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Where The Hell Did My Job Go?
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Taking redundancy personally. Friday, February 28, 2003
WARNING: None of these links will help you find work.
Use them wisely.
If you’ve recently been made redundant and are unsure what to do next Ask Your Ass or visit Laid Off Central. Jen is doing everything right as she’s been voted Unemployee of the Month. Learn from the experiences of Unemployed Theo and compare it with Jessica’s. Consider applying for a Bum Card and then rethink your covering letter. Get your business card noticed. Take a break, it's the weekend. Wednesday, February 26, 2003
Guide Dogs Petition Against Unemployment
I miss commuting so much that I spent a couple of hours a day playing Gridlock. I then fill the day with pointless exercises, or networking as I prefer to call it. If anyone can contribute to this game of Alphabetti Bloghetti, please mention this site! Once again my trip to the Job Centre was surprisingly quick as: a) they never check whether you’re applying for work! b) the current refurbishment has made them more efficient I was also informed that after the refurbishment, they are implementing a new system. Warning bells are sounding. You already know that it probably involves them making staff cuts which means that I’ll be back to spending over an hour in there achieving very little. Is the name change to JobCentrePlus really going to fool anyone? But at least I’m not trying to find work in Alabama, where a dispute over CD’s and money resulted in 4 dead. Their unemployment rates have never been so low! One report proves that cheap imports are proving lifesaving for Americans. Graham Norton is buying a ghost town on ebay, think of the employment possibilities. In not so glamourous Newbury, there are a huge amount of vacancies at Vodafone. Typical! Just when I finally find details on how to be an autopyrotechnician they attempt to outlaw fireworks. This seems to be caused by the ready availability of louder fireworks used at weddings and such festivals as Diwali and Eid. If I’ve understood it properly, 75,000 guide dogs have put their pawprint on the petition, with each guide dog earning up to £35,000 you can understand their upset. Why not help their cause. Jobz Blitz: New Performance stats from Rolls Royce: 1,100-0 in 3 years. Not singing for their supper. Buzz off. Losing the Abbey habit. Tuesday, February 25, 2003
Unemployed on the Streets Initiative
The Job Centre is now appearing in a kiosk on a high street near you! Is this a cynical ploy by the Government to get the unemployed used to life on the streets? Here I was thinking that looking for work is a full time job when I can be doing it while waiting for a bus. If you’re lucky enough to unemployed and living in Bath, Blackpool, Bristol, Bromley, Knowsley, London, Manchester, Newcastle, Reading, Swindon, Suffolk or Sutton, then you’ll probably be out shopping anyway!! We all know that Jobseekers Allowance is free money and anyway, there’s a 3 for 2 on at HMV. An alternative approach to the job/shopping recruitment drive is offered at the Bullring where 8,000 jobs are being created. Read their top ten tips for your interview making sure you don’t arrive too early, they may not have finished building it. Don’t feel down - Christian Sandler advises us to "look forward" to the next 12 months. When there’s no more jobs, in your neighbourhood, who you gonna call? Jobsbuster! Do I spot an opening for an Employee Retention Specialist to retain Customer Retention Specialists? Monday, February 24, 2003
Unemployment Lethargy
Rather than spending much of my time visiting job web sites and using their search functions I’ve finally subscribed to the email service of many of them. This way I get an email per search from each site. Some of them have a limitation on the number of searches you can store so you may need to use a complex query to get the best results.
I’m certainly not spending as much time trawling sites and weeding out inappropriate jobs. But perhaps that’s just because I can’t be bothered. I must register www.unemploymentlethargy.com. I thought Blue Arrow was a courier service, but I’ve re-discovered them as a recruitment agency. I didn’t find any promising jobs, but I’ll definitely be using their Tea Maker when I get a new job. What’s the point of finding a job if I can’t even have the odd afternoon down the pub? Wednesday, February 19, 2003
A further indicator of the downturn in the economy is dished up by Reuters as they announce 3,000 job cuts leading up to 2005. This is on top of the 3,200 over the past two years. The company is facing increasing competition in it’s main markets. Their main rival is Bloomberg, but they are facing competition from my ex-employer Thomson Financial. My redundancy was caused by a re-alignment within Thomson as they went after the “big two” of Reuters and Bloomberg. I don’t take this announcement to mean that Thomson and Bloomberg are winning, only that there will be more consolidation (redundancies!) within the market. Perhaps Reuters just need to spend more time concentrating on the real news. Perhaps it’s an omen that the Reuters redundancies come on the same day that Asda announces an expansion plan! Listening to the radio, the discussion was about exporting jobs as more call centres are opened in India. Reading the newspaper, the article said that we are importing foreign workers to staff the NHS. It’s no wonder I can’t find a job. Does the Job Centre really need to use a recruitment agency to hire staff? Tuesday, February 18, 2003
Yes, I’ve been spending quality time with the web site. I’ve worked through a backlog of emails of support from visitors. It’s great to have the encouragement of strangers. Thank you. With the result that I’ve not been job seeking as much as I probably should have. But this investment of time in myself seems so much more valuable than ploughing through countless job sites. There has to be a point at which the amount of time spent job hunting becomes wasted. As they would do in Sex and the City… Am I less likely to find a job by looking? Each hour spent fruitlessly looking for a suitable vacancy is another hour not spent on developing a new skill to add to my CV. If I’ve not found a job with these skills in the last 3 months, why should it appear today? As part of the new links from new found bloggers, selected excerpts on the frustration of job seeking courtesy of Jon Baas and Emily Hanson. If you’re fed up with being rejected by employers then why not reject the economy? Monday, February 17, 2003
No doubt Ken is regretting not introducing the congestion charge a couple of days earlier to profit from the 1 million people flocking to central London for the war protest. He could have made a bomb! And hidden it. Although he would probably have been caught on one of his 688 cameras. Big Brother is never far away! Remember that under the Data Protection Act you may request the footage of yourself on any camera you think you may have appeared. (This information courtesy of the now apparently defunct Mark Thomas Product). A couple of good articles in the Guardian. Been laid off? Don't take it lying down got me thinking about how little Jobseekers Allowance I will receive in comparison to the 6 years of National Insurance payments I have made. I was shocked when the article reminded me that I will only receive JSA for 26 weeks. Paid fortnightly at £107.90 this only comes to £1402.97 when my NI payments have been…. somewhat higher than that (per year!) Licence to skill seems to imply that as I am literate and can communicate I am way ahead of the competition. Unles I red wrong. And finally, a thank you to the HR Advisor from the Post Office who wrote to me for a second time to re-iterate their non-interest in employing me! There’s nothing quite like a kick when you’re down. Thursday, February 06, 2003
WOW! What a day! I received a great email from Emma who found this site useful as she is also unemployed and has been for 10 months. It’s really heartwarming to know that the site is serving as therapy to others. Emma also mentioned that she found my site listed on the Blogger home page. Which is just success beyond belief! Blogger is seen by thousands of people every day and my site is listed right there under Blogs of Note. I still can’t quite believe it! Hello all you fellow Bloggers! I’ve spent time today updating the ever changing poetry site Scribbling Rivalry Press, is the Valentine’s Page where you can send a Valentine’s poem to the one you love. At the close of business tonight I finally heard the result of last weeks interview. And it was not good news, unfortunately. The quick assessment from the agency was: Personality OK, Technical skills, Not. But that’s OK right? I work in IT where the majority of the job involves explaining a missed deadline to a client and to do that you need people skills not technical skills! Much disappointment. Back to square one, or very close to it. It’s a good job I’ve got a holiday planned… Wednesday, February 05, 2003
Delving deeper on the IT Job Board revealed a ton of tutorials on a huge range of subjects from Web Marketing to Active Listening. Browse the whole list. NamesFacesPlaces linked from cwjobs.co.uk has a lot of interesting editorial, but requires you to register (free) before viewing it. Reading in the Evening Standard last night that a predicted 15,000(!) jobs will be shed from City institutions alone in 2003, my optimism took a turn for the worse. I realise how fortunate I was when they detail that under statutory redundancy rules the maximum weekly amount for each year of service is £250. Although the very lucky ones who receive a huge redundancy cheque will only be taxed for over £30,000. They then advise you to shop for cheap food and services, tell your bank manager, remortgage your property and rent out a room, stop your pensions payments but not your critical illness cover, claim Jobseekers Allowance and thank the day you took out MPPI. Monday, February 03, 2003
Exhausted Cambridge recruiting sites today as the area is on the up. Also discovered a wealth of Crystal Reports sites including one that was kind enough to display it’s client list so that I can now trawl their sites for vacancies. Saturday, February 01, 2003
Blimey! A weekend posting! Something important must have happened! Forget the real news. WAGN Railways have finally issued my refund cheque. Although of course I won’t get too excited until I’ve cashed it!
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