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......

Wanted: Someone Who Can Communicate In Plain English

PORING OVER the jobs classifieds in the Arbroath Herald, Dundee Courier and Aberdeen Press and Journal every Friday is an unremittingly depressing experience. It’s amazing how often the phrases “evening and weekend working required” and “minimum wage” crop up. Fortunately, light relief is provided with the occasional advert – usually placed by a council or educational establishment – which despite taking up many column inches with fancy slogans and font types, manages to avoid telling you what the job being advertised actually is.
Take this example, which was placed by Dundee University in today’s Courier:

Information and Communication Services
CAPS Project
Trainer/Project Assistant
Grade 5(£18,165 - £21,000)
Fixed term until 31 July 2008.

We are looking for someone with recent experience in organising and delivering training sessions. The University is working on implementation of the eProcurement Scotl@nd system and this is an exciting project. You will be computer literate, have excellent communication skills and the ability to work flexibly to achieve different tight deadlines and targets by prioritising your workload. You will be a proactive team member and use your initiative acting in a professional and ethical manner.
Further details and an application pack are available etc etc........

OK, can anyone tell me what the job actually is? It’s something to do with “information and communication services” and something called the “CAPS Project”, and you need to have “excellent communication skills”, and it’s an “exciting project”, but it doesn’t actually tell you what you would be doing. Continue wading through the treacly prose and you find further clues: you need to have “recent experience in organising and delivering training sessions.” Yes, but training sessions in what? First aid techniques? Basket-weaving? International semaphore etiquette? I thought recruitment adverts were designed to entice and intrigue potential talent. This one appeared designed to crush out any spark of interest in the reader.
Still, convinced that buried somewhere in this morass of corporate-speak could be the semblance of a job that was perfect for me – I’ve got a proven background in information, communication and training – I forced myself to type in the website address. What followed was like the scene out of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe when the heroes stumble into a strange, surreal and slightly scary world where nothing appears to make any sense:

This post has arisen due to a new exciting project – CAPS (Commitment & Advanced Procurement Service). The Project will combine commitment accounting with advanced procurement practices, in conjunction with the Scottish Executive’s eProcurement Scotl@nd system.
This Project aspires to:-
• Obtain Best Value for Money in our procurement of goods/services
• Provide Senior Management within the University with an accurate picture of committed funds over a period of time, to enable business planning and decision-making.
• Enable individual College/Departmental Heads to proactively manage their agreed budgetary allocations.
• Deliver greater efficiencies and unlocking of savings that can be redirected to front-line services in support of institutional teaching, research and commercial objectives.
• Achieve Superior Performance Status under the McClelland Review.
• Participate in collaborative procurement to a greater level.

Now I think what all of the above was trying to say was this:

Accountant wanted to help us manage our budgets a bit better.

So nothing to do with “information and communications” or “training” then.
As if being out of work and looking for a job isn’t bad enough, you have to put up with shit like this too.

From The Margins Of Society

SEASONAL FACTORY OPERATIVE, 8.30 – 4.30 Monday to Friday, that’s what the advert said. How difficult can packing smoked fish be? I filled in the application form. A week later, I got a phone call. Could I come down for an interview at 10.30 on Tuesday? Sure, see you then.
Five minutes into the interview, and oh, by the way, the girl with the showercap on her head says, all the factory operative jobs have been filled. Do you have any experience of hygiene procedures, because we thought we’d interview you for the hygiene supervisor’s job. The hours are eight at night till eight the next morning. Including the odd weekend. Interested?
So, let’s get this straight, you are interviewing me for a completely different job from the one which I applied for, with drastically different hours? Could you not have mentioned this on the phone?
Welcome to the margins of society. That’s where you end up as an unemployed person. It’s a buyers’ market out there. When it comes to recruitment practices, employers can get away with just about anything. I’ve previously been rejected by employers on the grounds of not being in possession of my English GCSE certificate from 1977; including a photograph with my CV; and asking if there was any possibility I could have my “10-minute, preliminary interview” on the phone, rather than spending time(two days) and money(£250) travelling to the other end of Britain.

REJECTED

I’ve also been rejected(for a job as an “explainer” at a local science centre) because I wasn’t available to work at weekends during the football season(their £5.31 an hour not being as attractive as the £16-an-hour I earn on Saturdays and Sundays as an amateur football referee), despite having wiped the floor with my job rivals with my presentation about the Stroop Effect and having stated clearly on my application form that I wasn’t available at weekends. (I eventually won a £750 out-of-court settlement from this employer after taking them to an Employment Tribunal on the grounds of age discrimination. A confidentiality clause and non-admission of liability means I can’t name them, but if any reader is concerned about their own application for similar-sounding jobs in the east of Scotland, feel free to email me and I’ll tell you who they are).
Meanwhile, back at the fish factory – R R Spink & Son of Arbroath, by the way – the dreary girl in the shower cap couldn’t even summon up the ability to proffer an apology for dragging me all the way down to this grim industrial estate under false pretences. She looked at me blankly, with not even a flicker of remorse, just the merest hint that she might be suffering some kind of mild brain seizure. (One indignant letter to the managing director later, and I’d received a full apology and a box of smoked salmon, trout and mackerel).

SKELETAL

And so to my local job centre, a veritable bastion of benevolence, sympathy and skeletal skagheads drowning in their shellsuits. This morning was my three-monthly interview, which consisted of an overweight, wrinkled-beyond-her-years clerk reading the details of my Jobseeker’s Agreement from her computer screen at me and me showing her a list of all the jobs I’d applied for recently(23 in total). I mentioned my experience at the fish factory to her. Didn’t they have a code of conduct for employers to follow when it came to recruiting staff? No, she said. They had very little contact with local employers. They dealt mainly with the dregs of society like me instead(okay, she didn’t say that exactly, but she might as well have). Nor could she tell me what the Plus in Jobcentre Plus was for.
While there, I’d printed off the details of a job. It was exactly the same job I’d applied for three months earlier. (I even had a copy of the original letter of application I’d written. I’d brought it and the list of other jobs I’d recently applied for with me to prove to the Jobcentre that I had actually been looking for work) The local butchers, Fleming and Sons, were looking for a van driver/salesman. Three months earlier, I’d bounced into their main shop looking as smart and enthusiastic as possible and handed in a letter and my CV to a bored-looking twentysomething sat behind the window of an office separate from the display of steaks and chicken thighs. I never received an acknowledgement, let alone an invitation to an interview. Back then, they’d advertised via the local paper and asked for CVs. Now they were advertising through Jobcentre Plus and wanted you to fill in an application form. What does this tell you? It tells me they must have previously got so many barely legible letters scrawled in brightly-coloured crayon – including one from the person who eventually lasted only three months in the job - that they had decided to make their own lives easier by filtering out the illiterates through Jobcentre Plus. Meanwhile, my beautifully-typed letter and lovingly-crafted CV had probably ended up wrapped around a leg of pork.

WORTHLESS

So I strode up the hill from the Jobcentre Plus to the butchers. It was only a short walk, but in that distance I spiralled down the evolutionary ladder from outgoing and confident adult to worthless piece of shit.
The bored-looking twentysomething wasn’t there, but a small, moustached man with a stony, battered-by-life expression on his face was serving an old lady a nice piece of rump. After she’d checked her change and left, I asked the man if I could speak to Louise Henderson, the name on the Jobcentre print-out, who I suspected had been the bored-looking twentysomething all along. “She’s busy,” he said, cocking a look in the direction of the office window.
So I explained how I’d applied for the van driver’s job three months ago but had never heard back, and now the position was vacant again so I wanted to know if they still had my CV?
“We must have had about 50 applicants so couldn’t acknowledge them all,” said the man with the battered face.
“That’s a shame,” I said. “There’s lots of us unemployed out there, a lot of us are honest and reliable, and we never hear back from jobs we apply for.”
He said nothing, but absent-mindedly caressed the cleaver on the chopping slab in front of him.
“Well, I still haven’t got a job,” I said as cheerfully as if I’d just won a couple of grand on the lottery. “So I’m still available.”
“You have to fill in an application form,” he said.
“But you’ve already got my CV. And look, here’s the letter I originally sent you.”
He made no attempt to take it from me, as if the effort of reaching across those glistening pieces of freshly-jointed animal anatomy would be too much.

WET

My humiliation was complete. I was practically begging a butcher’s assistant to take my application for a van driver’s job from me. I placed my letter on top of the glass display cabinet and walked out of the shop. It was wet and cold outside. I looked at the list of jobs I’d recently applied for: press officer, postman, coffee shop assistant, water meter reader. I screwed it up and put it in a litter bin and began walking back down the hill, revelling in my endless holiday.