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...
Thursday, 15 March 2012
The Light at the End of the Tunnel
I shall again apologise for my sporadic presence on this here blog over the last week, blame the vomiting. Oh the vomiting...
The result of this is that I come to you, a little later than intended, with some news... I have an interview!!!!!!!!!! Finally - I HAVE AN INTERVIEW! It has taken me over six months but... I HAVE AN INTERVIEW!!!!! (If I'm this excited about the interview, then I wonder what would happen if I get the job.)
I'm excited for a number of reasons, one of them being that I would love the job. Often you apply for something and there are aspects of it that don't quite ring true with your experience or your interests; this job is different - it's right up my street on all levels.
So right here right now, it seems like the perfect job. I'm also excited about the prospect of having something fulfilling to fulfil my days. I'm not saying that blogging and writing other miscellaneous bits and pieces isn't worthwhile, but I long for routine - to leave the house in the morning and come back in the evening after achieving a great deal. I want to put my yoghurt in the communal fridge, I want to do the morning commute whilst reading a book, I want to have water cooler moments, I want to legitimately wear business casual!!!!
The interview isn't for a few weeks, so I'm also excited about going for a few days away to see some friends, doing some Italian tutoring and even prepping for my interview - I'm hoping that I'll be nicely busy. Lovely.
So as I emerge blinking into the world from my sickbed with bleary-eyed optimism, it does seem like this stretch of unemployment is coming to an end. Ok, so there's no guarantee I'll get the job, but it means I'm finally on the right track and I've found a winning formula. Even if it's only the first domino to fall, it should fall into another, and then another, and then soon I'll get something.
Part of the reason I'm so upbeat about all of this is because things are on the up for unemployed people in general. There are streadily fewer and fewer of us out there - well in fact there are more, but that's because there are more people actively searching for work. And so yes, unemployment did rise, but by the lowest number of people in recent months and though public sector jobs went down, private sector jobs more than compensated for the difference between the two.
I love Spring. I love tulips - they're my favourite flower and I love it when they come out at this time of year. Spring is all about new beginnings and it seems to match both my current mood, and that of the UK economy at the moment. Finally it looks like things are on the up.
And about time too.
The result of this is that I come to you, a little later than intended, with some news... I have an interview!!!!!!!!!! Finally - I HAVE AN INTERVIEW! It has taken me over six months but... I HAVE AN INTERVIEW!!!!! (If I'm this excited about the interview, then I wonder what would happen if I get the job.)
I'm excited for a number of reasons, one of them being that I would love the job. Often you apply for something and there are aspects of it that don't quite ring true with your experience or your interests; this job is different - it's right up my street on all levels.
So right here right now, it seems like the perfect job. I'm also excited about the prospect of having something fulfilling to fulfil my days. I'm not saying that blogging and writing other miscellaneous bits and pieces isn't worthwhile, but I long for routine - to leave the house in the morning and come back in the evening after achieving a great deal. I want to put my yoghurt in the communal fridge, I want to do the morning commute whilst reading a book, I want to have water cooler moments, I want to legitimately wear business casual!!!!
The interview isn't for a few weeks, so I'm also excited about going for a few days away to see some friends, doing some Italian tutoring and even prepping for my interview - I'm hoping that I'll be nicely busy. Lovely.
So as I emerge blinking into the world from my sickbed with bleary-eyed optimism, it does seem like this stretch of unemployment is coming to an end. Ok, so there's no guarantee I'll get the job, but it means I'm finally on the right track and I've found a winning formula. Even if it's only the first domino to fall, it should fall into another, and then another, and then soon I'll get something.
Part of the reason I'm so upbeat about all of this is because things are on the up for unemployed people in general. There are streadily fewer and fewer of us out there - well in fact there are more, but that's because there are more people actively searching for work. And so yes, unemployment did rise, but by the lowest number of people in recent months and though public sector jobs went down, private sector jobs more than compensated for the difference between the two.
I love Spring. I love tulips - they're my favourite flower and I love it when they come out at this time of year. Spring is all about new beginnings and it seems to match both my current mood, and that of the UK economy at the moment. Finally it looks like things are on the up.
And about time too.
Monday, 12 March 2012
Room 101 (Part II)
I never intended to do a second post about things I wish to put in Room 101, but I've had a bit of a weekend of it and I feel compelled to share it. You may have noticed that I haven't posted in a while and it's principally because I was waiting. I didn't think there was much point in continuing to update you all on the various techniques I'd employed in order to kill time; neither did I wish to comment on the uninteresting governmental updates that would affect us poor unemployed citizens.
In short I was losing interest. I was once more waiting for a communique and I was bored of it. I hate waiting - it would certainly slot well into my list of things I would pop into Room 101. But no bother, I found something else to occupy my time with - something else that would also go nicely in my Orwellian hovel of things I hate.
I got sick.
Really sick.
Like I totes chundered everywhaaaaaaar.
Even writing this post is giving me a headache and technically I've been the better side of my bug for a couple of days. I'm also writing this in my pyjamas like a proper bum. But as I said, being ill is something that I hate. I hate not being able to do the stuff I want to do, I hate feeling ill, and I hate being sick.
Despite this, I reached a peculiar conclusion. Now I don't like being sick, but I really don't like waiting around and killing time, and so even I will admit that throwing up with my head down the toilet and choking on a half-digested parsnip is preferable to watching extended Come Dine With Me marathons.
So I actually found myself something to do over the weekend. Granted it wasn't as enjoyable as say a weekend in Italy, but I didn't have to while away hours and hours filling my time with pointless exercises. Instead I lounged in front of the television for three days - I even watched all three games from the Six Nations (well two and a half, I may have fallen asleep in one of them).
So by the time Monday came round, I had filled my time quite adequately. I logged on to my emails this morning and there was nothing of interest - as per usual. As I still wasn't feeling 100% (far from it), it looks like today is going to be spent in front of the TV again while I try to kill some more time, and get a little better...
In short I was losing interest. I was once more waiting for a communique and I was bored of it. I hate waiting - it would certainly slot well into my list of things I would pop into Room 101. But no bother, I found something else to occupy my time with - something else that would also go nicely in my Orwellian hovel of things I hate.
I got sick.
Really sick.
Like I totes chundered everywhaaaaaaar.
Even writing this post is giving me a headache and technically I've been the better side of my bug for a couple of days. I'm also writing this in my pyjamas like a proper bum. But as I said, being ill is something that I hate. I hate not being able to do the stuff I want to do, I hate feeling ill, and I hate being sick.
Despite this, I reached a peculiar conclusion. Now I don't like being sick, but I really don't like waiting around and killing time, and so even I will admit that throwing up with my head down the toilet and choking on a half-digested parsnip is preferable to watching extended Come Dine With Me marathons.
So I actually found myself something to do over the weekend. Granted it wasn't as enjoyable as say a weekend in Italy, but I didn't have to while away hours and hours filling my time with pointless exercises. Instead I lounged in front of the television for three days - I even watched all three games from the Six Nations (well two and a half, I may have fallen asleep in one of them).
So by the time Monday came round, I had filled my time quite adequately. I logged on to my emails this morning and there was nothing of interest - as per usual. As I still wasn't feeling 100% (far from it), it looks like today is going to be spent in front of the TV again while I try to kill some more time, and get a little better...
Wednesday, 29 February 2012
Room 101
In George Orwell's 1984 we first meet the concept of 'Room 101': invented by Big Brother, Room 101 has the single most thing you fear in the whole entire world. Over time the phrase itself has slipped into our vocabulary and means, amongst other things, somewhere you'd like to put everything that gets under your skin and irritates you like nothing else.
The BBC now have a quiz show based on this premise. It used to be a kind of chat show where celebrities moaned about things they despised; now several of them compete to put items into Room 101, the most convincing ones gets that pleasure.
If I were ever to go on Room 101 I would campaign 100% to pull the lever and send Tom Daley, the diver, down to the depths. I'm not saying that I hate him enough to hope that he meets with a nasty accident when someone pulls the plug out of the pool and doesn't tell him; all I'm saying is that he really annoys me. If he appears on the television, I have to mute it. There's just something about him that makes me want to vomit.
Anyway I'm not one to have beef with people in my blogs and start hatin' on people I've never met; I'm normally not one to use words like 'beef' and 'hatin' on'. You may have guessed what's coming next: I'm going it to make a point.
Tom Daley loves to be in front of the camera - anyone that saw that ridiculous video of him and his mates in Australia knows that he likes to be the centre of attention. Err Tom, shouldn't you be concentrating a little more on your day job?
This was the fiasco that overshadowed his performance at the most recent diving championships and saw the stupid video played out on all the major broadcasters. I suppose the problem I have above all is that Tom Daley is in a privileged position - in the media spotlight, a talented young man, he can have anything he wants, yet he still wants to prat about and not put his all into his training.
Why should he? He's still young - he's got quite a few Olympics left in him. So what if he can't be bothered in the meantime, he should just kick back and enjoy what he's doing - it's not as if he's flying the flag and representing our nation... Ambassador? Pah! Of course not...
And we've reached my point. This boils down to the issue of social responsibility. I wrote a post about it a while ago when a family (having bought the Sky Movies package) said they would have to choose between 'heating and eating' if their benefits were cut under the government's rejigging of the Welfare State's allowances.
I said I didn't blame the family - I mean I confess I judged them a lot for the 'heating and eating' comment and would maybe advise buying fewer cigarettes a week, but if the government are giving them the money, then why should they bother to get jobs and boring stuff like careers...
This issue has reared its ugly head all over again with the work experience programme that the government are trying desperately to get employers to participate in. It's the one where young people on benefits do some voluntary work experience to try and get on in the company.
Oh my goodness. The poo has certainly hit the fan with that one. The coalitian is now back-peddaling at an alarming pace, the most recent concession is to drop potential cuts to jobseekers' allowance if certain terms of employment aren't met.
Ok, let's have a look at this in more detail:
Some people have called it slave labour because the young people are working for nothing: THEY'RE ON BENEFITS!!
Their benefits would only be cut if they don't finish the programme: WOHHH - YOU MEAN YOU'RE ASKING PEOPLE TO WORK FOR MONEY!?
Social responsibility. That's all it is. Young people don't want to get in on the scheme because they run the risk of losing their benefits if they start working. That is the most backwards, irresponsible, lazy thing I think I've ever come across. But why should they give up this free money that they can get, technically, until pensionable age? If the government gives it to them, why not take it...
The BBC now have a quiz show based on this premise. It used to be a kind of chat show where celebrities moaned about things they despised; now several of them compete to put items into Room 101, the most convincing ones gets that pleasure.
If I were ever to go on Room 101 I would campaign 100% to pull the lever and send Tom Daley, the diver, down to the depths. I'm not saying that I hate him enough to hope that he meets with a nasty accident when someone pulls the plug out of the pool and doesn't tell him; all I'm saying is that he really annoys me. If he appears on the television, I have to mute it. There's just something about him that makes me want to vomit.
Anyway I'm not one to have beef with people in my blogs and start hatin' on people I've never met; I'm normally not one to use words like 'beef' and 'hatin' on'. You may have guessed what's coming next: I'm going it to make a point.
Tom Daley loves to be in front of the camera - anyone that saw that ridiculous video of him and his mates in Australia knows that he likes to be the centre of attention. Err Tom, shouldn't you be concentrating a little more on your day job?
This was the fiasco that overshadowed his performance at the most recent diving championships and saw the stupid video played out on all the major broadcasters. I suppose the problem I have above all is that Tom Daley is in a privileged position - in the media spotlight, a talented young man, he can have anything he wants, yet he still wants to prat about and not put his all into his training.
Why should he? He's still young - he's got quite a few Olympics left in him. So what if he can't be bothered in the meantime, he should just kick back and enjoy what he's doing - it's not as if he's flying the flag and representing our nation... Ambassador? Pah! Of course not...
And we've reached my point. This boils down to the issue of social responsibility. I wrote a post about it a while ago when a family (having bought the Sky Movies package) said they would have to choose between 'heating and eating' if their benefits were cut under the government's rejigging of the Welfare State's allowances.
I said I didn't blame the family - I mean I confess I judged them a lot for the 'heating and eating' comment and would maybe advise buying fewer cigarettes a week, but if the government are giving them the money, then why should they bother to get jobs and boring stuff like careers...
This issue has reared its ugly head all over again with the work experience programme that the government are trying desperately to get employers to participate in. It's the one where young people on benefits do some voluntary work experience to try and get on in the company.
Oh my goodness. The poo has certainly hit the fan with that one. The coalitian is now back-peddaling at an alarming pace, the most recent concession is to drop potential cuts to jobseekers' allowance if certain terms of employment aren't met.
Ok, let's have a look at this in more detail:
Some people have called it slave labour because the young people are working for nothing: THEY'RE ON BENEFITS!!
Their benefits would only be cut if they don't finish the programme: WOHHH - YOU MEAN YOU'RE ASKING PEOPLE TO WORK FOR MONEY!?
Social responsibility. That's all it is. Young people don't want to get in on the scheme because they run the risk of losing their benefits if they start working. That is the most backwards, irresponsible, lazy thing I think I've ever come across. But why should they give up this free money that they can get, technically, until pensionable age? If the government gives it to them, why not take it...
Friday, 24 February 2012
Day Ten: The Final Countdown
I'm writing this post out of working hours because I want to draw an official line under my 'zero fortnight'. I've waited patiently and now the time has come where I've got to move on. Back when I started this I said I was putting my cards on the table and said I needed to have a job by the start of April and that I was waiting for replies from the 'big three' - three jobs I really wanted.
The first week didn't go too well and after waiting all week I heard from one of these on Friday afternoon, and it was a no. Because I was sick of waiting, I tried to make myself another opportunity which worked and the second half of my zero fortnight picked up a great deal.
I was asked to apply for a job and started to get somewhere with some other projects I was working on. In the meantime I got rejected from another one of the 'big three', but because things were moving anyway, I wasn't too cut up about it.
This meant I was waiting for the Big One. I'm going to ruin the pointless suspense now - I still haven't heard. I don't know when I will hear, but I've spent the afternoon looking for other jobs in the hopes of meeting my April deadline. I don't know whether I'm not in the mood or whether there really is very little our there of interest, but it seemed like there was nothing on offer that wasn't marketing or telesales. Any jobs asking for writers are all about finance and stocks - stuff that I don't want to write about even if I could.
A while ago I blogged about how the internet has transformed job searches and it means I can do everything from the comfort of the sofa, but even with the entire universe at my fingertips, I can't find anything I want to do. I'm suffering from one of those 'lacking in motivation' days. I picked up something a little dodge and I'm not feeling at my best so you can understand how hard it is for me to get enthusiastic about a job that advertises itself as an 'exciting opportunity' and that's it.
So come next week I don't know what I'll be doing. I know I have about a month to find a job, but I have no idea what that job will end up being. Hopefully I'll be feeling better and a little more motivated, but right now I don't know, well I don't know anything.
So at the end of my 'zero fortnight' the results are thus:
1. Things are beginning to move a little in a couple of areas.
2. I'm still waiting to hear about my dream job.
3. If none of those things work, the poo will hit the proverbial fan because I will be forced to take a job merely called an 'exciting opportunity' which we all no is not going to be an 'exciting opportunity'.
I'm on the cusp of something - I just don't know what it will be...
The first week didn't go too well and after waiting all week I heard from one of these on Friday afternoon, and it was a no. Because I was sick of waiting, I tried to make myself another opportunity which worked and the second half of my zero fortnight picked up a great deal.
I was asked to apply for a job and started to get somewhere with some other projects I was working on. In the meantime I got rejected from another one of the 'big three', but because things were moving anyway, I wasn't too cut up about it.
This meant I was waiting for the Big One. I'm going to ruin the pointless suspense now - I still haven't heard. I don't know when I will hear, but I've spent the afternoon looking for other jobs in the hopes of meeting my April deadline. I don't know whether I'm not in the mood or whether there really is very little our there of interest, but it seemed like there was nothing on offer that wasn't marketing or telesales. Any jobs asking for writers are all about finance and stocks - stuff that I don't want to write about even if I could.
A while ago I blogged about how the internet has transformed job searches and it means I can do everything from the comfort of the sofa, but even with the entire universe at my fingertips, I can't find anything I want to do. I'm suffering from one of those 'lacking in motivation' days. I picked up something a little dodge and I'm not feeling at my best so you can understand how hard it is for me to get enthusiastic about a job that advertises itself as an 'exciting opportunity' and that's it.
So come next week I don't know what I'll be doing. I know I have about a month to find a job, but I have no idea what that job will end up being. Hopefully I'll be feeling better and a little more motivated, but right now I don't know, well I don't know anything.
So at the end of my 'zero fortnight' the results are thus:
1. Things are beginning to move a little in a couple of areas.
2. I'm still waiting to hear about my dream job.
3. If none of those things work, the poo will hit the proverbial fan because I will be forced to take a job merely called an 'exciting opportunity' which we all no is not going to be an 'exciting opportunity'.
I'm on the cusp of something - I just don't know what it will be...
Thursday, 23 February 2012
Day Nine: Why Are We Waiting?
It's the penultimate day of 'zero fortnight' and I haven't heard from the Big One. I may have planned to meet friends, execute complex projects, and begin my career in other departments, but I'm still waiting to hear from the Big One - my dream job.
Fortunately I had my other projects to take my mind off it. Of my three projects I have now completed one and a half and can see myself crashing headlong back into limbo. Admittedly there are still another one and a half projects to do, but I've looked at them so much in the last few days that I'm starting to go cross-eyed.
There are no new jobs to apply for - I've checked. Well there are jobs - several in fact that I'm on the cusp of applying for, I'm just waiting until the last minute before I bite the bullet and apply for something that I consider to be second best.
Essentially, I've got itchy feet. There are things on the horizon, I just have to wait for them. I hate waiting. I hate waiting with a fervent passion. Hate. Hate. Hate.
In response to all the waiting I've been doing, I decided I was going take a more proactive approach to my job search and it paid off to a certain extent: the big rusty cogs are beginning to grind into life. I've been making real progress there, but for the next step, I still have to wait - a week. Now a week can be swallowed up adequately in the big picture, but stopping to think about what I'm doing in detail over the next seven days and all of a sudden I'm turning back to daytime TV and refreshing my email inbox.
I sound thoroughly tragic don't I. I have an online assessment to do for Monday, but I haven't even thought about it yet because my head's all over the place. On the one hand I'm planning what will happen if I get some success with my projects, on the other I'm still trying to face up to the fact that I'm going to have to start applying for jobs I don't want to do.
Now I sound pompous. Taking things that are second best; applying for jobs I don't want, what right have I to demand my dream job? Well I don't, but if you are unemployed you've most likely said 'I could do their job better than that' and, for want of a more eloquent phrase, it's the luck of the draw.
I get so frustrated especially when I see public figures in the media - in the industry I want to catapult myself into - and some of them make an awful mess of their jobs. Just last week I referred to the BBC's farcical article about unemployed bums like me. It's not just that - spelling and grammar mistakes are common - if you don't know how to use an apostrophe, go back to school and get out of the newspapers.
However much I hate waiting, though, it looks like I'll have to do some more before I can drag myself out of this mire...
Fortunately I had my other projects to take my mind off it. Of my three projects I have now completed one and a half and can see myself crashing headlong back into limbo. Admittedly there are still another one and a half projects to do, but I've looked at them so much in the last few days that I'm starting to go cross-eyed.
There are no new jobs to apply for - I've checked. Well there are jobs - several in fact that I'm on the cusp of applying for, I'm just waiting until the last minute before I bite the bullet and apply for something that I consider to be second best.
Essentially, I've got itchy feet. There are things on the horizon, I just have to wait for them. I hate waiting. I hate waiting with a fervent passion. Hate. Hate. Hate.
In response to all the waiting I've been doing, I decided I was going take a more proactive approach to my job search and it paid off to a certain extent: the big rusty cogs are beginning to grind into life. I've been making real progress there, but for the next step, I still have to wait - a week. Now a week can be swallowed up adequately in the big picture, but stopping to think about what I'm doing in detail over the next seven days and all of a sudden I'm turning back to daytime TV and refreshing my email inbox.
I sound thoroughly tragic don't I. I have an online assessment to do for Monday, but I haven't even thought about it yet because my head's all over the place. On the one hand I'm planning what will happen if I get some success with my projects, on the other I'm still trying to face up to the fact that I'm going to have to start applying for jobs I don't want to do.
Now I sound pompous. Taking things that are second best; applying for jobs I don't want, what right have I to demand my dream job? Well I don't, but if you are unemployed you've most likely said 'I could do their job better than that' and, for want of a more eloquent phrase, it's the luck of the draw.
I get so frustrated especially when I see public figures in the media - in the industry I want to catapult myself into - and some of them make an awful mess of their jobs. Just last week I referred to the BBC's farcical article about unemployed bums like me. It's not just that - spelling and grammar mistakes are common - if you don't know how to use an apostrophe, go back to school and get out of the newspapers.
However much I hate waiting, though, it looks like I'll have to do some more before I can drag myself out of this mire...
Wednesday, 22 February 2012
Day Eight: The Big One
You'll be pleased to know I found a name for my pirate. This was very much yesterday's problem, but I solved it with some clever wordplay and now I'm back on track, ready to take the world by storm. Well nearly.
Once I get the bit between my teeth, I'm practically unstoppable and this is what happened yesterday evening. I worked right the way through the Brits on my projects. I say through, I mean during - it didn't merit enough attention to not be doing something else at the same time. I'd started work that morning and I ploughed my way through until 10pm - that's dedication to the cause.
To tell you the truth, I worked a little too much. We hit 9'o'clock, and let's face it, I was only watching for Noel Gallagher and Blur; I tied up some loose ends, but because I'd have to wait until 9.50 for my Blur marathon, I thought I'd start something else instead. This was a bad idea and made my brain fry.
I therefore shut my computer down and walked away ready to start afresh today. Which I intend to do, probably after lunch... I'm not procrastinating, I'm just saving these jobs for the time when I can give them most attention; I also don't want to finish them in a week and find I'm back to being a bum again.
The likelihood of that happening is slim, as it really seems as if things are picking up for once. I just want to make sure that I do the best job I can with the resources available to me, and if time is a resource that I have in abundance, I'm jolly well going to use it.
Time management is a big deal for me because I hate to have days yawning before me; currently I've had 6 months of them and I don't reckon on it being up to much. Most of my time is spent looking for jobs, applying for jobs, or waiting to hear back about job applications, and let me tell you this for nothing (I am unemployed) it sucks.
You can imagine how good it felt, therefore, to have a few projects to work on, to have something to occupy my time with. Even if I never hear back from these opportunities, it has killed time while I wait for the big three, which became th big two last Friday and, sorry to report folks, is now the Big One - and I don't mean the fun kind, like in Blackpool.
If I were writing a fictitious blog about unemployment I would have done it excatly as you read it. Just in case you think I'm not 22, a girl, and unemployed, but a 53-year-old fat and balding man from Basingstoke who's trying to penetrate the female psyche by adopting the identity of a young unemployed girl, I'm not. I am genuinely unemployed. This is, unfortunately, real life.
But I say that because the plot is building. After 6 months of waiting, things are finally hotting up. I could finish this post by saying:
'Tomorrow on The Diary of an Unemployed Bum, things are progressing with the company that asked Hannah to apply for a position, the projects are finally starting to take shape, but will she hear from the Big One about her dream job? Tune in to find out.'
That is literally my life at the moment - a reality TV show.
It turns out my predictions were right about this being 'zero fortnight' and though it's two rejections out of three, it gave me a kick up my unemployed bum and I'm looking down the barrel of a potential job interview and a really exciting opportunity too.
It's day eight out of ten - if days nine and ten are as eventful as days six, seven and eight, this is going to be a week to remember.
Once I get the bit between my teeth, I'm practically unstoppable and this is what happened yesterday evening. I worked right the way through the Brits on my projects. I say through, I mean during - it didn't merit enough attention to not be doing something else at the same time. I'd started work that morning and I ploughed my way through until 10pm - that's dedication to the cause.
To tell you the truth, I worked a little too much. We hit 9'o'clock, and let's face it, I was only watching for Noel Gallagher and Blur; I tied up some loose ends, but because I'd have to wait until 9.50 for my Blur marathon, I thought I'd start something else instead. This was a bad idea and made my brain fry.
I therefore shut my computer down and walked away ready to start afresh today. Which I intend to do, probably after lunch... I'm not procrastinating, I'm just saving these jobs for the time when I can give them most attention; I also don't want to finish them in a week and find I'm back to being a bum again.
The likelihood of that happening is slim, as it really seems as if things are picking up for once. I just want to make sure that I do the best job I can with the resources available to me, and if time is a resource that I have in abundance, I'm jolly well going to use it.
Time management is a big deal for me because I hate to have days yawning before me; currently I've had 6 months of them and I don't reckon on it being up to much. Most of my time is spent looking for jobs, applying for jobs, or waiting to hear back about job applications, and let me tell you this for nothing (I am unemployed) it sucks.
You can imagine how good it felt, therefore, to have a few projects to work on, to have something to occupy my time with. Even if I never hear back from these opportunities, it has killed time while I wait for the big three, which became th big two last Friday and, sorry to report folks, is now the Big One - and I don't mean the fun kind, like in Blackpool.
If I were writing a fictitious blog about unemployment I would have done it excatly as you read it. Just in case you think I'm not 22, a girl, and unemployed, but a 53-year-old fat and balding man from Basingstoke who's trying to penetrate the female psyche by adopting the identity of a young unemployed girl, I'm not. I am genuinely unemployed. This is, unfortunately, real life.
But I say that because the plot is building. After 6 months of waiting, things are finally hotting up. I could finish this post by saying:
'Tomorrow on The Diary of an Unemployed Bum, things are progressing with the company that asked Hannah to apply for a position, the projects are finally starting to take shape, but will she hear from the Big One about her dream job? Tune in to find out.'
That is literally my life at the moment - a reality TV show.
It turns out my predictions were right about this being 'zero fortnight' and though it's two rejections out of three, it gave me a kick up my unemployed bum and I'm looking down the barrel of a potential job interview and a really exciting opportunity too.
It's day eight out of ten - if days nine and ten are as eventful as days six, seven and eight, this is going to be a week to remember.
Tuesday, 21 February 2012
Day Seven: Ha-haaaaarrr!
So here I am once again blogging about the fortnight where I hope to be in employment, or at least very close. Last week this didn't go too well so I decided to roll things over to this week hoping that I can end on a high and not another rejection.
This plan has so far been working masterfully in that I have been asked too apply for a job (always a good sign) and I've had a meeting which has given me three very interesting projects to work on. These projects may never come to anything, but I feel like I have a purpose. I feel as if I don't need to blog every day in order for me to think I'm doing something useful.
I have however reached a sticking point of a kind unfamiliar to me. I have plenty of work to do, I'm just held back by an itsy-bitsy detail. This detail is becoming my nemesis and I will not move on until I have bettered it. Normally I don't give you too many deets, principally because I realise how uninteresting they are. On the odd occasion I do (my babysitting debacle is a prime example, but that really was quite entertaining, especially if you weren't there and didn't have to deal with it).
In this situation, for you all to better understand my plight, I will share with you some details. I'm looking for a pirate name. Long John Silver and Blackbeard have both been taken; Calico Jack was shotgunned many years ago; Captain Jack Sparrow I believe has also appeared here and there, all of which narrow the field quite dramatically.
The best I could come up with was Cannon-Fodder Davies and 'Cutlass' Joe Jones. These are passable, but they are not majestic enough for the pirate I'm trying to name. Yesterday I trawled the internet looking for inspiration. I Googled famous pirates - I even sunk to the depths of putting lots of different names into a 'Pirate Name Generator' to see what would come out. I was desperate.
I'm going to give myself until this evening to come up with something plausible and then I'm going to move on. Granted I'll move on kicking and screaming, but move on I will. It annoys me that now I have stuff to do that's potentially really worthwhile, but I've hit a stumbling block and it's preventing me from doing my best work.
Having said all of that, it's a lovely predicament to have compared to what I have been enduring in te form of a modern adaptation of Waiting for Godot. What makes this worse is that you can't even put on modern adaptations of Waiting for Godot because of the Beckett clause. Not only was I incapable of producing my own literature decent enough for people to take notice, but I was ruining the stuff we had already.
So if a troublesome pirate name is all I have to deal with, I've not done to badly.
Ha-harrrr!
This plan has so far been working masterfully in that I have been asked too apply for a job (always a good sign) and I've had a meeting which has given me three very interesting projects to work on. These projects may never come to anything, but I feel like I have a purpose. I feel as if I don't need to blog every day in order for me to think I'm doing something useful.
I have however reached a sticking point of a kind unfamiliar to me. I have plenty of work to do, I'm just held back by an itsy-bitsy detail. This detail is becoming my nemesis and I will not move on until I have bettered it. Normally I don't give you too many deets, principally because I realise how uninteresting they are. On the odd occasion I do (my babysitting debacle is a prime example, but that really was quite entertaining, especially if you weren't there and didn't have to deal with it).
In this situation, for you all to better understand my plight, I will share with you some details. I'm looking for a pirate name. Long John Silver and Blackbeard have both been taken; Calico Jack was shotgunned many years ago; Captain Jack Sparrow I believe has also appeared here and there, all of which narrow the field quite dramatically.
The best I could come up with was Cannon-Fodder Davies and 'Cutlass' Joe Jones. These are passable, but they are not majestic enough for the pirate I'm trying to name. Yesterday I trawled the internet looking for inspiration. I Googled famous pirates - I even sunk to the depths of putting lots of different names into a 'Pirate Name Generator' to see what would come out. I was desperate.
I'm going to give myself until this evening to come up with something plausible and then I'm going to move on. Granted I'll move on kicking and screaming, but move on I will. It annoys me that now I have stuff to do that's potentially really worthwhile, but I've hit a stumbling block and it's preventing me from doing my best work.
Having said all of that, it's a lovely predicament to have compared to what I have been enduring in te form of a modern adaptation of Waiting for Godot. What makes this worse is that you can't even put on modern adaptations of Waiting for Godot because of the Beckett clause. Not only was I incapable of producing my own literature decent enough for people to take notice, but I was ruining the stuff we had already.
So if a troublesome pirate name is all I have to deal with, I've not done to badly.
Ha-harrrr!
Monday, 20 February 2012
Day Six: Progress
I never thought I'd be doing this again this week. I thought I'd be back to ironic jibes at the unemployment situation and sharing anecdotes about funny things that happened in my life as an unemployed bum. I had hoped to be in work, or at least have a clearer picture about the situation I was going to find myself in.
The reality is somewhat diverse.
Let me explain. I initially made my 'zero hour' a 'zero week' and then a 'zero fortnight'; in the week I expected to hear back from three applications, I heard back form one, so elongated the deadline to see if the dregs would slip out if I waited a little longer.
So here we are on day six. Really, the action started happening on mid-week last week when I decided that waiting just wasn't exciting and I emailed one of my contacts to see if I could bump start something into happening. This was successful and we scheduled in a meeting that happened earlier today.
Then on day five I eventually heard back from one of the three jobs (in the negative, but at least I heard) and then yesterday (yes, Sunday) I was asked to apply for a job with a company that I thought had forgotten me and erased all traces of my CV and cover letter from the known universe.
Things are certainly on the up and the meeting I had this morning made me a very busy girl indeed. I have three projects to work on; they're things of my own invention that are in various stages of completion, but after speaking to someone 'in the industry' I have a direction, some targets, and it finally feels like I'm getting somewhere with it all.
So I still may not have heard from the two other jobs I've applied for, but I have a potential job, and a very large potential opportunity on the horizon that I never even considered last week. It's not so much that good things come to those who wait, but good things come to those who don't give up.
Day six is proving to be a vintage...
The reality is somewhat diverse.
Let me explain. I initially made my 'zero hour' a 'zero week' and then a 'zero fortnight'; in the week I expected to hear back from three applications, I heard back form one, so elongated the deadline to see if the dregs would slip out if I waited a little longer.
So here we are on day six. Really, the action started happening on mid-week last week when I decided that waiting just wasn't exciting and I emailed one of my contacts to see if I could bump start something into happening. This was successful and we scheduled in a meeting that happened earlier today.
Then on day five I eventually heard back from one of the three jobs (in the negative, but at least I heard) and then yesterday (yes, Sunday) I was asked to apply for a job with a company that I thought had forgotten me and erased all traces of my CV and cover letter from the known universe.
Things are certainly on the up and the meeting I had this morning made me a very busy girl indeed. I have three projects to work on; they're things of my own invention that are in various stages of completion, but after speaking to someone 'in the industry' I have a direction, some targets, and it finally feels like I'm getting somewhere with it all.
So I still may not have heard from the two other jobs I've applied for, but I have a potential job, and a very large potential opportunity on the horizon that I never even considered last week. It's not so much that good things come to those who wait, but good things come to those who don't give up.
Day six is proving to be a vintage...
Sunday, 19 February 2012
Zero Hour (Mark II)
So here we are again. A week ago I posted about what was going to be the beginning of what I hoped would be the final nail in my job hunting coffin. Basically, I hoped I'd either have one of the 'big three' jobs I applied for, or I'd be on the lookout for something else because I didn't get any of them.
I would give you links to the last five days of posts where I did, for once, what this blog suggests, and wrote a diary about my unemployment, but they're literally just the last five posts I've written, so you can probably navigate your way there yourself. Anyway, if you've read those already, you may notice a common theme. Last week wasn't 'zero week' as I succinctly termed it. Last week was a continuation of 'wait around and get frustrated' week, which is where I've been really since August.
Nice.
Things did, however, change. Friday evening I got an email telling me I hadn't got one of the 'big three'. At first glance this may sound disappointing, but I was relieved more than anything: the 'big three' are now the 'big two' and that's one less thing to worry about. Now I have my plan of campaign in place, I don't want to have to wait some more before I implement it.
The reason I issued myself witht the 'zero week' (now 'zero fortnight') ultimatum was because I felt like I was really getting somewhere with a job and then it disappeared into the atmosphere, never to be heard of again. Regular readers may remember my petite rant. In view of this I thought that enoguh was enough - I needed to start taking some drastic action and get something because even the jobs you feel like you're going to get might not pull through.
Hence the situation we're in now.
Then I got an email. It was this afternoon - not a working day and certainly not a 'zero' day: it was my old friends who didn't call me. The gentleman kindly explained as to why was never called - apparently (and this is the case at the moment everywhere) there are so many people applying for jobs that are in theory beneath them, that people like me don't stand a chance. It was nice to know that under normal circumstances I would have stood a good chance, it was just the jobs market that wasn't willing.
Anyway he asked me to apply for another position at the company instead. He told me it was coming up and I needn't worry about sending anything else in the way of an application. I had to admit that I was quite excited about it and, when I went out in the car but ten minutes later, I had a celebratory Red Hot Chili Peppers sing-along.
This was good news indeed. The job is by no means mine, but it will probably be the closest I've got so far. It puts my new plans into slight jeopardy, but I will wait for the 'big two' and apply for whatever else in the meantime.
So as the second part of zero fortnight is about to start, some progress has been made, let's just hope I can go on as I meant to start...
I would give you links to the last five days of posts where I did, for once, what this blog suggests, and wrote a diary about my unemployment, but they're literally just the last five posts I've written, so you can probably navigate your way there yourself. Anyway, if you've read those already, you may notice a common theme. Last week wasn't 'zero week' as I succinctly termed it. Last week was a continuation of 'wait around and get frustrated' week, which is where I've been really since August.
Nice.
Things did, however, change. Friday evening I got an email telling me I hadn't got one of the 'big three'. At first glance this may sound disappointing, but I was relieved more than anything: the 'big three' are now the 'big two' and that's one less thing to worry about. Now I have my plan of campaign in place, I don't want to have to wait some more before I implement it.
The reason I issued myself witht the 'zero week' (now 'zero fortnight') ultimatum was because I felt like I was really getting somewhere with a job and then it disappeared into the atmosphere, never to be heard of again. Regular readers may remember my petite rant. In view of this I thought that enoguh was enough - I needed to start taking some drastic action and get something because even the jobs you feel like you're going to get might not pull through.
Hence the situation we're in now.
Then I got an email. It was this afternoon - not a working day and certainly not a 'zero' day: it was my old friends who didn't call me. The gentleman kindly explained as to why was never called - apparently (and this is the case at the moment everywhere) there are so many people applying for jobs that are in theory beneath them, that people like me don't stand a chance. It was nice to know that under normal circumstances I would have stood a good chance, it was just the jobs market that wasn't willing.
Anyway he asked me to apply for another position at the company instead. He told me it was coming up and I needn't worry about sending anything else in the way of an application. I had to admit that I was quite excited about it and, when I went out in the car but ten minutes later, I had a celebratory Red Hot Chili Peppers sing-along.
This was good news indeed. The job is by no means mine, but it will probably be the closest I've got so far. It puts my new plans into slight jeopardy, but I will wait for the 'big two' and apply for whatever else in the meantime.
So as the second part of zero fortnight is about to start, some progress has been made, let's just hope I can go on as I meant to start...
Friday, 17 February 2012
Day Five: So Far, Not So Good
So for those that don't know by now what this week of posting has been all about, it's zero week: the week where I hope to find out about the three big jobs/opportunities I've applied for. I mean I had no real idea that this week would be the week, but it was a best guess.
That guess is turning out to be, well, for want of a better word, wrong.
Let's have a brief recap:
Day one saw me employed in a little physical labour as I packed up my friends' flat. When I say employed, I mean voluntarily, of course...
On day two I hit the bottom of the pit of despair as I came to terms with the fact I might never hear back from these people.
Day three provided light entertainment when the BBC thought they would publish poor sensationalist fiction instead of journalism (if you read just one more of my posts, I would go for that one).
Day four saw me leap out of the pit of despair and I decided to branch out and apply for a different brand of jobs - a job isn't for life (though some are just for Christmas).
And here we are at the end of the week - the week I had thought would bear some fruit in my 6-month-and-counting job search. So far, not so good.
I may have thrown in the towel a little and started looking for jobs that might not be my first choice, but I'm still holding out the hope that I can get a breakthrough. This may come on Monday when I have my meeting (see day three), it may not come for months.
What really annoys me is that I know how good I am and, though I hate to quote the article about my hairy friend again (at the point I'd just like to say he is not my friend, I'm merely being ironic) the quality of journalism in that article is, quite frankly, poor. I don't care that he has his window open in his flat - if he has his window open in the middle of a cold snap in February, he can clearly afford high heating bills and his economic situation isn't as bleak as we're made to believe. This is mindless drivel meant to stir emotions for a man that, if he shaved his large beard off, would stand a much better chance at getting a job. Ms BBC Journalist: please don't treat me like an idiot, because though I am unemployed, stupid, I am most definitely not.
But back to my hairy friend for a moment: he's having sleepless nights and he doesn't smile very often - he's been out of work two years. If you're looking for someone who should be downbeat with their confidence dashed against some metaphorical rocks, may I direct you to the Manchester man who has been turned down from 1,500 jobs. Ouch. Our hairy friend has some poor A levels, according to the article; this guy is qualified in IT.
It seems that unemployment doesn't discriminate on qualifications. I have a good degree from a good university, and I'm struggling as much as the IT man and my hairy friend. The economy is so sluggish that pretty well all aspects of the working world have been touched and those with little or no experience (primarily the young) are suffering the most.
Today is my day five - five out of five for this week, and I still haven't heard from the big three. The companies I've applied for jobs for always send an email with a yay or nay, so I know that I'm still waiting, it's not as if they won't ever get back to me. It appears that I will be stuck in this state of suspended animation for a little longer.
So what's my solution? Well I have no choice but to target next week as being 'the big one' and come Monday, zero week (now zero fortnight) will resume...
That guess is turning out to be, well, for want of a better word, wrong.
Let's have a brief recap:
Day one saw me employed in a little physical labour as I packed up my friends' flat. When I say employed, I mean voluntarily, of course...
On day two I hit the bottom of the pit of despair as I came to terms with the fact I might never hear back from these people.
Day three provided light entertainment when the BBC thought they would publish poor sensationalist fiction instead of journalism (if you read just one more of my posts, I would go for that one).
Day four saw me leap out of the pit of despair and I decided to branch out and apply for a different brand of jobs - a job isn't for life (though some are just for Christmas).
And here we are at the end of the week - the week I had thought would bear some fruit in my 6-month-and-counting job search. So far, not so good.
I may have thrown in the towel a little and started looking for jobs that might not be my first choice, but I'm still holding out the hope that I can get a breakthrough. This may come on Monday when I have my meeting (see day three), it may not come for months.
What really annoys me is that I know how good I am and, though I hate to quote the article about my hairy friend again (at the point I'd just like to say he is not my friend, I'm merely being ironic) the quality of journalism in that article is, quite frankly, poor. I don't care that he has his window open in his flat - if he has his window open in the middle of a cold snap in February, he can clearly afford high heating bills and his economic situation isn't as bleak as we're made to believe. This is mindless drivel meant to stir emotions for a man that, if he shaved his large beard off, would stand a much better chance at getting a job. Ms BBC Journalist: please don't treat me like an idiot, because though I am unemployed, stupid, I am most definitely not.
But back to my hairy friend for a moment: he's having sleepless nights and he doesn't smile very often - he's been out of work two years. If you're looking for someone who should be downbeat with their confidence dashed against some metaphorical rocks, may I direct you to the Manchester man who has been turned down from 1,500 jobs. Ouch. Our hairy friend has some poor A levels, according to the article; this guy is qualified in IT.
It seems that unemployment doesn't discriminate on qualifications. I have a good degree from a good university, and I'm struggling as much as the IT man and my hairy friend. The economy is so sluggish that pretty well all aspects of the working world have been touched and those with little or no experience (primarily the young) are suffering the most.
Today is my day five - five out of five for this week, and I still haven't heard from the big three. The companies I've applied for jobs for always send an email with a yay or nay, so I know that I'm still waiting, it's not as if they won't ever get back to me. It appears that I will be stuck in this state of suspended animation for a little longer.
So what's my solution? Well I have no choice but to target next week as being 'the big one' and come Monday, zero week (now zero fortnight) will resume...
Thursday, 16 February 2012
Day Four: Outside the Box
So far zero week wasn't going as I might have hoped it would. Days one, two and three had not given me too much to whoop about: I'd packed my friends off to a new life a couple of hours away, I'd got upset, and I'd charged up the roflcopter after an unintentionally funny BBC article.
Not that I'm ever one to give up, but we're more than halfway through the week and I've not heard so much as a squeak from any of the big three applications I'm waiting on. I'm starting to think that this week might not be the 'zero hour' I wished it would be.
By the end of yesterday I was getting sick of waiting - it is all I ever seem to do these days and so I tried to look into making my own opportunities. I followed up on something I'd been working on and managed to arrange a meeting with someone for next week. If it comes off it will be brilliant, amazing and by far and away the break I've been hoping for.
I'm not giving up on these other jobs - if I got even as much as a phone interview I'd be made up, but currently my time is much better served working on other things. If nothing else, it kills time waiting. Now like my hairy friend from yesterday's post, I could play my games and watch my DVDs because let's face it, that is going to get me a job a lot faster. Oh no wait, it won't. I'm going to have to start being a little more proactive about it. If I'm not getting the jobs I'm currently applying for, it's time to change tack.
These days a career isn't for life so it doesn't matter if I do thirty different jobs because versatility is becoming the order of the day far more than brand loyalty ever was. Employers want to see transferable skills - to be honest I thought I'd covered that with the page-turning stories that I could come up with from some of the jobs and opportunities I've done over the years, but maybe some people don't enjoy hearing about the lady who decided she would get completely changed on an Italian bus and would prefer to hear about my extensive copy-writing experience.
Oh well. After the torment and confidence deflation of Tuesday afternoon, I've been looking for alternative careers, sorry jobs. The trouble I have is that I'm a fidget-y person: I can't sit still and I hate offices. I like meeting new people and stretching my legs, not sitting in a poor-erganomic chair in an office that's either too hot or too cold.
I think I've found a solution. Then again this is always my problem. I think I have the answer and then I start to plan steps two, three and thirty-five, before I have successfully passed step one. This is an area I have absolutely no experience in, but I love a challenge - who doesn't!?
This is proving to be rather a good distraction from zero hour...
Not that I'm ever one to give up, but we're more than halfway through the week and I've not heard so much as a squeak from any of the big three applications I'm waiting on. I'm starting to think that this week might not be the 'zero hour' I wished it would be.
By the end of yesterday I was getting sick of waiting - it is all I ever seem to do these days and so I tried to look into making my own opportunities. I followed up on something I'd been working on and managed to arrange a meeting with someone for next week. If it comes off it will be brilliant, amazing and by far and away the break I've been hoping for.
I'm not giving up on these other jobs - if I got even as much as a phone interview I'd be made up, but currently my time is much better served working on other things. If nothing else, it kills time waiting. Now like my hairy friend from yesterday's post, I could play my games and watch my DVDs because let's face it, that is going to get me a job a lot faster. Oh no wait, it won't. I'm going to have to start being a little more proactive about it. If I'm not getting the jobs I'm currently applying for, it's time to change tack.
These days a career isn't for life so it doesn't matter if I do thirty different jobs because versatility is becoming the order of the day far more than brand loyalty ever was. Employers want to see transferable skills - to be honest I thought I'd covered that with the page-turning stories that I could come up with from some of the jobs and opportunities I've done over the years, but maybe some people don't enjoy hearing about the lady who decided she would get completely changed on an Italian bus and would prefer to hear about my extensive copy-writing experience.
Oh well. After the torment and confidence deflation of Tuesday afternoon, I've been looking for alternative careers, sorry jobs. The trouble I have is that I'm a fidget-y person: I can't sit still and I hate offices. I like meeting new people and stretching my legs, not sitting in a poor-erganomic chair in an office that's either too hot or too cold.
I think I've found a solution. Then again this is always my problem. I think I have the answer and then I start to plan steps two, three and thirty-five, before I have successfully passed step one. This is an area I have absolutely no experience in, but I love a challenge - who doesn't!?
This is proving to be rather a good distraction from zero hour...
Wednesday, 15 February 2012
Day Three: My Palpably Downbeat Mood
So after a fruitless day one and a fruitless and emotional day two, day three crashed into being at the same time as new unemployment statistics came out. My 'zero hour' week was turning out to be quite a rollercoaster. I wrote a blog post a while ago about an increase in unemployment to the tune of 118,000. This time the stats aren't as drastic, but 48,000 more people are out of work.
What I found more interesting when I discovered this unhappy news was a feature on the BBC News website about two woeful unemployed people:
Their downbeat mood is palpable: a smile is rare, and their softly spoken voices convey a lack of confidence and hope after years of sitting on the subs' bench.
Woh. Serious stuff. I have several problems with this as an opening sentence:
1. It is overly emotive.
2. It panders to the whims of the unemployed.
3. The football metaphor makes my skin crawl.
After the journalist introduces the protagonist lighting his 'roll up cigarette' they proceed to write this:
The window is ajar and a crisp cool breeze forces its way through, blowing the curtain into the side table.
Woh. WOH.
This is not poor detective fiction. You expect to see the sentence carry on thus:
The smoke from the private detective's [aforementioned] roll-up cigarette curls through the air, disappearing into the atmosphere like his long-lost optimism. He carefully opens the dusty case file...
At this moment in time some kids that are down with the other kids would say 'lol'.
Lol.
It seems that whatever the unemployed gentleman was smoking, the journalist has given it a couple of puffs as well and created what it an incredibly conceited piece of writing. Unfortunately the result of it all, in trying to make it more emotive than, well it is, means that I do not sympathise or even empathise with the unemployed roll-ups man. He's played his games several times, he's watched all his DVDs three or four times, and he still doesn't have a job.
I am unemployed like him; I keep myself busy by, I dunno, blogging; I'm also a handy soul and have a number of low-earning business enterprises that keep me active: it's not difficult to do. Though games and DVDs are a nice option, I think that looking for jobs and opportunities has to take priority.
What I found more interesting when I discovered this unhappy news was a feature on the BBC News website about two woeful unemployed people:
Their downbeat mood is palpable: a smile is rare, and their softly spoken voices convey a lack of confidence and hope after years of sitting on the subs' bench.
Woh. Serious stuff. I have several problems with this as an opening sentence:
1. It is overly emotive.
2. It panders to the whims of the unemployed.
3. The football metaphor makes my skin crawl.
After the journalist introduces the protagonist lighting his 'roll up cigarette' they proceed to write this:
The window is ajar and a crisp cool breeze forces its way through, blowing the curtain into the side table.
Woh. WOH.
This is not poor detective fiction. You expect to see the sentence carry on thus:
The smoke from the private detective's [aforementioned] roll-up cigarette curls through the air, disappearing into the atmosphere like his long-lost optimism. He carefully opens the dusty case file...
At this moment in time some kids that are down with the other kids would say 'lol'.
Lol.
It seems that whatever the unemployed gentleman was smoking, the journalist has given it a couple of puffs as well and created what it an incredibly conceited piece of writing. Unfortunately the result of it all, in trying to make it more emotive than, well it is, means that I do not sympathise or even empathise with the unemployed roll-ups man. He's played his games several times, he's watched all his DVDs three or four times, and he still doesn't have a job.
I am unemployed like him; I keep myself busy by, I dunno, blogging; I'm also a handy soul and have a number of low-earning business enterprises that keep me active: it's not difficult to do. Though games and DVDs are a nice option, I think that looking for jobs and opportunities has to take priority.
Anyway after reading about my fellow-unemployed bums, I checked my emails. Just the four. None of them were interesting.
Wednesdays are busy days for me as I have 'domestic duties' to occupy myself with. To be honest it helps me take my mind off the waiting. So as I embark upon my domestic duties part II, I hope that there will be an interesting email waiting in my inbox when I return.
My optimism hasn't quite evaporated just yet...
Wednesdays are busy days for me as I have 'domestic duties' to occupy myself with. To be honest it helps me take my mind off the waiting. So as I embark upon my domestic duties part II, I hope that there will be an interesting email waiting in my inbox when I return.
My optimism hasn't quite evaporated just yet...
Tuesday, 14 February 2012
Day Two: The Pit of Despair
So with zero hour in full swing and day one of 'the week that could change my life' proving fruitless, I threw myself into day two by having a lie-in. I was recovering a little from hauling boxes about the previous day and so by the time I'd breakfasted and done a few little jobs that didn't require a computer, it was 11'o'clock.
I logged onto my emails: six new messages. I decided I would look at some other things while I worked up the courage to see whether any of the emails were 'interesting'. I checked some job sites (nothing there), I checked Facebook (one new notification that I soon dealt with), I checked to see if anything was happening in the world (it wasn't). I was ready. I checked my emails... No. Nothing of interest. I deleted four emails straight away - I don't know if these companies have been informed of the employment status, but I have no money to spend on 'the latest fashions' and even with 'massive reductions' I'm not going to shell our for TV boxsets.
Of the two remaining emails, one was from a company I submit daily surveys for on what I watch on TV (quite a lot these days considering I'm not employed). The other email was the source of great frustration following some logo design thing that I'd agreed to give feedback on with my church. I didn't necessarily think I would be giving my feedback and then having it completely ignored, but you never know, people may want to come to our church given the fact the logo looks like a clover leaf - there's always something refreshing in having inadvertent symbols of luck advertising religious institutions.
So far day two was going just as day one did, but this time I had no diversion in the afternoon to keep me occupied. No worries. My afternoon took on quite a different theme that more than kept me occupied. You see I have a deadline for another application I'm filling in - it's next Monday and after today, I haven't got a free day to do it in. My trouble is I'm not motivated. Until I get closure from the applications that are currently pending, I don't feel I can spend time on a new appliction when my head's elsewhere.
Someone close to me tried to do some motivating. It went a little along the lines of 'you're the rank outsider, so apply for this new job because you're more likely to get it.' Now I love tough love as much as the next person, but this particular breed sent me into a tearful, daytime telly-induced mope that lasted several hours.
Now I know I'm the rank outsider for the aforementioned jobs, but until I get closure, I can never move on from the thought that I might hear something positive. Maybe it's because I'm a hopeless optimist, maybe it's because I'm fervently hoping against all odds that I hear something from just one of these companies. If I don't, I have to admit defeat and as this other application is for a position starting in June, I have to get something as a stop-gap in the meantime and that's a whole other kettle of fish I know very little about.
Anyway, I found something to do with my afternoon, it just made me miserable.
I logged onto my emails: six new messages. I decided I would look at some other things while I worked up the courage to see whether any of the emails were 'interesting'. I checked some job sites (nothing there), I checked Facebook (one new notification that I soon dealt with), I checked to see if anything was happening in the world (it wasn't). I was ready. I checked my emails... No. Nothing of interest. I deleted four emails straight away - I don't know if these companies have been informed of the employment status, but I have no money to spend on 'the latest fashions' and even with 'massive reductions' I'm not going to shell our for TV boxsets.
Of the two remaining emails, one was from a company I submit daily surveys for on what I watch on TV (quite a lot these days considering I'm not employed). The other email was the source of great frustration following some logo design thing that I'd agreed to give feedback on with my church. I didn't necessarily think I would be giving my feedback and then having it completely ignored, but you never know, people may want to come to our church given the fact the logo looks like a clover leaf - there's always something refreshing in having inadvertent symbols of luck advertising religious institutions.
So far day two was going just as day one did, but this time I had no diversion in the afternoon to keep me occupied. No worries. My afternoon took on quite a different theme that more than kept me occupied. You see I have a deadline for another application I'm filling in - it's next Monday and after today, I haven't got a free day to do it in. My trouble is I'm not motivated. Until I get closure from the applications that are currently pending, I don't feel I can spend time on a new appliction when my head's elsewhere.
Someone close to me tried to do some motivating. It went a little along the lines of 'you're the rank outsider, so apply for this new job because you're more likely to get it.' Now I love tough love as much as the next person, but this particular breed sent me into a tearful, daytime telly-induced mope that lasted several hours.
Now I know I'm the rank outsider for the aforementioned jobs, but until I get closure, I can never move on from the thought that I might hear something positive. Maybe it's because I'm a hopeless optimist, maybe it's because I'm fervently hoping against all odds that I hear something from just one of these companies. If I don't, I have to admit defeat and as this other application is for a position starting in June, I have to get something as a stop-gap in the meantime and that's a whole other kettle of fish I know very little about.
Anyway, I found something to do with my afternoon, it just made me miserable.
Monday, 13 February 2012
Day One: Genesis
In honour of the fact that this blog may be defunct at the end of this week, I'm going to give you a daily breakdown of what happened and whether I have heard anything from my potential employers. If you're wondering what the context to this is, you might want to look at my musings on zero hour.
So early this morning I was in Tesco doing the weekly shop - the earlier the better. I like Monday mornings in Tesco - I don't like them when I first wake up, but it means I can hit the ground running. My phone goes on nice and early to receive calls from anyone who's interested in me (or who wants me to claim back my non-existent PPI).
I was back home at half nine and ready to kick start the day when my phone rang. Who is it? Who is it? Oh, it's my friend. No worries, I was kind of expecting that. He and his wife are moving and I said I'd go and help pack with them. That was my afternoon taken care of.
I put my computer on and looked to see if I'd had any emails. No, well not from anyone interesting or rather who wanted to offer me a job. I blogged for a little while and did some bits of admin that needed seeing to. I whiled away the morning in that vein and soon found it was lunchtime.
When I work I like to work at big projects for big amounts of time. Because of this I tend to do my most complex work in an afternoon, leaving me to mop up whatever's left in the morning. This is what I found myself doing today - killing time. I tried to run all the little jobs together so that I could have something to show for myself at lunchtime.
I ended up stockpiling posts for my other blogs. Well it'll save me some time later on when hopefully I am in full-time employment...
So after lunch I went over to my friends' flat. I cleared out cupboards, cleaned the cupboards, packed bags of clothes, dealt with some washing, emptied drawers, packed up boxes, got in a mess with parcel tape, shifted all the boxes around, drank tea, threw away a lot of rubbish.
Handy Hannah indeed.
It's not most people's idea of fun and I won't be taking cleaning up as a day job, but it needed to be done and I'll do anything for my friends. To be honest it was nice to go and spend an afternoon away from my computer waiting for emails to come in. Now that it is 'zero hour' - the week where anything could happen - it's nice to take your mind off thinking about it.
I came home and turned my computer on. I logged onto my emails. There were four new messages in my inbox. What can they possibly be!? Three were offering me 'great deals' on a variety of exciting things. The other one was a reply from a friend.
No joy today. In the words of Noddy - we'll see what tomorrow brings...
So early this morning I was in Tesco doing the weekly shop - the earlier the better. I like Monday mornings in Tesco - I don't like them when I first wake up, but it means I can hit the ground running. My phone goes on nice and early to receive calls from anyone who's interested in me (or who wants me to claim back my non-existent PPI).
I was back home at half nine and ready to kick start the day when my phone rang. Who is it? Who is it? Oh, it's my friend. No worries, I was kind of expecting that. He and his wife are moving and I said I'd go and help pack with them. That was my afternoon taken care of.
I put my computer on and looked to see if I'd had any emails. No, well not from anyone interesting or rather who wanted to offer me a job. I blogged for a little while and did some bits of admin that needed seeing to. I whiled away the morning in that vein and soon found it was lunchtime.
When I work I like to work at big projects for big amounts of time. Because of this I tend to do my most complex work in an afternoon, leaving me to mop up whatever's left in the morning. This is what I found myself doing today - killing time. I tried to run all the little jobs together so that I could have something to show for myself at lunchtime.
I ended up stockpiling posts for my other blogs. Well it'll save me some time later on when hopefully I am in full-time employment...
So after lunch I went over to my friends' flat. I cleared out cupboards, cleaned the cupboards, packed bags of clothes, dealt with some washing, emptied drawers, packed up boxes, got in a mess with parcel tape, shifted all the boxes around, drank tea, threw away a lot of rubbish.
Handy Hannah indeed.
It's not most people's idea of fun and I won't be taking cleaning up as a day job, but it needed to be done and I'll do anything for my friends. To be honest it was nice to go and spend an afternoon away from my computer waiting for emails to come in. Now that it is 'zero hour' - the week where anything could happen - it's nice to take your mind off thinking about it.
I came home and turned my computer on. I logged onto my emails. There were four new messages in my inbox. What can they possibly be!? Three were offering me 'great deals' on a variety of exciting things. The other one was a reply from a friend.
No joy today. In the words of Noddy - we'll see what tomorrow brings...
Sunday, 12 February 2012
Zero Hour
Last week I put my cards on the table and told you that I had plenty of opportunities and jobs that I'd applied for and plenty more in the pipeline if the current ones didn't work out. This is, in theory, a good thing and though the progress I've been making hasn't born fruit yet, it is still progress nonetheless.
By my calculations, however, this week will be zero week, but you can't really say zero week, so it's just a very long zero hour. Zero hour, for those who don't know, is the time when the clock ticks down to zero and something happens. I think it's a military phrase in origin and signals the time that an operation is due to start. But anyway, this week will be my zero hour.
I say that because I think that is when I'll find out about the majority of the current pending applications I have at the moment. There aren't too many of them, I count three off the top of my head, but they're the ones I really want - as in really, really want.
If feels like everything has so far been ticking down to this moment: the two near-misses with the phone interviews and the long hours spent waiting for emails back. I really feel like this week could be make it or break it in terms of getting my dream job anytime soon.
Yesterday I pondered the idea of righteous anger when it comes to a potential employer saying they'll call you back and then they never do. In it I mentioned my next zero hour - the really serious one - the fact that I told the Student Loans Company I would get a job by the next financial year. You see they're going to start taking back the money they lent to me because 1. I'm not on the dole and 2. I don't have a job. To them I literally do not exist.
Anyway I assured them I'd be in employment by then and so I've set myself a deadline that isn't that far away. When I turn my light off at night and lie down in bed this niggling doubt that I won't have a job by then does seep into my mind like the darkness. As a general rule I don't let it affect me and and instead set myself intermediary zero hours, only for them to pass by with little result.
But I'm sure this one is going to be different. It has to be different, because if I get rejected from the jobs I have currently applied for, I doubt I will be in a position to apply, have an interview, and take on something before my deadline of early April.
So readers, fellow bloggers in the blogosphere, this is it. We're about to count down to zero hour, and if nothing happens in the next week, or even the week after, then the next zero hour I count down to will be a whole lot more serious.
By my calculations, however, this week will be zero week, but you can't really say zero week, so it's just a very long zero hour. Zero hour, for those who don't know, is the time when the clock ticks down to zero and something happens. I think it's a military phrase in origin and signals the time that an operation is due to start. But anyway, this week will be my zero hour.
I say that because I think that is when I'll find out about the majority of the current pending applications I have at the moment. There aren't too many of them, I count three off the top of my head, but they're the ones I really want - as in really, really want.
If feels like everything has so far been ticking down to this moment: the two near-misses with the phone interviews and the long hours spent waiting for emails back. I really feel like this week could be make it or break it in terms of getting my dream job anytime soon.
Yesterday I pondered the idea of righteous anger when it comes to a potential employer saying they'll call you back and then they never do. In it I mentioned my next zero hour - the really serious one - the fact that I told the Student Loans Company I would get a job by the next financial year. You see they're going to start taking back the money they lent to me because 1. I'm not on the dole and 2. I don't have a job. To them I literally do not exist.
Anyway I assured them I'd be in employment by then and so I've set myself a deadline that isn't that far away. When I turn my light off at night and lie down in bed this niggling doubt that I won't have a job by then does seep into my mind like the darkness. As a general rule I don't let it affect me and and instead set myself intermediary zero hours, only for them to pass by with little result.
But I'm sure this one is going to be different. It has to be different, because if I get rejected from the jobs I have currently applied for, I doubt I will be in a position to apply, have an interview, and take on something before my deadline of early April.
So readers, fellow bloggers in the blogosphere, this is it. We're about to count down to zero hour, and if nothing happens in the next week, or even the week after, then the next zero hour I count down to will be a whole lot more serious.
Saturday, 11 February 2012
Should I get cross if someone says they'll call me, and they never do?
I want to make it clear I'm not talking about a gentleman that said those famous ill-fated words: I'll call you, but with no intention do follow through on his throwaway sentence. I am instead talking about one of the most frustrating situations for job seekers - the joy of someone getting back to you and saying they like what you do, only for them to completely ignore you afterwards.
Do I have the right to get cross if they say they'll call me and never do? If they say they'll email me something, but have no real interest in contacting me ever again? If they build my hopes up only to dash them again when I never hear another word from them?
I realise that employers are busy, and I'm not the only one to apply for the position. I might not even be applying for a position so there's even less reason for them to get back to me. Initial contact isn't something that I have 'beef' with (as the kids on the street say). If I never hear anything after applying for a job, or sending something a little unsolicited, then I never get my hopes up in the first place.
What really gets me is when someone contacts me, shows an interest in me and my work, says they'll contact me again, but never do. There is something manipulative about keeping a potential employee at the end of a piece of string like that. I'll get you interested about the job we're offering, leave you hanging for a couple of weeks, and then call you to offer you something meagre.
This is a best-case scenario. There have been times I was offered a nugget, when there was really only a crumb on offer - a crumb I had to take. But more often than that, I never hear from these people ever again.
So do I have the right to get angry? I realise that these people are all busy, they've got their own jobs to do without having to deal with me and my CV. Most recruiters in small companies aren't recruiters in their day-job so can't give all their time and effort to it. Still I think they should give a second thought to the people they're rejecting and not telling. I would much rather know if my CV had been put in the bin rather than stay in the state of umeployed limbo, waiting for an answer.
I know if I haven't got a job by April, I'm going to have to bite the bullet and get any old job from any old agency. But what happens if there are still jobs applications out there in the stratosphere? Do I wait or do I just go and get a mind-numbing office job because I can't be assured of anything? But what happens if someone contacts me after I've got a mind-numbing office job and gone through the rigmarole of signing contracts? What happens if my ideal employer won't let me work my notice with my less-than-ideal employer?
I don't know. I just don't know.
It's not like it's a hard problem to solve. I was taught how to do a mail merge at high school - it wouldn't be difficult to send everyone that letter, or to save on costs, that email that we scan for the 'unfortunately' and bin afterwards.
I do appreciate that people are busy and have lives of their own, but if I can understand this and act sensitively as a result, surely they can do the same for me. I've been unemployed for about six months now and haven't heard back from dozens of applications and CVs I've sent. Fair enough. Some websites say that if you haven't heard in x amount of time, then, we're sorry, but it's a no. I can deal with this. What I really struggle with is when someone calls you full of enthusiasm and give you the impression you're on the hotlist, but that time is the first and only time you ever hear from them.
Ouch. It hurts.
Do I have the right to get cross if they say they'll call me and never do? If they say they'll email me something, but have no real interest in contacting me ever again? If they build my hopes up only to dash them again when I never hear another word from them?
I realise that employers are busy, and I'm not the only one to apply for the position. I might not even be applying for a position so there's even less reason for them to get back to me. Initial contact isn't something that I have 'beef' with (as the kids on the street say). If I never hear anything after applying for a job, or sending something a little unsolicited, then I never get my hopes up in the first place.
What really gets me is when someone contacts me, shows an interest in me and my work, says they'll contact me again, but never do. There is something manipulative about keeping a potential employee at the end of a piece of string like that. I'll get you interested about the job we're offering, leave you hanging for a couple of weeks, and then call you to offer you something meagre.
This is a best-case scenario. There have been times I was offered a nugget, when there was really only a crumb on offer - a crumb I had to take. But more often than that, I never hear from these people ever again.
So do I have the right to get angry? I realise that these people are all busy, they've got their own jobs to do without having to deal with me and my CV. Most recruiters in small companies aren't recruiters in their day-job so can't give all their time and effort to it. Still I think they should give a second thought to the people they're rejecting and not telling. I would much rather know if my CV had been put in the bin rather than stay in the state of umeployed limbo, waiting for an answer.
I know if I haven't got a job by April, I'm going to have to bite the bullet and get any old job from any old agency. But what happens if there are still jobs applications out there in the stratosphere? Do I wait or do I just go and get a mind-numbing office job because I can't be assured of anything? But what happens if someone contacts me after I've got a mind-numbing office job and gone through the rigmarole of signing contracts? What happens if my ideal employer won't let me work my notice with my less-than-ideal employer?
I don't know. I just don't know.
It's not like it's a hard problem to solve. I was taught how to do a mail merge at high school - it wouldn't be difficult to send everyone that letter, or to save on costs, that email that we scan for the 'unfortunately' and bin afterwards.
I do appreciate that people are busy and have lives of their own, but if I can understand this and act sensitively as a result, surely they can do the same for me. I've been unemployed for about six months now and haven't heard back from dozens of applications and CVs I've sent. Fair enough. Some websites say that if you haven't heard in x amount of time, then, we're sorry, but it's a no. I can deal with this. What I really struggle with is when someone calls you full of enthusiasm and give you the impression you're on the hotlist, but that time is the first and only time you ever hear from them.
Ouch. It hurts.
Friday, 10 February 2012
Let's Get Digital, Digital!
I'm currently blogging on the internet. When I was growing up, the idea of 'blogging on the internet' made about as much sense of 'Garfunkeling on the sideboard'. Times change and have changed a lot even in the last ten years. This hasn't just changed how we socialise and how we buy our shopping, it has changed the way we look for jobs.
I was flung out into the jobs market after graduating this summer and I've been on the lookout for work ever since. I'll come clean - I don't know how people found jobs before the internet was used widely. Did they all buy Loot and circle the jobs they wanted to apply for? Just how did people find out about the positions that were on offer?
This question really flummoxes me and makes me realise another way I'm so dependent on the internet in my daily life. I don't have a smart phone and if I want to go on the internet, I'll do it on one of my two laptops (which are never too far from me). So when I log on in a morning I hit my top job sites and then I might find something I want to apply for and make an online application. If I don't understand something, I might drop someone an email. My job hunt would be dead in the water without the internet.
I don't know what I'd do without it. The internet has made me think big - I can apply to the big companies all over the world because I can hop over to their website and see what vacancies they have available. I can book a flight online and be ready for an interview the next day.
But it doesn't end there! If I apply for a job in PR and I have no idea what PR is, I wander over to Google and type in 'what is PR?' Assuming I like the sound of PR and apply for a job with a company, I can find out all about them on the internet. Then when I get an interview, I can search for likely questions and research the right kind of interview technique.
I may be able to find out everything about a job more easily, but with the internet they can find out more about me too. I have a showreel online, I blog, and have profiles on some of the world's favourite social networking sights. If someone wanted to find out about me, then all they need to do is pop over to Google.
There are a few down-points to this. Traffic. Though employers may be able to reach more people, in doing that fifty CVs per job can very quickly become hundreds. There is so much dross to sift through that you often have to be really special to make yourself noticed. If you've managed to corner the market in quirky, alternative self-selling then you might just hit all the right notes - that said because the internet makes things so transparent, it's very easy to go from sublime to the ridiculous with an unwise Tweet and some questionable Facebook photos.
The internet has made me so much more ambitious. These days I stand a much better chance of getting my CV onto the desk of someone important. The only problem is that everyone else does too...
Thursday, 9 February 2012
Is 'la vita' more 'dolce' on the other side?
I have an Italian degree so surely my best bet for finding jobs would be something that uses my language - translation, interpreting, teaching, manning Italian offices for British companies. Failing that, Italian companies are always looking for people that speak fluent English so I could always pop over there and sort myself out with something.
I'm going to take a moment to unpack the reasons I haven't done that.
If you think the job market is bad in the UK, it's so much worse in Italy. 8.9% of all Italians are unemployed, a few points of a percent ahead of the UK and where 22.3% of young people are unemployed over here, it's a whopping 25.4% over in Italy. This leads me to draw two conclusions - firstly that it's very unfair to fly over to Italy and waltz into a job that one of the 25.4% could have had; secondly, if I can't get a job here (where unemployment is lower), what chance do I think I have over there!?
I did try and get a job in Italy for my year abroad and then over the summer after I'd done my year at university. This was more than a little tricky - the only place that would have employed me decided my Italian wasn't good enough (this was before my year abroad). No matter how many CVs I sent, the tumbleweed kept rolling in (instead of the cash).
If you think about all the schemes that the British government are employing to get people working, for the majority, it shouldn't be hard to get at least something. Italy don't have that - they're too concerned with the sorry state of their country post-Berlusconi.
So the problem in Italy is the same on in the UK, but much worse - people don't get jobs, because there are no jobs to be had. Well there are if you want to answer phones all day, but not if you want to do something productive. In fact the job situation in Italy is so bad, that everyone is overworked and underpaid. I have some friends that were coping with the stress of working six days a week until their employees decided that it was high time they did a seven day week instead. Nice.
But there's no harm in working for a British multi-national in Italy, in fact I'd quite like that option. There are, again, two problems with that. The first problem is that the companies tend not to be media and broadcasting, the field I am very keen to get into. The second problem is that of bureaucracy. Taxes, bank accounts, Euros, housing contracts, car insurance... In theory it's possible to overcome it all, and it would be the second time I've done it as I've lived over there before, but doing it on my own is different from doing it with a bunch of friends for a grand total of a year...
The conclusion I have reached is that if I can't get anything over here, I'm going to approach the multi-nationals and see if I can work out there, but as I said yesterday, there are a few options open to me before I have to do that.
I'm going to take a moment to unpack the reasons I haven't done that.
If you think the job market is bad in the UK, it's so much worse in Italy. 8.9% of all Italians are unemployed, a few points of a percent ahead of the UK and where 22.3% of young people are unemployed over here, it's a whopping 25.4% over in Italy. This leads me to draw two conclusions - firstly that it's very unfair to fly over to Italy and waltz into a job that one of the 25.4% could have had; secondly, if I can't get a job here (where unemployment is lower), what chance do I think I have over there!?
I did try and get a job in Italy for my year abroad and then over the summer after I'd done my year at university. This was more than a little tricky - the only place that would have employed me decided my Italian wasn't good enough (this was before my year abroad). No matter how many CVs I sent, the tumbleweed kept rolling in (instead of the cash).
If you think about all the schemes that the British government are employing to get people working, for the majority, it shouldn't be hard to get at least something. Italy don't have that - they're too concerned with the sorry state of their country post-Berlusconi.
So the problem in Italy is the same on in the UK, but much worse - people don't get jobs, because there are no jobs to be had. Well there are if you want to answer phones all day, but not if you want to do something productive. In fact the job situation in Italy is so bad, that everyone is overworked and underpaid. I have some friends that were coping with the stress of working six days a week until their employees decided that it was high time they did a seven day week instead. Nice.
But there's no harm in working for a British multi-national in Italy, in fact I'd quite like that option. There are, again, two problems with that. The first problem is that the companies tend not to be media and broadcasting, the field I am very keen to get into. The second problem is that of bureaucracy. Taxes, bank accounts, Euros, housing contracts, car insurance... In theory it's possible to overcome it all, and it would be the second time I've done it as I've lived over there before, but doing it on my own is different from doing it with a bunch of friends for a grand total of a year...
The conclusion I have reached is that if I can't get anything over here, I'm going to approach the multi-nationals and see if I can work out there, but as I said yesterday, there are a few options open to me before I have to do that.
Wednesday, 8 February 2012
Cards on the Table
I blogged a wee while back about a phone interview I had. I called the post 'The Fake Sound of Progress' because although it was further than I'd ever got before, it was by no means a guarantee of a permenant position with a proper salary and other boring things like health insurance and a pension.
Guys, I didn't get the job. Unfortunately I didn't realise that what I was signing up for was essentially what I was signing up for. I thought it was a magazine internship and couldn't understand why there was so much stuff about TV on the application. It transpired that it was a magazine internship, but the six participants would be the subject of a reality show about the whole shebang. Coming to your screens on ITV2 before you can say The Only Way is Essex.
I would have done it - it would have been too good an opportunity to miss, but my communal living experiences are the subject of sitcoms and not reality TV - it would have certainly been interesting to watch.
Anyway they said they would contact me sometime last week if they wanted me to come for an interview/audition last weekend. They didn't do any of that so reality TV will have to wait for now.
But as one door closes another one opens, though at the moment I feel as if I'm in the midst of a Poirot and someone has just fired a gun, bringing every last person out of their rooms in the stock period house: all the doors open with a different face and a different possibility in each one.
I have a spreadsheet with all the things I've applied for - jobs and opportunities: I delete things I don't get and add in new things. There are three outstanding job applications - I just hope they are outstanding; one application for work experience; two existing pieces of work experience that I can dip into as often as I please; and two writing opportunities.
So that's everything outstanding.
I have great friends, familiy, and industry contacts that send me stuff my way, of which there are three more jobs I can apply for and one more opportunity for something beginning with writing. I also have numerous back-up plans and temp work to keep the wolf from the door.
There is just SO MUCH up for grabs!
I count 13 (minimum) things at the moment - 13 cards that I'm going to put on the table. Unlucky for some, I just hope one of them turns out to be the ace in the pack.
Guys, I didn't get the job. Unfortunately I didn't realise that what I was signing up for was essentially what I was signing up for. I thought it was a magazine internship and couldn't understand why there was so much stuff about TV on the application. It transpired that it was a magazine internship, but the six participants would be the subject of a reality show about the whole shebang. Coming to your screens on ITV2 before you can say The Only Way is Essex.
I would have done it - it would have been too good an opportunity to miss, but my communal living experiences are the subject of sitcoms and not reality TV - it would have certainly been interesting to watch.
Anyway they said they would contact me sometime last week if they wanted me to come for an interview/audition last weekend. They didn't do any of that so reality TV will have to wait for now.
But as one door closes another one opens, though at the moment I feel as if I'm in the midst of a Poirot and someone has just fired a gun, bringing every last person out of their rooms in the stock period house: all the doors open with a different face and a different possibility in each one.
I have a spreadsheet with all the things I've applied for - jobs and opportunities: I delete things I don't get and add in new things. There are three outstanding job applications - I just hope they are outstanding; one application for work experience; two existing pieces of work experience that I can dip into as often as I please; and two writing opportunities.
So that's everything outstanding.
I have great friends, familiy, and industry contacts that send me stuff my way, of which there are three more jobs I can apply for and one more opportunity for something beginning with writing. I also have numerous back-up plans and temp work to keep the wolf from the door.
There is just SO MUCH up for grabs!
I count 13 (minimum) things at the moment - 13 cards that I'm going to put on the table. Unlucky for some, I just hope one of them turns out to be the ace in the pack.
Monday, 6 February 2012
The Scottish Dilemma
I studied at university in Scotland. As a result I paid a mere £1,700 in tuition per year compared to my English counterparts studying in England who paid £3,000. That said I did study for four years and not three... I got quite a good deal really, though not as good as the Scottish students who paid diddly-squat.
I've already given my opinions on university and what I think of the fee rise, but now I'm going to delve a little deep into the problem with respect to Scotland.
Now from next year students in England studying at Scottish universities will pay, for the first time, the same as their friends studying in England - £9,000 a year. The Scottish students, however, will continue to pay nothing, nada, rien, zero, niente - you get the picture. I have a problem with this. I don't have a problem with the fee rise as I think it encourages people to really think before they commit to going to university, but I do have a problem with English students paying for what Scottish students get for free.
If there's one thing I noticed from studying in Soctland (and I want to stress that it wasn't like this for the majority), some Scottish students think they're owed a free university education. Many of them receive unconditional offers which often means they have obtained poor grades in comparison to their fellow-students south of the border. Many too have come to university solely because it's free and there's not much on offer for Scottish young people straight out of school.
Last year the Scottish government guaranteed funding for 2,300 more postgraduate places, a luxury not afforded to English students. On average Scottish students get better jobs and higher pay and the unemployment rate post-graduation in Scotland is 6.5%, 1% lower than that of English graduates.
There is some evidence of a slight migration - 1.9% more of employed graduates have looked for work outside of Scotland in 2009/10 than in 2008/09, with just 78.6% finding work in their native land. And though three years on a quarter of Scottish graduates are not in full time employment, the number is slightly lower than those for the UK in general.
What is interesting, is that the statistics for those who decided to go on to further study across the UK rests at 16%; the Scottish equivalent is nearly 20%. So maybe the reason Scottish graduates are getting better job is because they have better opportunities in higher education. If more English students had funding for postgraduate study, they might be able to earn more in a better job: because Scottish students can get funding, they do get funding.
It's not all rosy for Scotland though, but not where you'd expect it to be either. Scottish students have the highest drop-out rate - more than 1% more than in the UK in general; state-educated students are less likely to get into university if they are Scottish; 5% fewer students from poorer backgrounds have access to university places in Scotland than in the UK.
The drop-out rate can maybe be explained by saying that if they're not paying for tuition, there's no obligation to stay. The class issue, however, is more complex. Apparently, poor Scottish students receive less in maintenance grant and loan - up to £1,500 less than their English counterparts - poor you, it's not as if your education is free...
This year more than ever this gap between England and Scotland is going to become more visible. I can't see these statistics changing very much over time, but they don't reflect the personal impact on potential undergraduates in England sacrificing a degree on cost grounds, whilst there might be a person in Scotland who goes, though they don't really want to, because it's free.
There has been a slight change in the number of Scottish students applying to Scottish universities - falling by just over a percent. Compare this to a 5.6% drop in the number of English applications and a 15.1% drop in Northern Irish applications. Interestingly, 6% EU students, who will also pay nothing at Scottish universities, have decided to cash in their lot in the home of the brave and the land of the free (well free for some, anyway).
So what's my conclusion? Firstly, it isn't fair. I know it sounds petty and childish, but it isn't: it's the accident of birth rehashed in a different form. Maybe the reason English graduates aren't doing as well as Scottish graduates is because they haven't had the same opportunities. If I could sit and wait for my dream job I would, but come April I have assured the Student Loans Company I will be employed so that they can start taking their money back. If I have no job by then, I'm very sorry, but the temping agency it is and my dream job goes on a back-burner.
I don't begrudge Scottish students their opportunities, but when they make their decisions based solely on cost and boredom, taking the place of a hard-working English student instead, that makes me cross.
'I got an unconditional offer, so I didn't try in my last term of Highers. I passed, but only just.'
'I worked really hard to get a B and I was one mark off, and I still didn't get into the university I wanted - in Scotland.'
Oh.
Sometimes life isn't fair.
I've already given my opinions on university and what I think of the fee rise, but now I'm going to delve a little deep into the problem with respect to Scotland.
Now from next year students in England studying at Scottish universities will pay, for the first time, the same as their friends studying in England - £9,000 a year. The Scottish students, however, will continue to pay nothing, nada, rien, zero, niente - you get the picture. I have a problem with this. I don't have a problem with the fee rise as I think it encourages people to really think before they commit to going to university, but I do have a problem with English students paying for what Scottish students get for free.
If there's one thing I noticed from studying in Soctland (and I want to stress that it wasn't like this for the majority), some Scottish students think they're owed a free university education. Many of them receive unconditional offers which often means they have obtained poor grades in comparison to their fellow-students south of the border. Many too have come to university solely because it's free and there's not much on offer for Scottish young people straight out of school.
Last year the Scottish government guaranteed funding for 2,300 more postgraduate places, a luxury not afforded to English students. On average Scottish students get better jobs and higher pay and the unemployment rate post-graduation in Scotland is 6.5%, 1% lower than that of English graduates.
There is some evidence of a slight migration - 1.9% more of employed graduates have looked for work outside of Scotland in 2009/10 than in 2008/09, with just 78.6% finding work in their native land. And though three years on a quarter of Scottish graduates are not in full time employment, the number is slightly lower than those for the UK in general.
What is interesting, is that the statistics for those who decided to go on to further study across the UK rests at 16%; the Scottish equivalent is nearly 20%. So maybe the reason Scottish graduates are getting better job is because they have better opportunities in higher education. If more English students had funding for postgraduate study, they might be able to earn more in a better job: because Scottish students can get funding, they do get funding.
It's not all rosy for Scotland though, but not where you'd expect it to be either. Scottish students have the highest drop-out rate - more than 1% more than in the UK in general; state-educated students are less likely to get into university if they are Scottish; 5% fewer students from poorer backgrounds have access to university places in Scotland than in the UK.
The drop-out rate can maybe be explained by saying that if they're not paying for tuition, there's no obligation to stay. The class issue, however, is more complex. Apparently, poor Scottish students receive less in maintenance grant and loan - up to £1,500 less than their English counterparts - poor you, it's not as if your education is free...
This year more than ever this gap between England and Scotland is going to become more visible. I can't see these statistics changing very much over time, but they don't reflect the personal impact on potential undergraduates in England sacrificing a degree on cost grounds, whilst there might be a person in Scotland who goes, though they don't really want to, because it's free.
There has been a slight change in the number of Scottish students applying to Scottish universities - falling by just over a percent. Compare this to a 5.6% drop in the number of English applications and a 15.1% drop in Northern Irish applications. Interestingly, 6% EU students, who will also pay nothing at Scottish universities, have decided to cash in their lot in the home of the brave and the land of the free (well free for some, anyway).
So what's my conclusion? Firstly, it isn't fair. I know it sounds petty and childish, but it isn't: it's the accident of birth rehashed in a different form. Maybe the reason English graduates aren't doing as well as Scottish graduates is because they haven't had the same opportunities. If I could sit and wait for my dream job I would, but come April I have assured the Student Loans Company I will be employed so that they can start taking their money back. If I have no job by then, I'm very sorry, but the temping agency it is and my dream job goes on a back-burner.
I don't begrudge Scottish students their opportunities, but when they make their decisions based solely on cost and boredom, taking the place of a hard-working English student instead, that makes me cross.
'I got an unconditional offer, so I didn't try in my last term of Highers. I passed, but only just.'
'I worked really hard to get a B and I was one mark off, and I still didn't get into the university I wanted - in Scotland.'
Oh.
Sometimes life isn't fair.
Saturday, 4 February 2012
Desperate Housewife
I am going to share with you now one of my business ventures of the last week. This week has been good for me with Handy Hannah coming to the rescue on three occasions: in the guise of an Italian tutor, a remote copy writer and as a babysitter. Hooray! I'm off to blow my earnings on Amazon.
But if being a bit of a handy-woman has taught me something, it's that I don't really enjoy being a handy-woman very much. Ok so the tutoring and writing is right up my proverbial street, but the babysitting, well it wasn't strictly babysitting so much as damage control and living the life of a desperate housewife for two-and-a-half days.
Buckle your seatbelts - this one's a rough ride.
I arrive on Sunday evening to take the baton from the previous babysitter who has managed to get the kids in bed. My job is more involved than hers as I'm going to be staying with these kids and being both Mummy and Daddy for Monday and Tuesday. Fortunately when i arrived on Sunday evening they were asleep. I say they, I mean one of them was. One popped down to say hello, I popped her back off to bed to say goodbye and go to sleep.
I had to get used to my surroundings as I was to be staying there and meeting the kids' undreasonable demands of 'I want this now!' - if I didn't know there 'this' was, then you could say I would have fallen at the first hurdle...
So I opened all the drawers and rooted in all the cupboards. I knew I had to feed myself (the kids were taken care of for the most part) so I wanted to know what kind of fridge bingo I'd been left with. Well for a start most of it was off. Bleurgh. I managed to collate some items of food that were only recently out-of-date and got myself a toasted bagel. Which the dog ate half of when I wasn't looking.
Oh.
It's not going all to well.
Monday morning came and eventually the kids woke up and galvanised themselves. I got them downstairs for breakfast and ran into a problem. Older boy wanted nutella for breakfast. His mother wanted him to have cereal and an apple. I gave him a compromise. If he had cereal and an apple, then he could have nutella. Predictably he faffed and cried so much that there was no time for nutella. I hate it when that happens.
They were only five minutes late for school, which considering my time management is certainly an achievement. And when I picked them up at the end of the day I thought that we were in for a nice, relaxed afternoon. I didn't and we weren't. We had nutella-gate all over again and I caved for the sake of diplomacy. The kids' tutor came and though she was only supposed to stay for and hour and fifteen minutes, because of all the faffing and, again, tears, she ended up leaving an hour and fifteen minutes after she should have left.
The kids weren't bathed or fed.
I remedied that and got the wee lassie in bed, leaving the boy to get ready himself. He comes out later and tells me he's not feeling well. Yeah, probably because he ate so much nutella before. I said sleep was the best cure. He said he wanted to go back to the bathroom and that he was having, ahem, bowel issues. He spent another twenty minutes on the loo and only gave up after I stood outside the door and told him I wouldn't go away until he came out. At that point he told me about the fact he might have pooped in the bath. way to go - tell me when it's dried on. He went off to bed and I caught a glimpse of his iPod in his hand. Hang on! Has he just spent the last twenty minutes on his iPod!? I prised it off him, safe in the knowledge that he'd played me like a fiddle.
Tuesday morning was easier and things resolved themselves a lot faster than the previous day. Still this time we were ten minutes late for school. No, I don't understand it either. So that evening after school we were going to the gym for swimming lessons. When I say 'we', I mean I was ferrying these kids and staying with them whilst they had their swimming lessons.
We dumped out stuff in the cafe and got a drink. The kids made quite a scene when the boy took what the girl thought was the last cookie and then climbed all over the counter while I paid. We then sat down to do homework. Hold on. No pencils. The kids didn't think to bring any and I thought the world would end when I suggested they use pens.
Oh dear.
In fact nowhere in the gym could I find a pencil. Great. So time ticked on and I took the girl for her swimming lesson. When she was done I got them to choose what they wanted for tea. After an altercation with the boy - he wanted to choose from the adult menu, I thought that after a cooked dinner at school, a snack at home, and a cookie, he would be better with the kids' menu - we sat down for dinner. I say 'we' again, I really mean I cut up bits of sausage and picked up stray baked beans where I could. I then sent the boy for his swimming lesson so that I could keep an eye on his younger sister in the play area.
The lesson time came and went and half an hour after it finished, the boy came into the cafe in tears because I hadn't picked him up. I did feel awful, but in the instructions I was left, it quite clearly stated that the boy was more than capable of getting sorted on his own, and when he disappeared to check the time of his lesson before tea I was convinced he was more than capable of pulling a few stunts.
So we were late back and still had homework to do. If you thought there had been tears before, then there were more tears than ever. Both kids were knackered after running circles round me and they desperately wanted their mummy. In the midst of all that the dog ate a tissue and sicked it up again.
While I waited the parents to return home that evening, I decided that babysitting probably wasn't for me.
But if being a bit of a handy-woman has taught me something, it's that I don't really enjoy being a handy-woman very much. Ok so the tutoring and writing is right up my proverbial street, but the babysitting, well it wasn't strictly babysitting so much as damage control and living the life of a desperate housewife for two-and-a-half days.
Buckle your seatbelts - this one's a rough ride.
I arrive on Sunday evening to take the baton from the previous babysitter who has managed to get the kids in bed. My job is more involved than hers as I'm going to be staying with these kids and being both Mummy and Daddy for Monday and Tuesday. Fortunately when i arrived on Sunday evening they were asleep. I say they, I mean one of them was. One popped down to say hello, I popped her back off to bed to say goodbye and go to sleep.
I had to get used to my surroundings as I was to be staying there and meeting the kids' undreasonable demands of 'I want this now!' - if I didn't know there 'this' was, then you could say I would have fallen at the first hurdle...
So I opened all the drawers and rooted in all the cupboards. I knew I had to feed myself (the kids were taken care of for the most part) so I wanted to know what kind of fridge bingo I'd been left with. Well for a start most of it was off. Bleurgh. I managed to collate some items of food that were only recently out-of-date and got myself a toasted bagel. Which the dog ate half of when I wasn't looking.
Oh.
It's not going all to well.
Monday morning came and eventually the kids woke up and galvanised themselves. I got them downstairs for breakfast and ran into a problem. Older boy wanted nutella for breakfast. His mother wanted him to have cereal and an apple. I gave him a compromise. If he had cereal and an apple, then he could have nutella. Predictably he faffed and cried so much that there was no time for nutella. I hate it when that happens.
They were only five minutes late for school, which considering my time management is certainly an achievement. And when I picked them up at the end of the day I thought that we were in for a nice, relaxed afternoon. I didn't and we weren't. We had nutella-gate all over again and I caved for the sake of diplomacy. The kids' tutor came and though she was only supposed to stay for and hour and fifteen minutes, because of all the faffing and, again, tears, she ended up leaving an hour and fifteen minutes after she should have left.
The kids weren't bathed or fed.
I remedied that and got the wee lassie in bed, leaving the boy to get ready himself. He comes out later and tells me he's not feeling well. Yeah, probably because he ate so much nutella before. I said sleep was the best cure. He said he wanted to go back to the bathroom and that he was having, ahem, bowel issues. He spent another twenty minutes on the loo and only gave up after I stood outside the door and told him I wouldn't go away until he came out. At that point he told me about the fact he might have pooped in the bath. way to go - tell me when it's dried on. He went off to bed and I caught a glimpse of his iPod in his hand. Hang on! Has he just spent the last twenty minutes on his iPod!? I prised it off him, safe in the knowledge that he'd played me like a fiddle.
Tuesday morning was easier and things resolved themselves a lot faster than the previous day. Still this time we were ten minutes late for school. No, I don't understand it either. So that evening after school we were going to the gym for swimming lessons. When I say 'we', I mean I was ferrying these kids and staying with them whilst they had their swimming lessons.
We dumped out stuff in the cafe and got a drink. The kids made quite a scene when the boy took what the girl thought was the last cookie and then climbed all over the counter while I paid. We then sat down to do homework. Hold on. No pencils. The kids didn't think to bring any and I thought the world would end when I suggested they use pens.
Oh dear.
In fact nowhere in the gym could I find a pencil. Great. So time ticked on and I took the girl for her swimming lesson. When she was done I got them to choose what they wanted for tea. After an altercation with the boy - he wanted to choose from the adult menu, I thought that after a cooked dinner at school, a snack at home, and a cookie, he would be better with the kids' menu - we sat down for dinner. I say 'we' again, I really mean I cut up bits of sausage and picked up stray baked beans where I could. I then sent the boy for his swimming lesson so that I could keep an eye on his younger sister in the play area.
The lesson time came and went and half an hour after it finished, the boy came into the cafe in tears because I hadn't picked him up. I did feel awful, but in the instructions I was left, it quite clearly stated that the boy was more than capable of getting sorted on his own, and when he disappeared to check the time of his lesson before tea I was convinced he was more than capable of pulling a few stunts.
So we were late back and still had homework to do. If you thought there had been tears before, then there were more tears than ever. Both kids were knackered after running circles round me and they desperately wanted their mummy. In the midst of all that the dog ate a tissue and sicked it up again.
While I waited the parents to return home that evening, I decided that babysitting probably wasn't for me.
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