Job Search Optimisation

ANOTHER WEEK, another job applied for, another employer taking the piss....

I'm currently earning just over £7 an hour as a postman. It was a summer job that has turned into a permanent position. Far from being a custodian of people's hopes, dreams and love letters, I shove junkmail through 600 doors a day. A handwritten letter stands out like a beacon amongst all the dreary catalogues and pre-printed matter. I always had - and continue to have - the utmost respect for postal workers, but it is a soul-numbing job. So I continue scouring the classifieds and internet in the hope of finding something a bit more stimulating.

A Dundee company called MediaCo who specialise in internet copy writing were advertising for a copy writer/sub editor. It was the same position they'd advertised 14 months earlier. I'd sent in my CV then and didn't even receive an acknowledgement. So this time I telephoned them - the number on their website is an 0870 number which meant it cost me somewhere between 6 and 10 pence a minute from my non-BT landline - and spoke to the MD David Mills. Understandably, he couldn't recall my CV from 14 months earlier, but when I mentioned a couple of bullet points, such as my Daily Record connection, it seemed to ring some distant bells. But he still didn't seem very keen to welcome an application from me. Eventually, with the cost of our telephone conversation now well over a pound, I got him to agree to look at my CV (again) and, if he decided it didn't merit inviting me in for an interview, then he would offer me some constructive feedback. So I duly emailed my CV which, since I last posted here, now includes not just my stint as a postman but also a stretch working as an Assistant Producer on an episode of Sky TV's Ross Kemp on Gangs.(See for yourself by clicking on the link on the right)

Later that day, David sent me this email :

Thanks for calling and sending your CV.

I confess to being somewhat puzzled by your background. For example, one minute an adventure tour guide and next Features Editor of the Daily Record.

Can you fill in the blanks and clarify how things link together?

So not a very promising start. I sent this reply:

The "blanks" have been periods of either voluntary or involuntary unemployment(usually the former) during which I have either:
(a) travelled abroad
(b) written my autobiography
As for clarifying how things link together, I'm afraid the best I can come up with is Alan Bennett's definition of history: "It's just one [..] thing after another." No links, no five-year plans, just me working to live rather than living to work.....
Here, it seemed, was yet another small-minded, unimaginative employer who, if they weren't shocked by the inclusion of a photograph with my CV, seemed slightly traumatised by the fact my periods of employment didn't flow seamlessly together and that I'd once decided to travel abroad. So it was a pleasant surprise when later that day David emailed me to invite me in for a chat.

In a run-down part of Dundee - and trust me, that's saying something -MediaCo's office is the top floor of an unprepossessing former warehouse now grandly titled "Manhattan Works". There was no reception, never mind a receptionist, and after opening a door marked "Entrance" I found myself in a grey and noiseless open plan office peopled by earnest young men hunched in front of computer terminals. David emerged from his own glass office at the back and led me through another, similarly characterless and silent office(this one populated by even younger-looking staff) to a small conference room dominated by a whiteboard containing a spaghetti of hieroglyphics which apparently revealed some distant, dark secret of search engine optimisation(MediaCo's major USP).

The chat was amicable enough, with David even claiming the reason for his company's non-geographic phone number(i.e. 0870) was purely to prevent prospective clients being prejudiced by its Dundee location. There was no mention of the 1.5 p per minute profit 0870 numbers usually generate. He begrudgingly admitted he was impressed with my CV, but added cryptically that he thought I came across better in the flesh than on paper. He also seemed concerned that my "larger than life" character might clash with the sedate atmosphere of his office. I assured him that I could be as loud or quiet as the situation dictated, and was equally at home working in my own personal bubble as I was being the life and soul of the office. Then we talked about the kind of copy I'd be writing which was every bit as boring as I'd expected. We spent a lot of time discussing sheepskin coats on sale at the House of Bruar. Finally, despite acknowledging my experience as the Features Editor of a national newspaper and my stints as an English language teacher, he gave me a grammar and punctuation test.(The same thing happened when I went for an interview for a journalist's job at the Dundee Courier last year. I was eventually offered the job, but when I asked if I could think about it overnight, the Managing Editor looked as though I'd just called his mother a pox-ridden whore and said: "In 40 years, no-one's ever asked me if they could think about it." So the next day I decided to decline the offer.)

Meanwhile, back at MediaCo, David delivered the punchline: the job on offer paid £18,000. The hours were 9 to 6, Mon to Fri, with half an hour for lunch. There was the option of flexitime, i.e. starting at 8.30, 9 or 9.30 and finishing accordingly. And David went to great lengths to explain that if I was due to start at 9 but arrived at 9.05, I wouldn't be five minutes late, I'd be "25 minutes early". And there were strict controls on personal email and internet use.

So, just to clarify, the position was 45 hours a week in a drab, lifeless office without personal email or internet access in a shitty part of Dundee where there was nowhere to go for lunch and where all the shops had metal shutters. And I'd be writing mainly about sheepskin coats. And all this for less money than I was currently earning as a postman......