A short while ago I explained how the internet has revolutionised the way we search for jobs. The job I have recently taken would not exist without the internet so in more ways than one, I am exceedingly grateful to it as without I would still be bumming around in a way that only unemployed bums can.
In this post, however, I want to discuss a different phenomenon that concerns the internet. I touched on this in my other digitally-inspired ramble, but I'm going to stray away for employment for a few brief moments so that I can ponder the wider effects of the internet in our day-to-day life.
I'm a big fan of George Orwell - I think he's brilliant, a top bloke; apart from being incredibly insightful, he's also pretty funny - in fact if he were still alive and kicking, I'd consider marriage. You may have got this from my 1984-inspired post on Room 101, but I think there are a few more ways we can bring ol' George crashing into the 21st century.
I'm talking about Big Brother - are you sceptical?
So Facebook knows where you are because it’s linked to your SmartPhone; it knows who you’re friends with; it knows who you socialise with; it even knows how often you use certain words.Google knows what I search for on the internet; my sat nav knows where I drive – even my camera has GPS.
The grocery app on your phone knows what shopping you buy; the online book store knows what you like to read; the music player knows which song you’re obsessing over this week; you save your documents on the internet in big CIA-style online vaults.
So my life is a digital footprint ready to be sold to the highest bidder. There is no need for ‘Thought Police’ because we vomit our lives into the world’s largest database for anyone and everyone to peruse at their leisure. We give them the nails for our coffin lids.
Ouch.
Now I hate scaremongering and let's face it, the CIA aren't really going to be interested in me, but the point is that the information is there for the taking: you don't need an A-level in hacking to come by it and you can certainly make a tasty buck by selling it on.
But then again if we didn't like it then we could all drop our iPhones in the river and look things up in encyclopaedias and not on Google, and that's not a decision anyone I know is willing to make. That said, there are some people that have the peculiar idea that the general public cares about them a lot - I'm talking about people who vomit their lives onto social networking sites. Ok so I blog, but if you're here and you're reading this, I take it that's because you want to be; we're not friends on Facebook so you are not privy to my amusing anecdotes about the Canadian man trying to sell me car insurance and flirt at the same time.
Now this is an amusing story and one I thought my friends would appreciate. This turned out to be true. There are some people - you'll all know the type I'm talking about - that like to share with their hundreds of Facebook friends what they ate for dinner or how many words of their essay they have left. Let's be honest, this isn't interesting information in anyone's books and I have no idea why people have a compulsion to share it.
This brings me back to jobs (and about time too). We have become a nation, a world even, of downloaders. We receive information and then we download it so that we can dismiss it and move on. When I get to work in the morning I tweet about the nightmare journey in; when I have lunch I tweet about what I did that morning; when I'm on my nightmare journey home I tweet about what I did that afternoon; and when I get home I tell everyone about the man on the bus with BO and the roadworks on the ring-road (speaking purely hypothetically).
We use sites like Facebook and Twitter as our personal iClouds so that we don't have to think about anything other than what's happening right at that particular moment: I don't have to think anymore about my nightmare commute because I've shared it with the world and got it off my chest - it's like having a portable psychiatrist. In fact if you want sympathy, just tell people on Facebook that you're single...
Nowadays we're so used to sharing every aspect of our life with people (some of whom we barely know) and I have two problems with this: we're no longer deep thinkers - we can't process more than a few ideas at once before we have to find somewhere to put them; secondly we overshare.
Both of these elements make you a pretty undesirable candidate for a job. Any prospective boss would like you to be able to think about more than one thing at once, and if they add you on Facebook, they don't want to see you hatin' on them because they caught you tweeting during office hours.
There's also one other phenomenon that bugs me about sharing on social network sites: it's only Facebook, I can spell words however I want, and grammar is reserved only for academic essays so I'm not going to use it. I want to share an example with you, one of my 'friends' updated a status a while ago telling the world that 'cock-tales from tesco have no boose in them'.
I tell no lie.
So what lessons can we draw from all of this? The internet is a wonderful thing and has opened so many doors but we have to be responsible with it - if you're going to be transparent (and tell everyone absolutely everything about your life) then you have to make sure your boss is gonna like it, or they might not be your boss for much longer...
Thursday, 12 April 2012
Thursday, 5 April 2012
Sir Freelance Alot
So for those of you that don't know by now. I have a job. Woop woop! It may have been a long time in the making, but I have one and that's all that matters. Halleluljah!
If you read my joyous post about the great tidings of good news then you will also realise that I'm not going to go all flaky on you and stop blogging about being unemployed, even though I'm not unemployed. I will still blog about unemployment, but this time from the other side of the fence.
Now we've dealt with that, I'm going to hop back in time to when I was unemployed. If people asked, I hated admitting I was unemployed - there is such a stigma around unemployed bums that especially with new people I would say I freelanced.
Now freelancing is just like being a handy person - you may have read about my stint as Handy Hannah - you take all the jobs you can and don't earn enough money to even remotely bother the tax man. I've been a photographer's assistant, an Italian tutor, a babysitter, a copy writer, and a personal shopper, to name but several.
I think this is quite a heroic occupation - taking all the jobs that no-one else does, being thoroughly taken advantage of, getting paid next to nothing or just nothing. I genuinely felt like a medieval knight - I was Sir Freelance Alot.
But why did I do it? Why did I metaphorically go into battle and fight with nasty foes for little gain? Simply put, I did it because of what I could achieve at the end of it all. Employers don't like to see you sitting on your unemployed bum and not doing anything. If you can prove too that you've done the less desirable jobs then they know that you're not above doing menial work and you care about your career enough to make those sacrifices.
If you take the initiative and get out there and get freelancing you literally have no idea who you're going to bump into and where that might lead. Pull all the contacts you know - nepotism certainly isn't fair, but make it work for you.
Some people love freelancing - they do it all their lives. I'm not cut-out for temporary contracts and tricky tax returns - for me it was a means to an end. A lot of media employees end up freelancing for at least the early parts of their career - it's the way it goes: very rarely do you walk into a permenant job in TV on your first attempt.
Freelancing is about intiative - yep, just said that - but it's also about thinking outside the box. If I can't get a job as a runner in TV, I'll get a job as a runner in radio. If I can't do that, I'll call my friend and see if they can let me do a day of workshadowing. There are a plethora of opportunities on offer ready to be snapped up - the catch is having to work for nothing (or very little).
If you don't want to do that, that's ok. Get any job you can, but I can guarantee you, in ten years you won't be as near to your dream job as the people that sacrificed that easy money early on so they could get the experience that mattered...
If you read my joyous post about the great tidings of good news then you will also realise that I'm not going to go all flaky on you and stop blogging about being unemployed, even though I'm not unemployed. I will still blog about unemployment, but this time from the other side of the fence.
Now we've dealt with that, I'm going to hop back in time to when I was unemployed. If people asked, I hated admitting I was unemployed - there is such a stigma around unemployed bums that especially with new people I would say I freelanced.
Now freelancing is just like being a handy person - you may have read about my stint as Handy Hannah - you take all the jobs you can and don't earn enough money to even remotely bother the tax man. I've been a photographer's assistant, an Italian tutor, a babysitter, a copy writer, and a personal shopper, to name but several.
I think this is quite a heroic occupation - taking all the jobs that no-one else does, being thoroughly taken advantage of, getting paid next to nothing or just nothing. I genuinely felt like a medieval knight - I was Sir Freelance Alot.
But why did I do it? Why did I metaphorically go into battle and fight with nasty foes for little gain? Simply put, I did it because of what I could achieve at the end of it all. Employers don't like to see you sitting on your unemployed bum and not doing anything. If you can prove too that you've done the less desirable jobs then they know that you're not above doing menial work and you care about your career enough to make those sacrifices.
If you take the initiative and get out there and get freelancing you literally have no idea who you're going to bump into and where that might lead. Pull all the contacts you know - nepotism certainly isn't fair, but make it work for you.
Some people love freelancing - they do it all their lives. I'm not cut-out for temporary contracts and tricky tax returns - for me it was a means to an end. A lot of media employees end up freelancing for at least the early parts of their career - it's the way it goes: very rarely do you walk into a permenant job in TV on your first attempt.
Freelancing is about intiative - yep, just said that - but it's also about thinking outside the box. If I can't get a job as a runner in TV, I'll get a job as a runner in radio. If I can't do that, I'll call my friend and see if they can let me do a day of workshadowing. There are a plethora of opportunities on offer ready to be snapped up - the catch is having to work for nothing (or very little).
If you don't want to do that, that's ok. Get any job you can, but I can guarantee you, in ten years you won't be as near to your dream job as the people that sacrificed that easy money early on so they could get the experience that mattered...
Tuesday, 3 April 2012
The Trades Description Act
Readers I am in breach of the Trades Description Act. You may have read atop this blog that I claim to be 22 and unemployed. I am neither of those things anymore. I am 23 and I have a job.
Yes, that's right: I HAVE A JOB!
Boooooom.
You may remember that I spied a light at the end of the tunnel with the advent of Spring and an interview that I had hoped would bud and flower into a beautiful example of paid, permenant work. It did. It ACTUALLY did. I am now frantically researching flat shares, new cars, pension plans and a shopping binge. I have a whole pile of stuff to organise, but I can't wait - I'm loving every fraction of a second of it. For once I can get up off my unemployed bum and feel like I have a real purpose about me.
Boooooooooooooooooooom.
It's not been an easy ride. From my 'palpably downbeat mood' courtesy of the BBC, to endless waiting, days staring at my phone waiting for it to ring, hefty knockbacks, hauling myself back up, and just being plain sick and tired of everything. I've done it: 7 months of being an unemployed bum can end right here, right now.
I've already got my yoghurt ready for the communal fridge, and though they don't have a water cooler, we can all congregate round the Brita filter for our deep chats. I've folded my sweats and placed them at the back of my wardrobe only to surface if I get ill or get the urge to go to a Zumba class.
There are somethings I'm not going to give up though - this is one of them. I will continue to blog about the state of youth unemployment and how I dislike Tom Daley if only to encourage you to do the same. I was encouraged to write this blog - to pour out my heart and soul to the world wide interweb on just what it's like to be young and unemployed. I sent the link to this blog to my now current employer in my application on the off chance they would read it and have proof that I hadn't been bumming around, anything but.
They really liked it. If you have half an hour in an interview to convince someone you're the right person for the job and you'd fit into the office like the proverbial hand in glove then you're a better person than I, that or a Jedi Knight. If you give them a ready-made example of how you're a brilliant person and you can engage them from the beginning with tales of babysitting woes and getting played like a fiddle then suddenly they feel like they know you a whole lot better.
It's like I said in my last blog post: it's only by being proactive that you get the breaks you want/need. Only by making the effort did I have one of the best birthdays EVER in the history of mankind, and only by telling the world what I thought of Hazel Blears, the Robin Hood Tax, and the online revolution in job searching did I get to where I am today. Employed.
Yes, that's right: I HAVE A JOB!
Boooooom.
You may remember that I spied a light at the end of the tunnel with the advent of Spring and an interview that I had hoped would bud and flower into a beautiful example of paid, permenant work. It did. It ACTUALLY did. I am now frantically researching flat shares, new cars, pension plans and a shopping binge. I have a whole pile of stuff to organise, but I can't wait - I'm loving every fraction of a second of it. For once I can get up off my unemployed bum and feel like I have a real purpose about me.
Boooooooooooooooooooom.
It's not been an easy ride. From my 'palpably downbeat mood' courtesy of the BBC, to endless waiting, days staring at my phone waiting for it to ring, hefty knockbacks, hauling myself back up, and just being plain sick and tired of everything. I've done it: 7 months of being an unemployed bum can end right here, right now.
I've already got my yoghurt ready for the communal fridge, and though they don't have a water cooler, we can all congregate round the Brita filter for our deep chats. I've folded my sweats and placed them at the back of my wardrobe only to surface if I get ill or get the urge to go to a Zumba class.
There are somethings I'm not going to give up though - this is one of them. I will continue to blog about the state of youth unemployment and how I dislike Tom Daley if only to encourage you to do the same. I was encouraged to write this blog - to pour out my heart and soul to the world wide interweb on just what it's like to be young and unemployed. I sent the link to this blog to my now current employer in my application on the off chance they would read it and have proof that I hadn't been bumming around, anything but.
They really liked it. If you have half an hour in an interview to convince someone you're the right person for the job and you'd fit into the office like the proverbial hand in glove then you're a better person than I, that or a Jedi Knight. If you give them a ready-made example of how you're a brilliant person and you can engage them from the beginning with tales of babysitting woes and getting played like a fiddle then suddenly they feel like they know you a whole lot better.
It's like I said in my last blog post: it's only by being proactive that you get the breaks you want/need. Only by making the effort did I have one of the best birthdays EVER in the history of mankind, and only by telling the world what I thought of Hazel Blears, the Robin Hood Tax, and the online revolution in job searching did I get to where I am today. Employed.
Thursday, 29 March 2012
Age and Experience
A bad thing happened to me the other day. I was out and about with a friend - we wanted to find somewhere to have a drink - preferably somewhere with seats because we'd been on our feet for a wee while. Anyway the locality in which we found ourselves seemed to have only one drinking establishment and no seats.
Oh well. I'm still quite young, surely I can survive another few hours on my feet. It was a very good job I was wearing sensible shoes (even if they were bright red racing boots and didn't really go with what I was wearing): if I believed in it, I'd call it Karma, or something equally perplexing where stuff just happens.
When I arrived with this friend the music was fairly quiet - much like the place itself. This changed. A lot. When we hit 11.30pm a whole stream of students poured in and the music was cranked up a notch - in fact several. This made our conversation a little difficult, but we soldiered on.
By about 12.30 I had made a remarkable discovery. Apart from one exception, me and my friend were the oldest people there. Ouch. Big ouch. I felt all of my years in an instant. Bus pass anyone?
In fact all the people around my age were in pubs with seats, resting their potentially arthritic knees and not in a club full of students in fancy dress dancing to The Backstreet Boys and Rhianna.
You may remember I mentioned we were the oldest but for an exception. There was another group of, ahem, older people not too far from us and it wasn't long before we were looking for safety in wrinkly numbers just in case one of us got picked off (or even up) by some spotty adolescent by mistake.
This brings me, in a round-about way, to the concept of age and experience. In my head people always say age vs. experience, but surely they mean the same thing - if you're older you've had more experience (whether that be in work or just in life). Ok so there are some really irritating people that have bags and bags of experience and they're still only 18. We all hate those people, so let's not talk about them anymore.
In my opinion instead of age vs. experience, it should read age and experience vs. potential: that's really the only thing that you can compare - what a person has achieved vs. what a person might achieve. It boils down to the safe option vs. the risk.
That's all well and good, but at the beginning of this post I was feeling old - I was feeling all of my years and getting ready to cash in my pension plan. So I'm old but wait, I have no experience. At this point I want to say that I don't feel old and I haven't bought my first pot of anti-ageing cream yet, but I'm getting into my twenties and I still lack that elusive experience that is a) paid and b) permenant.
Bummer.
In the meantime, I'm going to stick to drinks at my local and places I can get to with my bus pass...
Oh well. I'm still quite young, surely I can survive another few hours on my feet. It was a very good job I was wearing sensible shoes (even if they were bright red racing boots and didn't really go with what I was wearing): if I believed in it, I'd call it Karma, or something equally perplexing where stuff just happens.
When I arrived with this friend the music was fairly quiet - much like the place itself. This changed. A lot. When we hit 11.30pm a whole stream of students poured in and the music was cranked up a notch - in fact several. This made our conversation a little difficult, but we soldiered on.
By about 12.30 I had made a remarkable discovery. Apart from one exception, me and my friend were the oldest people there. Ouch. Big ouch. I felt all of my years in an instant. Bus pass anyone?
In fact all the people around my age were in pubs with seats, resting their potentially arthritic knees and not in a club full of students in fancy dress dancing to The Backstreet Boys and Rhianna.
You may remember I mentioned we were the oldest but for an exception. There was another group of, ahem, older people not too far from us and it wasn't long before we were looking for safety in wrinkly numbers just in case one of us got picked off (or even up) by some spotty adolescent by mistake.
This brings me, in a round-about way, to the concept of age and experience. In my head people always say age vs. experience, but surely they mean the same thing - if you're older you've had more experience (whether that be in work or just in life). Ok so there are some really irritating people that have bags and bags of experience and they're still only 18. We all hate those people, so let's not talk about them anymore.
In my opinion instead of age vs. experience, it should read age and experience vs. potential: that's really the only thing that you can compare - what a person has achieved vs. what a person might achieve. It boils down to the safe option vs. the risk.
That's all well and good, but at the beginning of this post I was feeling old - I was feeling all of my years and getting ready to cash in my pension plan. So I'm old but wait, I have no experience. At this point I want to say that I don't feel old and I haven't bought my first pot of anti-ageing cream yet, but I'm getting into my twenties and I still lack that elusive experience that is a) paid and b) permenant.
Bummer.
In the meantime, I'm going to stick to drinks at my local and places I can get to with my bus pass...
Wednesday, 21 March 2012
Unemployment Benefits (Part III)
After the first post I wrote about unemployment benefits (the only one about actual unemployment benefits and not some witty wordplay) I didn't imagine I'd be writing another two. Part II and now Part III aren't strictly about unemployment benefits (as in jobseekers' allowance), but benefits aren't just about the government giving away their hard-taxed money...
This is what I looked at in Part II: the joy of being able to watch all the Formula 1 coverage humanly possible because I didn't have to go to work. In this post I'm going to look at another benefit to being unemployed, but this one has a sting in its tail.
My birthday is coming up. I love birthdays - I spent my 21st in Venice, but then again I was on my year abroad so it was less impressive than it actually sounds. This year isn't a special birthday, but that didn't mean I was going to let it wash over me in a sea of apathy...
During one of my long and lonely afternoons last week I began to think of what I could do. I very quickly ran into a problem: most people on their birthdays like to spend time relaxing at home, or doing something out and about because they don't have to work. This is pretty much my day-to-day existence and one more day spent in the same vein wasn't really going to make it any more special.
Oh.
I'd pretty much decided not to do anything - I wasn't going to mope all day, but I wasn't going to go out of my way to celebrate what hadn't been a vintage year. I don't know what is important for other people when celebrating a birthday, but for me a birthday is normally representative of the year. My last birthday was enjoyable and only slightly tinged with frustration (I wasn't having a great final year at university). The year that followed saw more of this mild unhappiness and all of my unemployment - understandably I didn't really feel like celebrating, especially in the same way that I spend most of my days...
It was by a serious of bizarre unrelated events that I came up with a fantastic plan for my birthday including a concert, a roll-together bed in a Travelodge and a trip to Sheffield, but it only came about after a chat I had with another friend.
My friend has the same birthday as me and we'd often celebrate it together when we were at university. I had asked her what she was doing for her birthday and she hadn't really realised it was coming up, but was probably going to spend it, like me, doing normal things. We graduated last year and she's in a very similar position to me in that she's not doing what she ultimately wants to and is having to do a number of jobs as a stop gap.
She felt exactly the same way that I did about her birthday: what is there to celebrate? And with many of our friends moving on and away - who is there to celebrate with?
This might just be a personal issue for me, but I think it's representative of a wider issue: there are lots of young people - maybe graduates - and they aren't happy. If they don't feel like they can celebrate their birthdays, surely that is a sign of apathetic unhappiness. This is a bit depressing isn't it - but for me it all worked out in the end.
This too is representative of the problem of youth unemployment - most young people are still under the impression that jobs are mailorder and will arrive in their lap on request: it's a passive procedure, and if they don't get what they want, then it's ok to send it back to Amazon and in the meantime keep on taking unemployment benefits or working in a dead-end job. What we should all be doing is getting out there and being proactive - very rarely do you walk into an amazing opportunity without putting in the leg-work beforehand.
So just like my birthday plans, I think we should all be trying to be as proactive as possible - only then will we stand a chance of getting where we want to be.
This is what I looked at in Part II: the joy of being able to watch all the Formula 1 coverage humanly possible because I didn't have to go to work. In this post I'm going to look at another benefit to being unemployed, but this one has a sting in its tail.
My birthday is coming up. I love birthdays - I spent my 21st in Venice, but then again I was on my year abroad so it was less impressive than it actually sounds. This year isn't a special birthday, but that didn't mean I was going to let it wash over me in a sea of apathy...
During one of my long and lonely afternoons last week I began to think of what I could do. I very quickly ran into a problem: most people on their birthdays like to spend time relaxing at home, or doing something out and about because they don't have to work. This is pretty much my day-to-day existence and one more day spent in the same vein wasn't really going to make it any more special.
Oh.
I'd pretty much decided not to do anything - I wasn't going to mope all day, but I wasn't going to go out of my way to celebrate what hadn't been a vintage year. I don't know what is important for other people when celebrating a birthday, but for me a birthday is normally representative of the year. My last birthday was enjoyable and only slightly tinged with frustration (I wasn't having a great final year at university). The year that followed saw more of this mild unhappiness and all of my unemployment - understandably I didn't really feel like celebrating, especially in the same way that I spend most of my days...
It was by a serious of bizarre unrelated events that I came up with a fantastic plan for my birthday including a concert, a roll-together bed in a Travelodge and a trip to Sheffield, but it only came about after a chat I had with another friend.
My friend has the same birthday as me and we'd often celebrate it together when we were at university. I had asked her what she was doing for her birthday and she hadn't really realised it was coming up, but was probably going to spend it, like me, doing normal things. We graduated last year and she's in a very similar position to me in that she's not doing what she ultimately wants to and is having to do a number of jobs as a stop gap.
She felt exactly the same way that I did about her birthday: what is there to celebrate? And with many of our friends moving on and away - who is there to celebrate with?
This might just be a personal issue for me, but I think it's representative of a wider issue: there are lots of young people - maybe graduates - and they aren't happy. If they don't feel like they can celebrate their birthdays, surely that is a sign of apathetic unhappiness. This is a bit depressing isn't it - but for me it all worked out in the end.
This too is representative of the problem of youth unemployment - most young people are still under the impression that jobs are mailorder and will arrive in their lap on request: it's a passive procedure, and if they don't get what they want, then it's ok to send it back to Amazon and in the meantime keep on taking unemployment benefits or working in a dead-end job. What we should all be doing is getting out there and being proactive - very rarely do you walk into an amazing opportunity without putting in the leg-work beforehand.
So just like my birthday plans, I think we should all be trying to be as proactive as possible - only then will we stand a chance of getting where we want to be.
Monday, 19 March 2012
Manual Labour
Surely all labour is manual - stuff that you have to do physically: until scientists perfect a way to do stuff telepathically then all labour is going to be manual and operating the toaster with telekinesis will have to wait a little longer.
But I'm being literal-minded. Of course manual labour doesn't refer to all labour, just the stuff you do with your hands as the Latin origins of the word dictate. If, however, I am allowed to be a little more literal-minded then I would take issue this time with manual labour just being about the hands because that's quite far from the truth...
I associate manual labour with the traditional heavy-lifting jobs - the kind of thing you need a man and a lad for. I'm a girl. I have spindly little arms. I'm not overly tall. I often get a headrush when I stand up. I am not suited to jobs where you have to get your hands dirty, so to speak.
To be honest that's a very out-dated viewpoint and if I wanted a career in construction there's so much red tape around the compensation culture, that I wouldn't be allowed to do anything that puts me in danger. All is not lost, but then I don't want a job in construction - it's just not what I'm good at.
But what's the point of all this?
Well the government seems to be encouraging certain industries to recruit and even coming up with projects of their own that will create many, many jobs. Fantastic! Finally there are some more jobs on the market - I won't have to apply to be the new Archbishop of Canterbury after all (well needs must). There is a downside: all these jobs seem to be related to manual labour - construction, car building, manufacturing in general.
Oh.
I don't begrudge anyone these jobs - it is a very necessary part of the economy, but this raises a bigger question. The government is putting money into a very specific job sector catering for people with very specific skills. Anyone can do unskilled labour, but as I have previously stated, I cannot lift anything that looks even remotely heavy, and I couldn't even engineer my way out of a paper bag.
Is this fair?
Should we be petitioning Downing Street to create more jobs across more industries?
If I were the kind of person that liked protesting I would say yes. I am not one of those people because I believe you can't have everything in life and there needs to be a certain amount of give and take. Social responsibility anyone?
So I concede that Mr Cameron can't give me everything; I am somewhat anomalous compared to most jobseekers and don't expect to have everything gift-wrapped for me when it comes to looking for work - where's the fun in that!? But even if you're reading this and you are a more average jobseeker, you may look at the number of jobs created in the construction industry (for example), seeing that there are far more there than anywhere else, and then immediately reach for your placard and felt pen: this is maybe not your best option.
Let me explain: it's the overall numbers we should be interested in. We should look at the number of jobs lost in the construction industry and then see what the final total is when you add in the new jobs. My guess is that there would be very little change at all. But even if it wasn't, the idea is that we increase manufacturing which gives a kick up the bum to the economy and then everybody's happy.
So although there are fewer jobs for me to apply for than, for example, someone who is excellent at making car bonnets, I have to content myself with that, knowing that my number will come up eventually (either that or I start doing a little bodybuilding of my own).
But I'm being literal-minded. Of course manual labour doesn't refer to all labour, just the stuff you do with your hands as the Latin origins of the word dictate. If, however, I am allowed to be a little more literal-minded then I would take issue this time with manual labour just being about the hands because that's quite far from the truth...
I associate manual labour with the traditional heavy-lifting jobs - the kind of thing you need a man and a lad for. I'm a girl. I have spindly little arms. I'm not overly tall. I often get a headrush when I stand up. I am not suited to jobs where you have to get your hands dirty, so to speak.
To be honest that's a very out-dated viewpoint and if I wanted a career in construction there's so much red tape around the compensation culture, that I wouldn't be allowed to do anything that puts me in danger. All is not lost, but then I don't want a job in construction - it's just not what I'm good at.
But what's the point of all this?
Well the government seems to be encouraging certain industries to recruit and even coming up with projects of their own that will create many, many jobs. Fantastic! Finally there are some more jobs on the market - I won't have to apply to be the new Archbishop of Canterbury after all (well needs must). There is a downside: all these jobs seem to be related to manual labour - construction, car building, manufacturing in general.
Oh.
I don't begrudge anyone these jobs - it is a very necessary part of the economy, but this raises a bigger question. The government is putting money into a very specific job sector catering for people with very specific skills. Anyone can do unskilled labour, but as I have previously stated, I cannot lift anything that looks even remotely heavy, and I couldn't even engineer my way out of a paper bag.
Is this fair?
Should we be petitioning Downing Street to create more jobs across more industries?
If I were the kind of person that liked protesting I would say yes. I am not one of those people because I believe you can't have everything in life and there needs to be a certain amount of give and take. Social responsibility anyone?
So I concede that Mr Cameron can't give me everything; I am somewhat anomalous compared to most jobseekers and don't expect to have everything gift-wrapped for me when it comes to looking for work - where's the fun in that!? But even if you're reading this and you are a more average jobseeker, you may look at the number of jobs created in the construction industry (for example), seeing that there are far more there than anywhere else, and then immediately reach for your placard and felt pen: this is maybe not your best option.
Let me explain: it's the overall numbers we should be interested in. We should look at the number of jobs lost in the construction industry and then see what the final total is when you add in the new jobs. My guess is that there would be very little change at all. But even if it wasn't, the idea is that we increase manufacturing which gives a kick up the bum to the economy and then everybody's happy.
So although there are fewer jobs for me to apply for than, for example, someone who is excellent at making car bonnets, I have to content myself with that, knowing that my number will come up eventually (either that or I start doing a little bodybuilding of my own).
Friday, 16 March 2012
Unemployment Benefits (Part II)
Unemployment Benefits. Jobseeker's Allowance. The Dole. Signing On. Whatever name you want to give it, the fact remains that it's a sensitive subject. A lot of people have a lot of polemic opinions on it. In fact I discussed this phenomenon about a month ago.
In that post I talked about the idea of social responsibility. This is also something I mentioned when listing the things that I would put in Room 101. I hate people who blunder through life expecting things to be done for them - to take, first you have to give.
The reason this post is take two of the 'unemployment benefits' chat is not because I am once again going to rake up and regurgitate the arguments for and against, but I'm going to look at a different kind of unemployment benefits: those that aren't related to money.
I am a MASSIVE Formula 1 fan. I LOVE it. When March arrives, ok I'm excited about Spring, but I'm SUPER-EXCITED about the start of the F1 season. I was seriously annoyed with the BBC for selling the rights for the F1 coverage to Sky: I don't mind paying for certain things in life, but television is one of those that I do get a little annoyed about. I pay the licence fee, why shouldn't I get the stuff I want - which, let me tell you, isn't Only Connect and Don't Tell the Bride.
Being the F1 fan that I am, I decided the only option was to sign up to Sky, after all they seemed to be singing from the same hymn sheet as I was - 'a whole channel dedicated to F1' - now that's what I'm talking about. The unfortunate price tag of £30.25 a month is, well, just that - unfortunate.
So right now I'm none too bothered about not having a job because I can watch Friday practice 1 and 2 on the new Sky F1 HD channel. It's pretty special. There's nothing I love more than watching FP1 & 2 and getting into the spirit of the weekend. For me it's like Christmas Eve. On odd occasions, therefore, I am quite glad I'm unemployed, and then I shake myself out of it and realise I would quite like a job and because of the wonders of Sky+ HD I can record FP1 & 2 in glorious technicolor and watch them when I get back from a hard day's work.
Is there a solution? To be honest is there actually a problem? I've got a solution already - you've just read it, but I still don't have a job. I know I may have an interview coming up and the next two weeks are going to be super-busy for me, but I'm not counting any bits of miscellaneous poultry just yet. So back to the original question... is there a solution? There is one, but it's full of what you might call pitfalls.
One of the things I long for in a job (and partly the reason I still don't have one) is that I'm looking out for something that won't feel like a chore because I'll be doing something I'm really interested in. I found that with the job that I've got the interview for, but as I say, there's no guarantee I'll get it.
So one of the criteria I have when looking for a job is things that interest me - Formula 1 is one of those things. Formula 1 is also one of the hardest industries to break into, whether it is working for the teams, the broadcasters, or the circuits. It still doesn't stop me trying and neither does it stop me failing monumentally on almost all levels.
So as the engines fire up for qualifying tomorrow I'll be watching with great enthusiasm, cheering for my favourites and wishing like mad that I was there...
In that post I talked about the idea of social responsibility. This is also something I mentioned when listing the things that I would put in Room 101. I hate people who blunder through life expecting things to be done for them - to take, first you have to give.
The reason this post is take two of the 'unemployment benefits' chat is not because I am once again going to rake up and regurgitate the arguments for and against, but I'm going to look at a different kind of unemployment benefits: those that aren't related to money.
I am a MASSIVE Formula 1 fan. I LOVE it. When March arrives, ok I'm excited about Spring, but I'm SUPER-EXCITED about the start of the F1 season. I was seriously annoyed with the BBC for selling the rights for the F1 coverage to Sky: I don't mind paying for certain things in life, but television is one of those that I do get a little annoyed about. I pay the licence fee, why shouldn't I get the stuff I want - which, let me tell you, isn't Only Connect and Don't Tell the Bride.
Being the F1 fan that I am, I decided the only option was to sign up to Sky, after all they seemed to be singing from the same hymn sheet as I was - 'a whole channel dedicated to F1' - now that's what I'm talking about. The unfortunate price tag of £30.25 a month is, well, just that - unfortunate.
So right now I'm none too bothered about not having a job because I can watch Friday practice 1 and 2 on the new Sky F1 HD channel. It's pretty special. There's nothing I love more than watching FP1 & 2 and getting into the spirit of the weekend. For me it's like Christmas Eve. On odd occasions, therefore, I am quite glad I'm unemployed, and then I shake myself out of it and realise I would quite like a job and because of the wonders of Sky+ HD I can record FP1 & 2 in glorious technicolor and watch them when I get back from a hard day's work.
Is there a solution? To be honest is there actually a problem? I've got a solution already - you've just read it, but I still don't have a job. I know I may have an interview coming up and the next two weeks are going to be super-busy for me, but I'm not counting any bits of miscellaneous poultry just yet. So back to the original question... is there a solution? There is one, but it's full of what you might call pitfalls.
One of the things I long for in a job (and partly the reason I still don't have one) is that I'm looking out for something that won't feel like a chore because I'll be doing something I'm really interested in. I found that with the job that I've got the interview for, but as I say, there's no guarantee I'll get it.
So one of the criteria I have when looking for a job is things that interest me - Formula 1 is one of those things. Formula 1 is also one of the hardest industries to break into, whether it is working for the teams, the broadcasters, or the circuits. It still doesn't stop me trying and neither does it stop me failing monumentally on almost all levels.
So as the engines fire up for qualifying tomorrow I'll be watching with great enthusiasm, cheering for my favourites and wishing like mad that I was there...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)