I now have a job :D But the hunt was long 0_____0

Hey folks,

Yesterday I was speaking to Merlyn and he reminded me about a few important things. So I decided to act on his advice and write this blog. This blog focuses on the amount of jobs I applied for, I give a list of the sites that exist and then I quickly move onto what helped me stay focused whilst looking for work.

I applied for over 14 jobs during my first month back in the UK. Of which I received 1 interview but that was for a telephone debt collection company. The people were nice enough but the nature of their work is something I did not feel comfortable with. Obviously that discomfort would have come across during the interview because I am not a great actor.

I applied for 19 jobs via the DWP operated Universal Job Match site. This site is alright but the problem when applying for jobs on this site is that more and more jobs offers were being placed by agencies. Therefore you would be asking to write a covering letter for a company you do not even know the name of and ultimately you would no doubt fail to get an interview because; would you put forward a candidate that fails to know the name of your company?

I attended 3 graduate recruitment events, each one was pretty damn depressing as they were for telephone jobs.  (You do not need to be a graduate of any kind in order to sell things over the telephone. Do not let anyone convince you that you need a degree to do telemarketing) These events could be relatively long and each one involved men that wished they were Sir Alan Sugar but are not and so graduates find themselves in a cramped room with an obnoxious windbag that thinks he runs the only graduate recruitment program out there.

During my seven month long job hunt I literally lost count of the amount of applications I sent to employers via the numerous other sites that are run by other companies. You can effectively send out 20 applications a day/week if you can handle filling in the same tedious forms over and over again. A good tip my advisor gave me at the Job Centre was to create a document where you can just copy and paste the information such applications require. It was a useful tip as I could blowtorch my way through the job offer forms that you can find on the numerous websites that exist.

For example of how many there are here is a quick list of some of those sites:

www.careerplayer.com           www.insidecareers.co.uk        www.milkround.com   www.prospects.ac.uk www.targetjobs.co.ukwww.ratemyplacement.co.uk www.efinancialcareers.com    www.wikijob.co.uk      www.thestudentroom.co.uk   www.gradireland.com www.gumtree.com     www.graduate-jobs.com        www.econ-job.co.uk   www.ratemyplacement.co.uk www.E4S.co.uk (Employment4Students)        I have included this list as there are many more sites out there and therefore my own list could help others.
I could write about the psychological effects of job hunting and how much that took a toll on my mind but I will save that for another day.

The thing that kept me going and feeling happy was having a good friend across the road that is also hunting for a job. We would meet every day or every other day, drink coffee and hunt for jobs together via the internet/looking in Banbury/newspapers/talking to friends/calling up companies. Speaking regularly with other friends also helped but I did not go to great lengths to talk to people as I predominantly felt quite crappy during the hunt.

My family was incredibly understanding. My mum is aware of the amount of people currently looking for work. There was a new Morrisons store opening up somewhere and they received over 10,000 telephone applicants in under an hour. Their telephone room was only operated by two a mum did not charge me rent as I was trying to pay off my overdraft.  I am so happy as I can finally afford to buy things for the people I love and now I can finally help my family cover the costs of things like food/energy/bus passes for siblings.

1 MONTH IN EMPLOYMENT HAS ERADICATED THE DEBT THAT I OWED MY BANK!!! (I owed about a grand to the Bank…now I owe them nothing :D.)
ONE MONTH.

Also I feel remarkably better on the inside as I am doing a job that I enjoy and I also get paid for doing it. The JSA does not work like that...it was never designed to bring satisfaction to people but to enable them to survive whilst job hunting.

The JSA is not a free ride. It is an allowance.
It is known as “The Job Seeker’s Allowance”.

If anyone accuses you of being a scrounger whilst on the JSA invite them to trade places with you.

Cheers for reading,
Have a great week.
Michael.

p.s I copied this blog across from a word document and so I spent a while fixing the paragraphing. Let me know if this all looks like a damn mess by emailing the usual address.