Job Hunting

Those of you who read this regularly will know I have been job hunting, since August, but being on a temporary assignment that kept getting extended tended to make me a little lazy. So, although I have been trawling through the emails from Monster Jobs and Total Jobs everyday and sending off my CV, I only started some serious searching at Christmas, knowing that this assignment finished this Friday.

Since being back I have realised that job hunting has changed a lot over the last 10 years and is now very internet driven via agencies. Job listings in papers are very limited and so, the biggest barrier to getting back to work is getting past the agencies as few companies advertise direct.

Just sending in your CV gets you no where. They get thousands every day and unless yours stands out for all the right reasons, it gets lost in the masses. Most agencies even state that they will not acknowledge your application and if you don't hear from them you've not been successful. Getting feedback as to why you haven't been successful merely extracts a response of 'there were others who met the criteria more closely!' - really helpful!

Registering with them doesn't seem to help in a lot of cases either, they seem really pleased to have you on board - for a couple of weeks - and then when they can't find anything for you they seem to lose interest and move on to the new applicants.

And finally, unless you 'gel' with one of the recruiters and they 'get' you - it seems you are just wasting your time.

I am lucky, in that I have an agency where I have someone who seems to 'get' me. I spoke with them last week and they were on the look out for a placement for me but they had nothing yet. Then, late on Friday I got a call +to say there was a permanent vacancy they felt I was perfect for. After a brief chat I agreed they could send my details through to the company and within the hour I was scheduled for an interview at 9am this morning.

And so, I met with them this morning and had a good interview. For a variety of reasons it suits us both to work on a 3 month contract with a view to a permanent contract if it works for both of us.

And so, it looks like I'll be starting at the beginning of February if the finer details of the contract can be agreed.

Fingers crossed!