Chapter 4: April. Second Impressions.

Hey folks,

This is the second blog about my interaction with the world of sales. The first one involved a recruitment agency that spoke out about I.T sales and then submerged it's candidates in the world of Red Letter Events. As if being an unemployed graduate wasn't a pain in the butt already without recruitment firms pulling stunts like that. Still one should never allow a single bad encounter as a means to judge an entire profession. Also I'll never name names while writing these. This blog focuses upon one of my trial days.

I was lucky to get an interview in February for a firm that do B2B sales. That means: Business to Business sales. Sounded better than cold calling and I would selling something...to a BUSINESS. I would be selling advertisement spaces to prospective clients on behalf of a newspaper. Sounds brilliant...sounded all official. I was on board for giving it a go. My trial day was in April and I went down...got quite lost in a town I've really been to but thankfully made it there. The staff were welcoming and helpful, they gave me some tips and I listened to them on the phone for a bit.

After a while the main man asked if we wanted some leads. The man got up, walked on over to a big pile of newspapers, he tore out the advertisements and instructed us to choose some numbers and just start calling. He said that it would be rare for us to make any sales. They did not expect that, they only wanted to hear how we sounded over the phone. I asked if anyone had made sales before, he said in another firm one new candidate did but you could tell they were a pro. I read through the paper looking at the advertisements. They all seemed to be small firms, probably ran from people's homes. A few places that I phoned confirmed this idea.  Naturally the responses I received was the sort you'd expect to be given when dialling a business line selling a product they've already bought and they're waiting for some actual income...not another sales person. Apparently the firm I was trialling for phone them every week. Poor sods, as if the economy wasn't putting enough strain on people . About an hour or so later the office manager came up and gave me a sheet of paper and some advice. It was mixture of useful and unhelpful tidbits.  What would have really helped are three key things:

1) Information about the newspaper I was working for.

They gave me nothing. I had the name but all in all I saw most of the other regional newspapers that day but not a single copy of the one they wanted me to sell. I felt like a prospector panning through a muddy river for a single nugget of gold.

One thing was all I needed and with that information I can believe in the product I am selling.
In sales belief is important (Or at least the projection of belief across the medium you're using to sell). When you believe in something you must then use that knowledge to convert your client. You must make them believe in your product too, they must see that you are selling a rainbow road. You must convince them that you're looking at the greatest opportunity known to man and you're offering them a way to get on board.

If you don't believe in what you're doing then you'll mutter "A job is a job is a job" which it is however I've seen folks in many different professions approaching their work half heartedly for they lost that faith in what they were doing.  If you've gone through the British education system then you've no doubt met a few teachers during a moment of no faith and those lessons. I say "moment" because let's not judge others who are doing a job, especially as I am discussing a sensitive matter and have experienced these moments myself.

The main point is some calls went rough when they really didn't need to on account of questions being asked that I didn't have the answers too. I looked on-line for this newspaper and the closest result I found was a newspaper that shut down a few decades ago. I stayed for the entirety of the trial day. Phoning up prospective clients from golden leads. Needless to say though I felt incredibly unclean for I felt like my leads were made from Pyrite.

We are a nation of service providers and sales people. I felt disturbed that a company gathers it's leads from the work of another sales person. I've been informed that this is common place and such information is nothing short of disheartening.

Still third time is the charm. This time I'll make sure to see the product I am selling before I pick up the phone...and pray that the leads come from sources that haven't been borrowed from source.

Overall I'm awaiting for another trial day. This blog won't be publicised across any social networks for reasons I feel are obvious without mentioning. (FEAR, TREMENDOUS AMOUNTS OF FEAR)

I'm looking forward for all trials and I do consider visiting this firm again as they were all really kind and welcoming. I occasionally felt like I was about to nail  a lead...and I came close but then handed the phone to manager as I didn't know the process of acquiring the details and he did. I probably won't go back though as I'm seeking other trials with firms I can acquire information on. As opposed to newspapers that don't seem to exist.

 Cheers for reading. The next blog will be up on the 6th May 2013. This gives me two weeks to get up to something and hopefully nail that something to the wall.

P.S MAJOR HIGHLIGHT:

The kettle broke. I asked a friend to pick one up. The kettle that Argos gave him and that he gave to me...contained no plug! I'm going to hand in a CV when I also hand over the kettle. I could totally work there, I've got like two eyes, 8 fingers and two thumbs! I could be a really amazing Quality Assurance person. No plug-less kettles on my watch.

Chapter 3: February. Sales person?

Hey folks,

I've explained why I returned to the U.K despite knowing that unemployment is more rampant here than sand in a sand storm. (Info here) The previous blog covered January and how to handle rejection. Before you get the wrong impression I'm going to preach a bit of Confucian philosophy.

There is a famous Chinese working in Beijing  called Yu Dan. She created the book "Confucius from the heart". It sold over 10 million copies and Yu Dan is famous in China for a series of lectures she gave on television about the subject. In her book she recalls the story "On Staying Behind" as told by an old writer & statesman Su Shi.  The main point of his story is that in order to overcome any bitterness or the tediousness that may occur every day, we must hold lofty or aspirational goals in our heart. If we have no greater ideals or values then we will get bogged down in the materialism (or lack thereof) that occur around us. The less we hold dear in our hearts, the more we frustrated we get with trivial trifles. The second idea is that every time we retell a story of great hardship we in turn get ourself stuck in our own trifle and open up old wounds.

The point of these blogs is not to burn myself a second time, nor it is to act like a victim for as my advisor said: "If it's unproductive, don't think about it".

Unproductive doesn't just mean: "Oh no...I didn't land a job." Unproductive means: Wallowing, ranting, creating lists of things to do but not carrying out with any of the things listed . I am retelling this story for the purpose of keeping a log, informing others what it is I am doing and also to provide an insight for those interested into what it is that job seekers do. As there are 2.56 million people that are currently unemployed I think that is important that we talk about what we are doing while the media puts forward the notion that we do nothing. There are a vast amount of vacancies out there...I have the phone number for the team that write the statistics so I will phone them later on and write a blog about that. Right now this blog is focused on what I did in February.

So what did I do in February?

1. Did the usual trawl through multiple job sites and applying for jobs online.
2. I attended a day run by a recruitment firm down south.

That day cost an entire week's worth of JSA.  As I have no desire to use these firms ever again I feel fine blogging about it as a way of giving insight for people considering this type of agency/middle-man. The firm in question I phoned myself seeking a few answers regarding the general queries we might have when seeing a graduate recruitment firm.

1) What do you do? 2) What can you do for me? 3) When/where do you do these things?

The man on the other end explained everything, he said they run a few tests and one of their regular hiring clients are there THIS Wednesday. I read through the documents emailed to me, it all sounded good. There would be an introduction sessions in which candidates introduce themselves, there would be some tests and then everyone would be divided into groups. We would do two group related activities, one set around numerical/verbal communication and another around selling. The name of their client also checked out and so I decided it was best to give it a go.

The main reason I went down was because the man on the phone said: If you don't get hired by this client, we can keep you on record for other opportunities. He also said that the field my degree itself wasn't crucial!   I went down because I didn't think it was a waste of time. First off the layout of the room was a damn travesty. The client in question was hidden around a corner and the room itself was set in such a way that the client could see only half of the candidates.

One of the activities was to sell a Red Letter Day event. You know that company?
The one that went under, was bought by two of  the Dragons while they were drunk?
That's it! That failed business venture set up to just flog roller coaster rides to people that have more important things to do. YES! That's the one.

I was there on a day relating to recruitment into sales for a computer firm. I was all ready with amazing facts regarding the greatest threats out there for those that use computers & the internet as a part of their business operation. Informations relating to how the U.S have tracked billions of dollars worth of intellectual property theft to a few locations in China and why security is more important than ever before.

As I left the revamped living room another candidate outside told me that the reason why they say your degree is not relevant is because the firm gets commission for every head in the room. A few candidates told me that they had been to many other days and also warned me that this day was better than others they had attended.

While I understand the importance of acting professional, we must also understand the importance of a safe working environment and not being scared into silence by the threat of being blacklisted. A smart man will pursue more than 1 career path and I am pursuing about three right now. I found the day incredibly enlightening in terms of how they expect a salesperson to act in a "blue chip" London based firm but what I saw made me realise that while our media calls out against acting like a bull in a China shop...it is that attitude still being sought after and I don't feel comfortable belittling my co-workers..colleagues...other human beings.

We must remember that while a job is a job is a job, no salary can truly cover a loss of integrity and no sales pitch can truly convince our conscience that a line of work we feel is not right for ourselves is something we should strive to get involved in. I learned that one line of work was not for me and so I decided to invest my time into looking into other career paths. That was what I have been doing in April and so that will be the topic of my next blog on the 22/04/2013.

Main message here:
Try something new and if you find out that it is not for you...you tried and can now look into other lines of work. There is never any harm in trying. There is always something new to learn. We can always build upon our past experiences thereby refining ourselves for future possibilities.

Cheers for reading,
Have a great week,
Feel free to share this or comment with suggestions.

P.S There is a book called "What Colour is Your Parachute". The author is Richard N. Bolles. He updates it every year and I'm only 20 pages in. He offers a really productive perspective on how to approach job hunting and he has a few figures to reinforce an optimistic outlook. A friend suggested it to me and now I'm reading it. It is a good read. 

Chapter 2: Dealing with Rejection. (January)

Update: The next blog will be released on Wednesday 17/4/2013. It'll be coming out later because I'm off to visit my girlfriend for a few days. Chapter Four will be coming out on the 22/4/2013. 

My first month back in England was odd.

I spent the time swamped by thoughts about what had just happened and trying create a new plan as I arrived nine months earlier than I initially planned. The Civil Service Fast Stream application for the Diplomatic Service doesn't open until September and so I had to look into some other alternatives.

I signed up to over a dozen job sites and graduate job sites. There will probably be even more sites cropping up when this year's graduates hit the road. When you start applying for jobs there are even more sites that appear before you. Those ones demand you sign up before you can even apply for the job you were looking at. It can get frustrating but thankfully Merlyn gave me an idea of just having a notepad file open where I can copy and paste the info these sites continually ask for. Saves on time lost by potential typo screw ups. *

My first month back was spent trawling for jobs via Graduate schemes & having phone interviews. So my time was spent recovering from the just the general hurt of a burned out dream (China) and finding myself in a country that I had no substantial desire to return to. (Apart from that most pressing desire we all experience when trying to escape from a psychopath.)

Considering that I had burned out the entirety of money surviving & escaping from China I also chose to seek out the JSA. Naturally prior to applying I was warned by friends and family that the people in the centre are battle-axes. That they care little for stories and even less for time wasters. I'm no battleaxe, I'm fond of stories but I hate having my time wasted. I told them a shorter and more succinct version of my first blog. They seemed impressed that Rachel and I had stuck it out for six months and the person told me to create an account on their website and to come back on a Wednesday for another appointment with my advisor. Also I was to receive a call regarding what I had done in China.

The next day I received a call, the person on the other end was succinct but not cold as I expected the great welfare battle-axes to be. During my first appointment I was told to record all my applications and general job hunting details down on their website or keep a log that I could bring. This information would be used to prove that I was keeping up my end of the agreement and I would receive payment. It took one full month to receive payment and during that time I was stuck in a tiny village sponging off of my family.

My first month and the encounters I had with the JSA staff during my appointments has given me the impression that as long as you're looking for work, as long as you can prove with some kind of documentation that you are applying for jobs...then they are ok and will sign the slip. If you haven't done that then they will tell you. I know this because other JSA applicants were often grilled in front of me. The excuses I heard at first seemed implausible but then you don't know how long they've been searching. I had already applied for a fair few jobs through a dozen websites and those leads were turning up with nothing.

I applied for work at Tesco. They phoned me and asked if I could get in for 6 am, I said on my form that I was reliant on public transport and lived in a village. Cycling from Sutton at 5 am or 4:30 is something I've never done. I have walked those roads enough times during broad daylight to know that there are plenty of blind corners and I wouldn't feel safe cycling around them near them. I also wouldn't feel safe cycling back at night because I remember spending most of my youth running from violent people that lived locally. Recently after taking my brother from A&E, a bunch of damn chavs drove by and blew a bloody air-horn at me. If I was cycling and that happened I'd damn well fallen into a ditch wearing a ruddy high-vis jacket while looking like some great big glittering drunk.  (The country side is just a load of windy roads, drinkers and ditches. During spring, you're not missing much here unless you like walking through muddy fields.)

I also failed to pass an on-line application to be a stockroom assistant, that was pretty gutting as I've put hundreds of things on coat hangers over the years so I thought I had a shoe in there. A lot of the on-line tests involved maths, reading and psychometric evaluations so it's hard to know where exactly you've gone wrong. Naturally I thought maybe my maths skills were lacking as Maths was never my strongest area at school. Without a clear indication though I just felt like I was fumbling in the dark after those tests.

If companies could give some insight then it would help the candidate with their own personal job hunt. By sending an apologetic email of rejection with a refusal to give any information why...the apology comes across as insincere. I wouldn't instantly reapply if I knew where I went wrong and these forms usually ask if you've applied before so I fail to see why they'd withhold the information. January involved a few rejections, a fair amount of silences and a few phone calls that were not too helpful.

I did visit an agency and a man in a suit was talking to someone about how their clients needs don't match their candidates skills. It sounded like there are a lot of jobs out there but our society pushed getting a degree more than it pushed getting specific degrees.

To develop this point I can simply give the example that degrees are marketed to children from a young age. We push our children to get the best grades, to get into the best schools, into the best universities and what degree someone chooses to study is often down to an individual's choice. I knew many students that chose their academic path because of they saw it as something they loved, whether or not it was the best economical choice is another matter entirely.  My current short term experience of unemployment does not make me regret my decision to study International Relations for I know that I can get a job and I did learn things that I wouldn't have learned on other degree schemes. It's a matter of persistence, resilience and keeping my mind active.

The short term rejections fall straight into the past and rejections from one line of work mean that my options are still open. I remember being told that each time you fail you increase your chances for success. While this is arguably a fallacy, hope is better than despair. Planning is better than sitting idle wallowing in self pity.

Hope and planning are the keys for making a better future.
Jobs don't fall from the sky but if we carefully tailor our CVs and fire them up...one might come falling down into our garden/inbox.

Next week I'll be discussing what I did in February  we're drawing closer to what I am doing now in regards to finding employment. These blogs will basically contain the genuinely negative experiences I've encountered and a conclusion as to why they've not got me down.

Here I recounted the emotional responses I had in regards to some rejections and no human being rejoices at rejection. By understanding how our life is not set in stone, that we do have a high level of control in regards to making decisions that could enhance our prospects exponentially, I hope to demonstrate that job hunting is only as crushing as we allow to be. We can choose what we do with ourselves.  Right now I'm choosing to look into something awesome but I need to wait for a few hours before I can make the phone call.

Cheers for reading,
Have a great week,

This was Diary of a Job Seeker.


P.S For those interested in the money: I didn't receive any money from the JSA until some time in February. I was able to live through whatever food my family had bought and the fact that my mother is kind enough to not charge rent as she knows the money given from the JSA is a pittance and she expects me to use it to keep myself presentable, get to interviews and land a damn fine job. ^__^

*Naturally I don't save my bank details into notepad files...or sensitive data. If there were any psychopaths out there I doubt they'd be targeting me in the first place. Unless they wanted my giant blue penguin 0___0

Chapter 1: The Uneven Path. (Origin Story)

Hey folks,

As I look for work and survive due to the JSA, I figured it would probably be grand to tell the world the life I currently live. In this blog I'll first explain how I ended up on the JSA as my story is not a common one. Most of my friends know about it but I doubt they understand nor know the terror we felt out there. I have made the spacing in this blog a bit bigger in between paragraphs for when I previewed it the whole "wall of text" just seemed a bit too much.
Anyway on with the story:

My girlfriend and I were working in China. Sadly we were not sent directly to a school as were the rest of the group members. Our employer held legal documents, was registered with the local bureaucrats as a school but for the last 3 years he had no students, staff or a fully functioning building that one would call a school. After being outsourced to six different schools spaced over a 30 mile area and teaching over 2000 students aged between 2 and 17 years old with only an hours notice that we would be teaching....Rachel and I endured six months of unending manipulation and misinformation.  

For the last six months we had held meetings with our boss in an attempt to re-negotiate the contract, we had met other employees that escaped his clutches and they filled our minds with horror stories. We witnessed these stories come true. 

We did have another job set up, we did have a placement in another province. Neither of us wanted to return to the U.K in a hurry because we know how bad things were here. We also wanted to have an ideal year together abroad...not a "placements from hell" year working for a psychopath. Unfortunately we were given no choice in the end. The boss sought to extort money from us upon our resignations. He requested a sum that was never mentioned in either contracts. The British Embassy is not allowed to enter disputes that relate to contracts. (This is mentioned on their website.) Our contacts in Beijing had proven to be useless too. We requested our mediator  to negotiate and persuade our boss to act in more professional manner. 

There were many evenings when we would be working on lesson plans for the school that the boss sent us to the most and then the phone would ring. It was the boss. He would tell us that tomorrow classes are cancelled and we are going to teach someone else. The lesson would be at 9am. The boss phoned us to tell us this at 9pm. The minute we argued about how unprofessional this was he would suddenly lose all English speaking abilities.

I struggled to get up most mornings because of this but Rachel has a "can do" approach which empowered at times to try my best as well. Whilst I would be stuck in a mental rut, Rachel sought to make the best of a bad situation. We both had a "dream" and hers was for a beautiful year abroad. We spent our time together visiting the local shopping malls, eating pumpkin soup and cuddling up watching Father Ted, Poirot and looking for solutions.  

We had a meeting where both parties agreed that more communication would be beneficial. The boss agreed to put the ages and location of our students on our time table. The next week the boss gave us no time table. Our time table was now delivered by text message. Our contacts in Beijing did not believe us, they assumed we were simply some middle class kids failing to understand some cultural differences: The school is registered with the local bureaucracy they would reply, the previous teacher did not complain. There was nothing we could do that would persuade them. Thankfully our contact in the U.K fought for us and he was a great pillar of support in what was truly a terrible time for the two of us.

There is nothing quite so terrifying than being over 5000 miles away from home working for a human being that humiliates you on a daily basis. He would suggest that we recruit students for his "school" from the ones he currently sent us to, his daughter suggested we teach lessons at McDonald's birthday parties and they wanted us to make videos to recruit more English-speakers their school! Apparently we would receive more money but how does one reconcile the thought that after receiving £50 another human being has been condemned to live in a flea infested apartment  working for a mad man that wants to hire them out as a McDonald's clown?

In our penultimate meeting in which he threatened us, his threats came with a lot of documentation that showed all of our communication with Beijing. He had this giant grin on his face,  our mediator had sent him everything. His intention was to make us feel powerless and his daughter ignored our demands, instead she spoke about the next week's lesson schedule. Rachel look into other stories and similar situations, unfortunately they ones closest to our own advised the people to get there a.s.a.p! The person we were working for was aware that my girlfriend was a trained singer and suddenly her lessons were to become singing lessons. 

In the final meeting we were calm, polite and I even acted upbeat (as Rachel persuaded me to control myself. I thought as we were hatching an escape plan that I should probably follow the lead actress on this one)

With heavy hearts we left China and returned to the relative safety of the U.K. Plane tickets cost a fortune and fortunes are something that graduates tend to lack. I was financially ruined from the venture and my girlfriend was pretty saddened by the entire ordeal as her dream year abroad was nothing but a nightmare. I ran back to home as I borrowed a lot of the banks money (overdraft) and she returned to her home with her family as we had divided our costs whilst working out there and so Rachel was in the same boat as I was. Ideally we would have spent more time together but I think we both felt quite shocked by our ordeal. We lacked the funds to go somewhere nice and our heads were rolling over everything we had just witnessed. I did not know what to say nor what to do, in retrospect there was little we could do except be thankful we made it back to the U.K. Broken both spiritually and financially it was a miracle that we made it back in one piece.

As I was severely out of pocket upon returning to Blighty I applied for the JSA. The first stage of the process was done online and the people in the Banbury branch were incredibly open minded as I doubt they receive many people who have fled from corrupt Chinese businessmen. My story shocked them and they were surprised we had even attempted to seek another employer while out there. Really the only thing I wanted to do was to see Rachel and hold her close as I needed someone to hold me close too and the last few years had been tough on her. Our stress in China helped neither of us and now we're back we're attempting to rebuild ourselves.

. For the first month I set up accounts, acquired a new phone/glasses thanks to Mum, received CV advice from one of my dearest friends (Merlyn) and tried to just come to terms with what had happened. My heart and mind feel fried from what's happened. Rachel and I speak quite often. She has plans for a masters :) Everyone talks to me and goes "China though, surely that was an experience". There were many good times but those happened outside a central nexus of terror, intimidation and manipulation that was run by our Mad Hatter employer.

If you experienced any notions of terror while reading this then I was successful in helping you understand why we had chosen to leave. I will probably try to re-learn Mandarin in the coming months as it is something I enjoy and learning such a language opens many doors. However we have reached the end of this blog as I have nothing else to write on this matter.

Except... that Rachel kept me sane whilst out there and I am glad that we made we back in one piece.

If it was not for Rachel I fear that I would still be out there. She is one of the toughest and most caring people I know.

Thank you for reading,

The next blog will be Chapter 2: My First Month.

It will be published on the 8/3/2013.