Work

[Hannibal Scorch]

Like with Monkee, been out since July. It’s absolutely soul destroying. Getting turned down for an interview because they had other candidates that fit the criteria better when it’s the same job I’ve been doing for over 5 years is insane. One place I did interview for (and made it to the last 3) said they had had over 760 applicants for the role. 
 

That said in a complete career shift, I’m down to the last stage for a fast track scheme, great but won’t start until the spring at the earliest and mentally (and financially) will need to find something in the meantime. It’s rough out there. 

[Chris B]

2 minutes ago, Hannibal Scorch said:

Like with Monkee, been out since July. It’s absolutely soul destroying. Getting turned down for an interview because they had other candidates that fit the criteria better when it’s the same job I’ve been doing for over 5 years is insane. One place I did interview for (and made it to the last 3) said they had had over 760 applicants for the role. 
 

That said in a complete career shift, I’m down to the last stage for a fast track scheme, great but won’t start until the spring at the earliest and mentally (and financially) will need to find something in the meantime. It’s rough out there. 

I've seen one with over 1200 applicants. Even taking AI bullshit ones into account, it's ridiculous. 

One thing, and I suspect you've been seeing this too, is a lack of clarity around salary. They won't tell you what the salary is, but you have to put your current salary or what you want for the role to apply.

I reckon that's the 'fit the criteria better' point in a load of them. Someone is applying for ten grand less.

[Monkee]

I got an email this week saying I’d been shortlisted and the next stage is to send them a “brief self-tape pitch”!?! 

I need to record a 3-minute video introducing myself, giving a scenario and then outline my marketing approach.

I don’t even know the salary! I’ve emailed back twice asking what file format they want and what the salary is. They’ve still not responded and the deadline for submission is 1 November. If the role is paying £70k then I’ll do as many videos as they want. If it’s £20k then they can get fucked.

I also have another Job Centre interview on Thursday. It’s been 3 months since I signed on so they’ll now expect me to look for jobs outside of my chosen list. The last interview didn’t go well where the guy asked why I didn’t relocate to Leicester instead of choosing redundancy and then proceeded to rip my CV to shreds and told me I needed to attend their CV writing course. He was patronising to the max and left me feeling like even more of a failure than I already do. I walked out of the Job Centre and just couldn’t face anything/anyone for the next couple of days. So I’m obviously really looking forward to this week’s meeting.

Edited October 26, 2024 by Monkee

[Kamran]

6 minutes ago, Monkee said:

I also have another Job Centre interview on Thursday. It’s been 3 months since I signed on so they’ll now expect me to look for jobs outside of my chosen list. The last interview didn’t go well where the guy asked why I didn’t relocate to Leicester instead of choosing redundancy and then proceeded to rip my CV to shreds and told me I needed to attend their CV writing course. He was patronising to the max and left me feeling like even more of a failure than I already do. I walked out of the Job Centre and just couldn’t face anything/anyone for the next couple of days. So I’m obviously really looking forward to this week’s meeting.

When I left uni I struggled to get a job and felt the exact same way you did. I remember once I got into a heated argument with the lady at the job centre who said with my degree I was probably 'too educated' and I should try removing that from my CV. She basically said I should make something up for those missing years. I never followed that advice, some point later I uploaded my CV to Monster.com and literally the next day I got asked to interview for a temp job...I went along and the company muddled up the interviews and they interviewed me for a permanent better job and I got offered that about 1hr after the interview. After all that headache it was just luck that I ended up getting that job and I've been there over 15 years now.  It's so hard to keep motivated but keep pushing yourself, during my unemployment I ended up doing some volunteer admin work at the local hospital, I found that helped my motivation as I felt needed and it got me out talking to people (I'm quite shy), I found that whole experience useful plus it looked good on the CV.

[Chris B]

23 minutes ago, Monkee said:

I need to record a 3-minute video introducing myself, giving a scenario and then outline my marketing approach.

I hate this recent trend, and I tend to assume it's because they're worried they can't tell ethnicity/class/background from a CV and are worried about wasting time interviewing people who aren't 'right'.

Edited October 26, 2024 by Chris B

[FLips]

Job center staff are thick worthless scumbags. Patronising idiots. Hate em.

[Chris B]

Need to vent for a moment.

My former employer, who made me redundant earlier this year, got in touch a few months ago to offer a pretty big bit of freelancing work. At a point where I need it. So that's good, I'm down for that, no matter how frustrated I was about things ending.

Supposed to be happening in August. Delayed until September.

Delayed until October.

I know what it's like for an agency locking down with clients, so I'm patient about it. I nicely chased this week, to get a multi-week out of office. So I chased the boss, and shock, surprise - 'delays and revisions, and can no longer guarantee your involvement'.

What's annoying is that they've known about this for over a month. They just didn't bother telling me. And they'd been patting themselves so much on the back about bringing me back into the fold on this. I'd seen how they treated freelancers, so I knew this would happen, but because I need the work, I had to believe otherwise for a while - even just to stay sane.

It's not the work falling through. It's the idea that I wasn't worth an email update, even after working with them for a year and a half.

This has been a very, very frustrating year.

[Ironic Indie Lad]

Yeah, fuck the vast majority of Job Centre employees. When I was much younger in the distant past of the late 00's, I did a 1 year FTC in a back office role for the DWP dealing with benefit appeals. Towards the end of the year, they announced a freeze on hiring, FTC extensions etc so I was let go. I signed on while I looked for something else and the staff in the Job Centre treated me like a piece of shit just by default. Once they noticed I had recently worked for them, they started to be quite nice to me and adopted a more apologetic "sorry we thought you were one of the shit munchers!" type tone.

Awful attitude. 

Looking for work truly depressing right now. When I was out of work and looking, it was so soul destroying to look on Linkedin because it shows you the number of applicants. So many jobs I didnt even apply for as the applications were through the roof.

I quite like my job at the moment and I am glad I held out for something fully remote (suits me, childcare wise) while a lot of employers are moving back to 2 or 3 days in the office. Finding it all very chilled and stress free which makes a change after the last couple of years. I've been approached about an internal move and its probably more suited to my skills and its more money. I am just hoping I dont make the move and regret it if its way more stressful. 

[Surf Digby]

Fuck the Job Centre. 

You won't ever please them, so do the bare minimum to satisfy the agreement, and apply for jobs based on what you know. The more information you give them, the more they'll use it against you, and they'll just grind you down and make you feel worthless. 

On 10/26/2024 at 12:50 PM, Monkee said:

They told me I needed to attend their CV writing course. 

I binned the one they put together for me, because I couldn't face sending it out. I wish I'd kept it now, because it's hard to believe how bad it was. Firstly, it was written all in paragraphs, like a primary school child writing about what they did in the summer holidays. "Then I went to work for a restoration company where I would set up the new jobs and assign them to the correct branch for that area and process their reports and invoices and deal with their queries. Then I went to work for an insurance company where the customers would tell me what they are wanting to claim for and I would set up the claim and work out whether to send it to a contractor or not. Then I went to work for......" etc.

And it was in Comic fucking Sans. I walked out of there with 20 copies of the most unappealing CV possible, printed in Comic Sans. "It's how employers like them these days", they said when I questioned this.

Quote

 I got into a heated argument with the lady at the job centre who said with my degree I was probably 'too educated' and I should try removing that from my CV.

Not the first time I've heard this, either from people online, or people that I actually know. 

Quote

It’s been 3 months since I signed on so they’ll now expect me to look for jobs outside of my chosen list

Just tell them you already are, because why would you limit yourself to only applying for jobs in the field that you were just made redundant from. 

[BomberPat]

13 hours ago, Surf Digby said:

"Then I went to work for a restoration company where I would set up the new jobs and assign them to the correct branch for that area

"This is a pretty basic job, which saw me setting up the new jobs and assigning them to the correct branch for that area".

[Thunderplex]

I’m nice.

[Gus Mears]

The only two people I'm aware work/worked for the Job Centre are Thunderplex and Dennis Nilsen. One of the most despised figures in British history and Dennis Nilsen.

[marc2j]

On 11/13/2024 at 10:15 AM, Ironic Indie Lad said:

When I was out of work and looking, it was so soul destroying to look on Linkedin because it shows you the number of applicants. So many jobs I didnt even apply for as the applications were through the roof.

Not sure if it adds any value, but these statistics were recently proven to be bollocks, in that it's not the amount of applicants, but the amount of people who click on the link. It's seen to artificially make the job seem more popular than it is...

(LinkedIn is both brilliant for jobs and utter fuckery, there is no in-between sadly...)

[SuperBacon]

Yeah I'll stick up for them as well. Well some of them, obviously every organisation has its shits, but I work very closely with lots of them, and they are genuinely passionate about helping people back into work.

But I have too been on the receiving end of not very helpful people when under their provision, and it's an emotive time so everything is heightened.

It's the whole of the DWP that needs ripping up and starting again, not the job centres as such. The caseloads are absolutely insane, staff turnover is really high, and their just aren't enough specialist resources to cover everything so something like "CV writing" is delivered at the same level to everyone, and therefore comes out a bit basic.

The National Careers Service is a bit more helpful so anyone under the JCP, please ask about that, as well as SWAP classes as they are pretty successful getting people into work as well.

I'll again bang the drum for Skills Bootcamps (yes I still hate the term) as these are designed with employers in mind and all of your local authorities should have some running (we've just launched a film and TV one which is quite exciting) and they are all free.

If you do genuinely need help with a CV, chuck me a message if you want, always happy to have a look, and if any of you need help with agencies, again always happy to help if I can.

In the immortal words of Tupac, keep your head up.

 

[Chris B]

Just had an interesting chat with someone and realised a big part of my recent issue is that I'm a generalist with content. This is both a plus and a minus. The plus is that I'm a very good content manager and creator, but my real skill is in being able to do a lot of things, and being able to tackle just about anything I'm asked to - which has involved being good at copywriting, editing, SEO, UX, GA4, social media, analytics, as well as video production/direction/editing, etc. The minus is that I'm constantly competing with people who have one of those things as their niche.

It's a frustrating realisation, but probably a useful one in the long-run. 

On a related note, if anyone here does know someone who needs help with content, etc, please do give me a shout.

The last 48 hours have been up and down. A meeting with a law firm who said they don't have much money and would prefer to pay based on results and leads (which is unworkable, but I've sent a very good-value one-off proposal that would help them a lot), and a guy offering me a bit of freelancing work programming AI chat-bots (not much money, but useful as a right-now).