job adequently and who has shown they can do it in the past. Dont get me wrong I am not suggesting I am any of the above, but I do consider myself an unsafe choice for an organisation. Young, unemployed and with no experience. Okay I have shown some application by getting a degree and a diploma but otherwise I am a blank canvas. Organisations it would seem would sooner take the painting over the canvas even if the canvas could become potentially a masterpiece the fact it could also prove a disaster means its not worth the risk.

This is best seen in agencies and their change of policy to only be interested in people with experience, in a way defeating the point of themselves.

A few weeks back someone suggested I look into volunteering, I have followed this up and now see it as my best chance of gaining that all important experience. I have been in correspondence with someone at the local volunteering agency and they are looking to place me somewhere in the New Year. Although I would (for obvious reasons) prefer a paying job, the idea of being able to gain experience whilst making a difference in the community is one that really appeals to me. I firmly believe that it was experience holding me back from getting a job, a view only vilified by the feedback from my latest interview.

Hi Anthony

Thank you for getting back in touch.

With reference as to why the other candidate got the position – it basically came down to the fact that they had previous administrative experience in an office environment.
Regards
Rachal

Now this is not to say other things do not matter but experience is the big differentiator so far, its the thing that has come up time and time again and without it I am not sure it mattters if I am the most enthusiastic, hard working, creative candidate who wants the job more than anyone else, I am the candidate with the least experience and that tells.

Another Rejection

2009-12-07T03:36:00.000-08:00

Maybe I should have chosen bullshit...

Recieved an email this morning from the Admin job informing me my application has been unsuccessful. Wrote back requesting feedback as I tend to do but am not sure whether I will recieve it or whether it will be any good.
Job hunting can be intensely frustrating and sometimes you really can despair. This is one such case, the position as I read it could have been done by more or less anyone and I cannot even get that.
Its important at times like this to avoid self pity, loathing and general depression. They after all do not get you anywhere but this latest rejection has led me to really ask what I am doing wrong. What, if anything will help me break into the job market and start a career.
I also get my results this week. The strange thing is although I am looking forward to them and would really like a distinction for the hard work I put in last year I dont believe it will actually make a difference to my job hunt.
Once again I have to get myself up and focus on the next opportunity, still have not heard from JPA, and the potential of a volunteering opportunity still exists.
On the whole though I am looking forward to the Christmas holidays, a change of pace and a rest from doing nothing

Honesty or Bullshit?

2009-12-04T08:31:00.000-08:00

Today I had an interview for an administration post.
I woke up feeling rotten, stuffed up, coughing and slightly nauseous so decided to ring the company to ask if they would rather reschedule it. They said they would risk my illness and thus I set off. Journey was easiest for a while, everything went like clockwork and then I arrived.
The post is covering for a girl not much older than me who is going on maternity leave for a year. It involves many menial, boring duties and long hours. This led unsurprisingly to my interviewer asking why someone with a degree and a diploma would want the position. I had two choices, honesty or bullshit. I could tell her I have always had a soft spot for filing, I enjoy working all day on computers, manning phones or I could tell her that I wanted the job because if offered experience and was only a year long, thus allowing me to pursue my chosen career once it finished.

I chose honesty.

I prefer to if I can. To me, trust and honesty are important in life and also in business. Sure some people can bullshit till there is no tomorrow, using half truths and outright lies to get a little further. But they will be found out for what they are usually, not to mention they will have little if any integrity.
In contrast honesty can be powerful. Yes it can make you out to be human and reveal something which on paper may harm your prospects but hopefully organisations appreciate it. In this case I was going for a job I would never have imagined going for, something which would usually be filled by a non graduate, but in doing so showed willing to do what it took to get somewhere. Something important in an menial admin job.
I will be honest, I would much prefer the JPA job mentioned earlier this week, but if necessary I will spend a year inputting data, filing and making tea. In my opinion it can only reflect well on me in the future.

Written Applications: A Rant

2009-12-03T05:12:00.000-08:00

Earlier this week I recieved a letter from a firm offering me an interview on Friday. Enclosed with the letter was an application form they desired me to fill out. An 8 page written application form

What is it with written application forms? Shouldn't they have been phased out in favour of technology? They are inferior in so many ways and in this case are being used to reiterrate information I have already given the firm, via technology. In case you are puzzled as to why I am quite so strongly opposed to them here are a few pointers.

1. They are time consuming - okay not a big issue for the firm here, but an irritation for the applicant. It takes so long to write everything out, which brings me neatly to point 2
2. You have to write EVERYTHING out - If you apply on a computer then a certain amount of copy and paste is likely. You will have you grades in your C.V and its a simple minute procedure to add them to the form. Similarly with work experience and personal information.
3. They have LITTLE boxes - What is it with firms who ask for information and they leave you a five centimetre box to write your answer in. Yes, you can always turn the page over and write on the other side, or write outside the box but this looks messy, instead you try to make handwriting as tiny as possible till its barely readable. Its entirely reasonable to limit the amount people can write but you can do that on a computer too!
4. Handwriting - Handwriting varies, some people have big loopy handwriting, some people have tiny crabbed handwriting. The one thing they have in common, typed script is easier to read.
5. Its on paper - So the firm gets the application. You cant database paper applications, well you can but its wastefully inefficient. Instead you may as well type it up.. and look your having to type up something that could have just been given to you anyway in that format!
6. What a waste of paper - Most applications are x pages long. The longest I have completed was 14 sheets. If every interested candidate has to fill that out the amount of paper wastage is impressive. On that note some pages are pointless to some candidates, I have had no previous employment thus left the page entirely blank. This the alternative of pressing "next" just with extra wastage. Why not put it on a computer, thus saving the environment and the world in the process. Its that easy!

7. A counter argument - Some people may suggest that technology scared people feel safer with paper. A fair point you might say. If the job did not largely involve sitting on a computer all day! Not to mention there really are no place for the kind of person who views a computer as a suspicious object best left well alone in any modern office!

Ultimately there are technologies and developments that make others obsolete. DVDs replaced Videos, CDS replaced Cassettes because they were better then their predecessor. Why then do we still have to put up with old fashioned, inferior paper applications? I am at a loss to see why paper applications are still used.

Answers to me on a stamp addressed envelope at...

Opening the sales door (And then shutting it again)

2009-12-02T03:23:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I went for a job that included the word sales in the title. This in itself did not seem remarkable.

On the very same day in the evening I was added by someone new on linkedin mentioning they may have an opportunity for me. Skeptical as always I preceeded to examine the links from her page finding a costume rental firm, a school and xango - a miracle drink made from mangosteens.

Xango is a MLM (multi levelled marketing) company. This means effectively they provide the product to individual distributors who then either distribute it on to other distributors or sell it directly. Distributors get to buy xango at wholesale prices and get to keep 50% off the profit.

Now I am not a scientist, nor am I going to claim to have an authority here but there is something I strongly dislike about this. I am not suggesting Xango is a scam (there are enough sites doing that) nor am I suggesting it works. (plenty of sites saying that too - from curing arthritis, asthma and even aiding cancer) I do however have an issue and always have had an issue with MLM and its concept. I dislike the idea of people selling to people they know, pressuarising them to buy a product they have been brainwashed to believe is a miracle cure for everything in existance. Even it is, they can simply tell people about it, the power of WOM. The fact they benefit by selling it at such high prices ($35 for 750ml) just makes it all a little less believable.

The joys of such schemes, so it is said, is that anyone, housewife, tinker, tailor, soldier...anyone can sell and make money from the product. The fact is however none of them can claim to be objective. The power of WOM in my opinion is objectivity. If a post a review of a product I own for others to see it is for objective reasons. I am not going to gain anything from posting the review, the company will not pay me for saying what a wonderful product they have and I am not going to then sell the product on. The moment that objectivity is lost then so is the value of those producing the review. It does not matter if your trying to be objective, you simply can't be, bias will creep in because you have something to gain and it is human nature to do so.

This is in essence my problem with sales(particularly hard sales) and why I have avoided seeking any sales based roles. The job at JPA was different, they really are offering services which are making a difference to older people with dementia, its black and white unlike the murky gray of products such as Xango

And thus the sales door shuts.

Another week, another interview.

2009-12-01T08:47:00.000-08:00

Today I had an interview with JPA in Bishops Waltham for a sales and marketing executive position. Before I give any details of the interview itself I will explain a new problem to add to the list.

Finding the Company!

Now in a lot of cases, if you are a graduate seeking a job you will be interviewing with small firms. They may be based in remote areas, in office complexes. They may not be well sign posted. Now if like me you have not got a car or do not know how to drive you will have to rely on public transport.
Finding the bus stop in town proved easy, an old woman there struck up conversation with me, she didnt know where Victoria Road was but stated that anyone in bishops waltham would help me. After a rickety ride of 40 minutes she turned to me and asked if it was near any landmarks. I mentioned the priory inn, which it turns out is on the corner of Victoria road. After thanking the old woman and bidding her farewell I looked at my phone. 1pm, 30 minutes early! First objective, find the actual building where the company is based.
This is at times a difficult problem to overcome, you can use the map provided, or something such as google maps to help you locate the building. Asking around does not hurt either
Except today none of that seemed to work. JPA is based on Victoria Road in Bishops Waltham, a street which takes around 5 minutes to walk from one end to other.
Google maps told me the wrong building so I ended up walking into private housing to consult with a couple of guys hoisting a wardrobe up some stairs.
Nobody seemed to know where it was.
Eventually after many minutes of searching and several spans of the road I rang the company and asked them and soon figured out where they were. There was nothing I had noticed anywhere to tell me it was the right place. In fact if I had not been directed there I would never have found it.
This can be a little demoralising just before an interview but for me it meant my focus had gone away from nerves. It was not a case of panicking as I could not find it, but more utter confusion as to why I couldnt. Incidently my time arriving was 1:26, 26 minutes after stepping of the bus. This served me well as I went into the interview relatively relaxed. After all the surprisingly hard part was out the way.

The interview

I was a little surprised to see the M.D of the organisation sitting in on the interview as the email about it had stated it would be someone else. I was asked a series of pre prepared questions after a brief explanation of what the company did.

I think I fielded them relatively well. A number asked about previous experience or understanding of sales terms and I think I took the right approach in being honest. Amusingly amongst my answers I made several references to gamesoc and in particular "selling" the society at the bunfight.

If you read my last post you will know that the interview for the last job I applied for put me off the position. This one had the opposite effect. I was very impressed with JPA and what they are doing and also what their plans are for the position. I left feeling satisfied with my performance and hopeful that they will be the ones to give me a chance to begin my career in business.

Compromise

2009-11-30T04:03:00.000-08:00

Part of job hunting is compromise. When you first set out to find a job, unless you are especially flexible you set a number of criteria which any potential job has to fill. These may be location based, occupation based, money based or based on an entirely different premise altogether. When I first set out to find a job I wanted a marketing exec position in the south that paid over 15,000.

The money was the first thing to go. After all its less important really. For many Graduates, a salary at all is just numbers and I picked 15,000 as a limit as I thought that was reasonable. Of course clever firms are cutting costs by offering significantly lower salaries because they know how tight the job market is.

Next I cut down to look for any marketing position and soon got a few interviews for marketing research positions. This is turn became any business based position which involved marketing which has led me to apply to some rather odd job titles.

Location cannot be changed. I am tied to a contract in Southampton and dont want to leave what I have here and in a way it limits me as much if not more than the others.

I am fortunate in that I have some savings and therefore do not have to literally take anything. The question is though how far do we have to compromise?

Last week I applied for a purely Admin position, a job description which could be filled my a school leaver and which duties include filing and making tea. I justified applying because it was a year contract and would give me office exeperience.

I think this is where I have chosen to draw the line. I don't see any light at the end of the tunnel with regards to the economic situation and I don't expect the job market to simply pick up. I have therefore ruled out jobs which have absolutely no application to my chosen career in business. I could go and work in a shop but then I am effectively just wasting time. Time which for the moment I can use to hopefully find one break. I am not naive to think that with that first job everything will be exceptionally easy, I do think I will be considered for more positions, and at least the excuse "you have no experience" will not be flung at me.

Incidentally I have an interview for a sales and marketing position with JPA tomorrow. When I originally applied the position was a marketing one, the sales was tagged on later. However I was impressed with the company and the position has marketing in the title. It is after all, all about compromise.

Wasting your life?

2009-11-27T03:34:00.000-08:00

Despite what many people may think, being unemployed simply is not fun. If you have gone through what is effectively 17 years of education without so much as a breather you really want to be able to go out and start earning money, having a life and leaving exams, essays and procrastination far behind you in the dust.

Unemployment would be more fun if there were actually any goals you could have other than get a job. Goals that help you fulfil your potential and ultimately satisfy you.

The thing I think that a lot of people seem to miss is that job hunting may be a continuous process, but it doesnt take up a whole day. Far from it in fact. I have a catalogue of sites I check regularly for updates, but that only takes half an hour, and maybe another half hour on top of that if I need to apply somewhere. Ultimately its not worth a spending a whole day job hunting, even if a job is posted when you refresh the page for the ninth time it will still be there tomorrow and you could have discovered it then.

The point is unemployment leaves you with a lot of time sitting around on your own doing very little. This is where the depression side of being unemployed can really hone in and do its damage.

I for instance have spent a lot of this week playing Fifa 2010. Many hours in fact, day hours whilst other people are out earning a living. Occasionally (jokes about football games aside) you sit back and think am I wasting my life? When I went to university and got a degree and a masters was it so I could sit and play Fifa all day a year later?

The answer clearly is no. But its really difficult to motivate yourself to do other things, I love to read for instance, but I struggle to spend most of a day reading unless I really engage with a book. Games are escapist in nature, and hours pass easily and ultimately thats what I spend most of my time doing, passing hours, days, weeks until the next job based opportunity.

It can be depressing if you dwell on it too much, but if you try to accept the circumstances and look forward and on to the next chance its bearable. After all if all goes well once youve got a job, you will look back on those many free hours with longing because ultimately you have to persevere. There is no other option.

Bepuzzlement

2009-11-26T05:23:00.000-08:00

As my main post today was about a general thing this is a shorter job related post.
Still waiting to hear from Amicus ITS a month on. Applied for a general admin job which is on a year contract.

Heard from College Chambers. Sounded like the standard conversation. It was a very tough decision, lots of good candidates...(yeah yeah get on with it)..so we are inviting everyone back for a second interview...

You will hear from us next week..

What?! I made a total hash of the interview. I looked nervous, clueless and totally unsuitable. Even if your giving everyone a second interview you may as well rule out some people, surely. Mystifying. I shall obviously wait to hear from them next week but it has left me a little bit of a predicament. From reading the earlier post you will know my thoughts on the job.

But its a job, which pays money and gives experience.
Its a difficult one.

Customer Service vs Business Service

2009-11-26T03:07:00.001-08:00

You may or may not have noticed a two day absence of blog posts. This was because of an issue with my laptop which meant I needed to get it fixed. This post is more of a general post, rather than related to jobs, its more just about marketing. Enjoy!

Because of the nature of the deal made when buying my laptop I am effectively covered by a business warranty for 3 years. Earlier this year when my power cable died I got a new one sent the very next day. This time I not only got a new power cable I got the entire bottom of the laptop replaced 2 days after I reported the issue (And this was only because the guy bought the wrong part the day before)

Compare this to the tales I have heard of customer warranties and you hear a very different story. It is closer to your standard it will take 2-3 weeks to arrive, parts missing and some things simply not being the companies responsibility. These warranties generally arent cheap either and offer very little.

Now its understandable why a business can get such an exemplary server. Businesses are usually worth big money. In this case my name is tied to a corporate so its unsurpising they want offer a fast efficient service. Often however, particularly in the current economic climate, the choice of the business to go with a company will come down to who offers the best deal, and that usually comes down to money.

In contrast your average home customer will buy for other reasons, efficiency, WOM, belief in the brand or simply previous experience. A home customer is likely to remember bad service and seek to avoid a company for the forseeable future. Admitedly their full lifetime purchases probably wont rival even a percent of a year business contract but if you add them and their street and then the town, region etc it soon becomes a lot higher. The fact is if you provide exemplerary service to a customer which goes beyond their expectation they will remember, they will tell their friends, they may even blog about it or share it on social networking sites. They are likely to purchase again, as well as drive the purchases of countless others. Now clearly in some businesses it may not prove economical to provide such a service to every single customer but it is something to be considered.

For one thing people may be willing to pay more for warranties if they actually believe in them and that may in turn fund the service. A loyal customer is a powerful asset and it does seem sometimes that big corporations who have multi million pound contracts with other corporates ignore this and thus fail to delight the grass roots consumer.

Always have a Plan B(F)

2009-11-23T05:21:00.000-08:00

I have always had the philosophy that it is worth having a back up plan. Things are sometimes subject to failure, they dont go the way you planned, something unexpected occurs, someone or something lets you down or you simply misjudge the situation.

For Job hunting my plan B was to seek out agency work, temporary office experience. As has been previously explained this failed as agencies are also now playing it safe and unwilling to hire someone who hasnt made tea or photocopied a sheet of paper in an office before, even if they have an excellent understanding of how to make a cup of tea and photocopy a sheet, in fact having done so before but just not in the hallowed office.

Okay maybe I overstretched that a little.

The point is having a back up, but sometimes you dont expect to need a back up to the back up to the point where you basically have back ups reoccuring.

Last week I requested suggestions and a friend suggested looking into volunteering in an office environment. Thus meaning I can say I have made the cup of tea and photocopied a sheet. Not to mention volunteering always looks good and perhaps, just perhaps I could make a difference. Another friend then provided me with links.

Today after a standard job search warranted not one opportunity I followed those links, signed up to one of the main sites and have now applied for two seperate volunteering opportunities.

Always have a plan B, but if that fails formulate a plan C and so on. There are after all 26 letters of the alphabet.

Blog Distributor comes acalling

2009-11-20T08:28:00.000-08:00

Its amusing, this blog, at its origin at least seems pretty dead. There is one comment on one post and that is all there is. Yet apparently I am now being offered cash to carry on writing the blog by blog distributor. The catch? - you post entries that are linked to sites.

Given the purpose of this blog is to discuss the issues facing unemployed graduates I cant see myself linking to websites other than to mention Id been offered a job by them. The email says the offer isnt made to everyone, a pretty standardised lie. But whether it is true or not I am not particularly interested. It does amuse me the way people outrightly lie and spotting the obvious ones is just now part of everyday life. You have just won, you could be lucky, you were selected, this is not spam..are now just everyday encounters on our travels around the web. Still its nothing new, such things used to come through the letter box.

I know from talking to people that people do read this blog, mostly through facebook still if anyone can link me to a traffic counter that works and is free Id be grateful, its nice to know who passes through the actual site and whether people are just lurking and not commenting. Id like to think I was being read by people I dont actually know occasionally as well!

In other news I have returned to my parents home this weekend so job searching takes something of a back seat. Also wont be posting anything till Monday. Nothing new in the job news arena. From yesterdays post I have decided to follow the advice of two of my friends and look to volunteer in a charity office. My next avenue of exploration.

The Big "C" Approaches.

2009-11-19T02:46:00.000-08:00

Those of you who have been reading this blog since the beginning will know that Thursday is effectively Job Search day. Where I check all the sites for relevant positions I can apply for.
Today I find 0 suitable positions, not one single job which I was a candidate for. I put this down to the approaching of Christmas, which although still a month away begins to steal peoples consciousness about now, not helped of course by the media and the retail industry. It is a common joke that the appearance of Christmas stuff gets earlier each year. Soon we will be able to purchase over priced chocolates, novelty fish and decorations in August.

With the looming vastness of Christmas I think many firms are not looking for change. Its not a good time to break some one into the company only to have them disappear for a week or more over the Christmas holidays. This is especially true of Graduates who at times require hand holding and training.

I am left with a choice then really, a question that has been haunting me and I imagine other graduates since their unemployment:

Do I look for a part time job or do I spend the time spamming organisations with speculative applications when no other jobs present themselves or seem likely to in the foreseeable future.

Part time job

Pros: Money- obviously the biggest pro as a little extra cash around the holiday period is always welcome
Experience - Unless you get it in a relevant discipline then this is pretty minor
Something to do - Sitting around on your arse most days isnt fun, at least a part time job will give you tasks and allow you to meet people
Reference- That all important employer reference, gives you some variety on your C.V at least.
Cons: Money- Working more than 19 hours a week will mean you are unable to claim JSA and subsequently housing benefits. This may mean you earn less then youd get from the government, which seems counter productive if your not getting anything that makes you more employable and could be using the time for better purposes
Time consuming- Part time jobs especially around Christmas can be very time consuming, you usually end up working in the retail sector and working several days a week.
Working until Xmas - Chances are, you work for a retail firm and they will want you until Xmas Eve. Travelling home then isnt going to be fun.

Speculative Applications

Pros: May get you a job - The whole part of a speculative application is to show an employer that you would be an asset to their company so that when a position opens up they think of you, that or if you really impress them they open a position just for you.
Contacts - Even if a person reading the application doesnt want to hire you they might write back and you may be able to contact them in the future
Cons: Wasting your time? - Last year when I was searching for a position I sent out a number of speculative applications. One responded. Just one of the eight I completed and that required significant chasing only to get an almost automated thanks but no thanks letter.
Christmas - Here it is again, are people really going to be interested in your application with the piles of work they have to complete before they can make merry with their family, probably not. I sent a spec application to Twinings last year and took nearly 2 months to deal with as it got lost over the Xmas period

So there we go, a difficult decision. There is always do nothing, or maybe something I have not thought of. Thoughts?

Dissecting the disaster / Sods Law

2009-11-18T02:49:00.001-08:00

This particular post will take a more personal standpoint as it essentially reviews my interview last night and what went wrong.

I arrived at College Chambers 10 minutes before my interview. I was directed to a small reception area outside a set of doors where I had to wait. The previous candidate was being interviewed, and the doors were far from sound proof. I have to say this was un-nerving whilst your waiting. The interviewers spoke quietly so I could not catch their comments but I could hear everything the guy said and the one thing that shone across was he knew his stuff.
I think should I find myself in that situation again I will find a reason not to stay directly outside the door. Some people believe you might pick up tips to better prepare you. For me it just made me feel generally and entirely bad.

When I was finally issued into the room it was several minutes past 5 and in fact the next candidate was sitting right outside able to listen to my entire interview.

The interviewers consisted of a panel, two barristers clerk and a barrister. They were across a wide table and there was no opportunity to initially shake hands.
The centre barrister clerk began by asking questions off a printed piece of paper. He did not have my C.V, covering letter he was just asking each candidate the same set of questions regardless. There was no attempt to put me at ease and he went straight in to the first inevitable question, "What do you understand by the role of Barristers Clerk?".
Typical the one time I dont basically memorise the job description is the one time it comes up. I had done some research but missed key points and it was downhill from there.
A later question asked what I knew of college chambers, as you may know from an earlier post this was very little due to their current lack of public promotion and the fact their website is under construction. I could therefore only use the information I gathered from other sources.
Also over the course of the interview it was revealed how the job was 90% barristers clerk and 10% marketing, a fact not clearly explained in the original advert. Marketing was effectively tiny small print to the size 50 "Barristers Clerk".

I think another issue was my understanding of the role, the term clerk, and the wages offered made it seem like a fairly minor thing, a junior role, necessary to the chambers but basically a role in which you were a dogsbody performing all the needed but unwanted duties of the barrister. Nothing had given me the impression it was a career in itself until I met the middle aged interviewer who had been a clerk his whole life. I dont entirely know why my mind could not properly comprehend this previously but it was another thing that made the interview that much harder.

I sweated my way through the other questions, even suffering a mind blank at the marketing one before the final question which asked where I saw myself in 3 years time at which I stuttered to a fairly generic answer.
As I left the room I made sure to shake one hand at least. The girl waiting gave me an apologetic smile, she had inadvertently witnessed the train wreck, whether it had helped or hindered her it is difficult to say.

I know I will not get the position. I am amazed I was even interviewed for it in the first place. After all my C.V and covering letter were marketing focused and put the barristers clerk bit almost as a footnote. A few extra duties that added to the actual job.

Next up in two weeks an interview for a sales and marketing position, where again the marketing seems to be a footnote. Im aware of it this time and each time I err in an interview simply makes one more mistake learned, to be avoided there after.

The day of an interview

2009-11-17T06:55:00.000-08:00

Everything has been leading up to this point, the day of the actual interview. Butterflies flutter around in your stomach. You go over planned questions and answers, thinking about worst case scenarios, best case scenarios. You question whether you are actually the right person for the position and why you applied for the job in the first place. You try to figure out what went wrong in the past. Plan the travel and timetable meticulously.

That is if you are anything like me.
Today is my second evening interview. I think I prefer when they are in the morning, less time to fret and worry. Similar to exams in many ways, you know there is prep you should be doing but you just dont know exactly what it is, sometimes its better to go in fresh, rather than with a jumble of thoughts cascading through your mind. I think at least evening is better than afternoon, this way you can give it very little thought in the morning and its only the afternoon for the fretting and prep.

I certainly have not got interview days down to a tee yet. If I can I like to research the position and the company (not always that useful-see earlier entry) but as far as actual questions go they have been so varied at the various interviews I dont really know where to begin.

I can advise on what I do do, however as I am still unemployed and thus unsuccessful in my previous interviews I understand if you take them with a pinch of salt. In no particular order.

1. Decide on a weakness which will not greatly inhibit your application and may also help it - The question on your greatest weakness doesnt always come up but if it does and you say something which makes you seem like a bad applicant its game over. I made this mistake once and never since.
2. See if there is any information on the person interviewing you - its good to put a name to a face, can help you feel more at ease.
3. Research company and position- already covered but one thing you can definately do is reread who they want. Think about how you fit that criteria.
4. Similarly to point 1 decide on a strength - sometimes interviewers phrase the question in such a way that you can reel off a whole string of positives, other times they want one.. so decide which of the many strengths you possess best fits the position.
5. Think about course experiences, what do you want to talk about and what might you find yourself talking about - If you have no experience, they are going to base everything off the academic, think about positive moments, or how to at least put a spin on the inevitable negative ones.

5 potentially useful points there, although as I said maybe I am doing it all wrong.

No job news, no new jobs

2009-11-16T06:56:00.000-08:00

A short entry today as it has been entirely uninspiring. Sometimes you get a day where nothing new appears, you dont hear from any individuals or companies and those days can always be pretty hard.
Fortunately I have an interview to prepare for tomorrow. Time to do some reading on law.

Preperation

2009-11-14T05:00:00.000-08:00

Its a well known fact that you are meant to prepare for interviews. Consider which questions are going to be asked, have a couple of well thought out questions you can ask the company, make sure you know lots about the company and the job. That last one at least has never served me well, I have researched the company when possible using their public outputs such as PR and website as extensively as I could. Yet most interviewers seem to spend the first 10 minutes telling you about the company, wasting all the time you spent information gathering.
Only in 1 interview so far was I asked about the company, only to be interrupted and to have the guy go on himself. Maybe its something to do with marketing jobs, who knows?

My next interview is with a law firm, College Chambers. Its for a position with an unusual job description, one I have subsequently lost. To make matters a little worse, on visiting their website I find that it is now under construction, thereby meaning I cannot gather more information on the firm.

How likely is it now the first question in the interview is "What do you know about College Chambers?"

If there is one thing I have learned from this particular job application it is to always copy and paste job descriptions, the information you are given when you originally apply. After all if you are applying to maybe 3-5 jobs a week you dont always remember the specifics of each one.

A lesson for the future, as for the coming week I just have to cross my fingers.

Preying on the Needy.

2009-11-13T03:01:00.000-08:00

In the world we live in there will always be disreputable people willing to make a quick buck or to con people for their own personal gain. We have all seen the emails puporting to be from Nigerian Princesses or wealthy single old ladies attempting to make us reveal bank details or to even give money. They are part and parcel of using the internet.

Recently the level of scams has began to evolve with the targets becoming more wide ranging.
Yesterday I recieved a job offer from a company in America offering me the position of Financial Representative. I was initially suspicious but read the email anyway, after all an unemployed graduate cannot just ignore a job offer completely, that and the email suggested it was from reed.co.uk, a site I was signed up with. On opening the job specification it was several pages long and quite authenticaly produced. I followed the link to the website of a venture capitalist firm in the U.S.A. Thinking it would be mad just to ignore it I forwarded it to my Dad who confirmed it was a scam. On further examination I found a site that showed it was one that had previously been operating in a number of different countries incl. South Africa, Australia and Thailand.

Now I am naturally suspicious but if someone desperate for a job recieved that they may just give the "employer" everything they want. The fact the bogus company are using reed as well just adds to the illusion of believability.

For anyone who is interested/who recieves the email. It looks a little something like this

> Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:21:47 +0300
> Subject: [Reed.co.uk] Anthony March, we have a great job offer for you!
> From: careersuk@assetmanwork.com
> To: cariassus@hotmail.com
>
> Dear Anthony March,
>
> This is David Hanson from Asset Management Company. I was assigned your
> Regional Instructor and from now on you'll be working under my
> supervision. I'll be providing you with all necessary information and
> submitting tasks to complete. I do hope we'll enjoy working together.
>
> We have received your resume. We are happy to say to you that you are
> qualified for the position of Financial Representative. This position is
> limited. You may find more about salary, hours and duties at job
> description.doc
>
> Application process:
> 1.Read job description document and respond me back with your agree word.
> 2.I will send you employment agreement and application form, you need to
> fill it out and send back signed
> 3.I will forward your application documents to our HR dept
> 4.You will be noticed about acceptance by e-mail
>
> Note:
> You may find more information at our web-site or feel free to ask any
> questions about your job duties and salary.
>
> My job is to assist you in managing payments and I'll be happy to do the
> utmost to help you whenever possible.
>
> My e-mail is: david@assetmancompany.com
> Please don’t use e-mail careersuk@assetmanwork.com for asking questions.
>
> I will serve as your account manager. Feel free to contact me regarding
> any issue.
> I will co-ordinate your work; therefore you can contact me anytime via
> e-mail and get an answer to any question of yours within 12 hours.
> Besides you can leave me a message on my answering machine anytime.
> Feel free to contact me anytime. My contact information is given below.
>
> This is not a spam! If you don't wish to apply - just notify me.
>
>
>
> --
> Best regards,
>
> David Hanson
> Employment Manager
> E-Mail: david@assetmancompany.com
> Phone: +1 646 462 4591
> Fax: +1 646 619 4183
> Address: Asset Management Company
> 2100 Geng Road, Suite 200
> Palo Alto, California 94303, US

I emailed Reed to warn them but I am not sure really what they can do. There really needs to be more stringent laws to catch this internet scammers. Another common one is to suggest there has been an issue with your bank account, with emails seemingly coming from banks such as HSBC, Lloyds and Natwest. It seems that the only defence the actual banks have against these is to state they would never send an email asking for such important details. Yet some people must be fooled

Later on in the same day I recieved another email. It thanked me for sending my C.V and then preceeded to ask for my Resume and details. It wasnt even signed by a company or individual.
Now I know I have sent a lot of C.V's to random places, but if in in the incrediably unlikely case it wasnt fake, if a company is quite so blaize about recruitment I am not sure I want to work for them anyway!

Thursdays

2009-11-12T04:58:00.000-08:00

Thursday, the day before the day that signals the end of the week. It sounds strange but on Thursday most people tend to be looking to the weekend whilst considering what they should have done in the week.

For me Thursday is one of the days I like to do a big job search. Dont get me wrong I job search every day in some places but its not worth doing an extensive job search everyday, you just get disappointed as nothing new gets posted. By Thursday however most new jobs in the week have appeared and you can be sure of something new to look at, as well as the old traditional time wasters. The Thursday job search has served me well in the past, I have found and applied for at least 1 job every Thursday for the past month. Today is no exception, a marketing assistant position in Winchester.

Nothing from Amicus who are apparently still conducting interviews a week after they were originally meant to be finished. I dont believe this bodes too well. If a company holds interviews after the original date they intended to this suggests to me that they have not been too impressed with the previously scheduled interviews. After all if you have 5 candidates suitable for the job, why spend more time looking for more?

Chasing Companies

2009-11-11T02:50:00.000-08:00

The day has finally arrived, you have sent out a plethora of applications and finally you got the call, the recognition you deserved offering you the chance to have an interview, to get that one step closer to finding a job. You wear your best suit, plan everything meticulously and make sure your prepared for anything the interviewer throws out you.
Leaving the offices you cannot help but smile, sure, there were a few curve ball questions but you handled them and hardly looked nervous at all. You bonded on a common interest and were able to talk at length about the company and what your role involved.

Now to play the waiting game. The interviewer said they would let you know in a week.
A week passes. Then comes the question, should I email them? Will it seem pressuarising or over eager, or seem you dont trust them. Better leave it a few days
Another half week passes. Time to Act. You send an email, careful with your wording so that it is an enquiry that will not cause offence, after all you dont want to suggest your future employer is incompotent.

Sound familiar?

In my experience so far not one company (all who have turned me down) have got back to me when they said they would. I have had to chase all but one, only to be told my application is unsuccessful. Now I understand that companies have limited time but to respond to the people who make interview from any SME cannot be that taxing.

The worst is asking for feedback. After all as a graduate you arent sure where you went wrong. You have not had the years of experience to know exactly how these things work.

Normally so far it has been just that. A lack of experience, most companies have been quick to stress that it is not a personal thing and that therefore they cant provide tips or pointers. One company laughably suggested my suit was too big and it made me look inexperienced. Unsurprisingly as an unemployed graduate I cant afford a tailored made sharp looking suit and besides if thats a reason for not employing someone you have to question the organisation.

Today, chased Amicus ITS, pretty sure I will be turned down but sometimes its nice just to get closure.

A Visit to the Job Centre

2009-11-10T08:18:00.001-08:00

Being the second Tuesday of the month, today heralded another scheduled visit to the Job Centre, a pre-requisite of recieving any JSA. For any unemployed graduate this is effectively extra financial aid you shouldnt do without and in the end its worth the time spent feeling out of place and the small cost of time and money to travel to it.

With in an increase in the number of unemployed continuing I imagine it gets busier every week but this week I had to wait half an hour for my appointment. Sitting on the laughably bright blue and red sofas scanning the faces you could tell no-one wanted to be there. Looking around you note the closed body language, heads down, arms crossed, silent, waiting for the moment each name is called so they can find freedom, minutes afterwards. Every stereotype you would expect there is represented and then a few people who clearly feel out place, myself included.

As part of the process you are asked to keep a record of everything you do to find a job, including job searches, applications, interviews etc. This is then checked every two weeks at the scheduled time, you sign to say you have been there and leave, guaranteeing yourself another two weeks worth of money. Watching those who came before these can last anything from 5-10 minutes as the adviser discusses what you have done and what else you could do.
Mine lasted a minute, quite literally. I was asked two questions, signed and left.

As simple as that. So if an graduates out there are not on JSA or loooking at the benefits open to them, you are just losing out.

No new job news today although will email a firm I was meant to hear from last week. I have to say I had expected some communication whether I got the job or not. There are some firms who you know will just not respond, but normally with smaller firms you expect to hear something if you get an interview.

Offer of an Interview

2009-11-09T12:29:00.000-08:00

Just got a phone call from a barristers firm I applied for nearly a month ago. The position is rather usually entitled barristers clerk and marketing assistant. I have an interview next Tuesday at 5pm. So hopefully this blog may be short lived.

Also got correspondence from JPA Dementia informing me the job I applied for entitled "Marketing Assistant" is actually mostly sales. However I am not ruling anything out and have basically informed that I will be short listed if I am interested.

Spent the afternoon trying to get the blog noticed by adding it to blog sites and trying to network with contacts.

First Day of a New Blog

2009-11-09T03:09:00.000-08:00

Well this is the beginning of my new blog, an idea that has been knocking around since I finished my Masters course at the end of September.

According to latest figures the number of unemployed young people is set to rise past 1 million, many of whom are graduates. That a lot of skilled, intelligent, young, moldable individuals out there. I am just 1 in hundreds of thousands and so far through my job search I have found little that allows them to connect.

To the many employers out there we are just nameless, faceless individuals who don't have the experience to join their companies. We are not just a statistic to be bandied about by government, we are people and we deserve better. After all, University is meant to enhance employment prospects, particularly if you achieve qualifications from red brick institutions or learn vocational skills. I have done both and it hasnt helped, not in the slightest.

So this blog will charter me, just one in the mass, and my attempts to join the gainfully employed. I will update what I have done each day, and the relative success or failures of my actions. I will also dicuss University, the general job environment, government "attempts" to address the issue and anything else related to jobs, graduates and business.

Its an unprecedented situation and certainly does raise interesting questions. The problem as I see it has of course been bought about the economic recession. The following points are the reasons I think it is so hard for graduates to gain employment in the current climate.

1. Unemployed or dissatisfied employees in other industries are going after Graduate jobs which offer salaries they would have previously scoffed at. This means that instead of being up against a biochemist from Leeds and a historian from Manchester for the position of Marketing Assistant, your now going up against a claims adjuster with 5 years of experience and a secretary with 3 years of experience.

2. When given the choice of a graduate leaking raw talent and someone who has experience in an office in the present climate most companies will take the experience. Its playing it safe and safe is a watchword of the recession.

3. Practical is everything in a recession. Knowing the theory and the practice is not good enough. If you have not applied it then it really does not count for much.

4. Companies can offer jobs with tiny tiny salaries and still be confident of filling them, there will be competition for every job and as point 1 states the extent of that competition has changed.

5. Perhaps the most controversial, Universities are no longer the elite, people can go to University so long as they just avoided failing their A Levels. The government wants more and more people to go to University, thus devaluating the whole process. This is just one other factor which makes experience more attractive and graduates less palatable.

6. One of the biggest employers are the graduate programs. But if your not interested or fail to get onto any. What then, companies just dont look to cater for graduates outside of carefully designed graduate programs.

7. Even Agencies wont take people with no experience. Yes apparently if you have never worked a photocopier before then you will struggle to do so in an office environment. This just leads to the vicious circle. No experience = no job, but if agencies wont even give you the experience then its impossible to get anywhere.

8. "Graduate" jobs are drying up. Retail companies are focused on Christmas and other companies arent generally looking to get new employees at the end of a year.

All in all its pretty grim out there. All I can do is cross my fingers, keep flinging out applications and hope that someone is willing to take a gamble on me. I'll be so grateful to them that I will go out of my way to make sure they arent mistaken.