I have this really strange memory of being tipsy with my dad in Greece and him singing the 'Officer's Version' of show me the way to go home. He nearly fell over into a bush so the memory always tickles me a little.
I woke up this morning to a child screaming outside my flat, and as it was neither ill, injured or in peril (except waking me up) I was more than a little bit peeved and have wanted to go back to bed ever since, but I had this horrendous mountain of laundry to get to and, even more, job applications. I feel like all I do at the moment is fill in my references, qualifications and experience and I'm a bit cheesed off with it all.
The last time I was properly looking for a job you picked up an application for from everywhere with a sign in the window, you filled them in, you took them back. Simple. Now, I feel like I'm writing a short story with every application as I have to tell each and every company why I want to work for them. Seriously? You'd advertising a vacancy, I want a new job - how are we not a match made in heaven? No, it's all about I have lived and breathed *insert field name* and had a *insert company name* mobile above my cot as a baby. ARE YOU PEOPLE SERIOUS? You're a company! You do not need an ego boost! Oh, you want to make sure I'm researching the company and the job? How about you ask me to do a test based on your job description or company values instead of this verbal and numerical reasoning. I'm not kidding - one job I applied for made me play 20 minutes of spot the frigging difference. I mean, come on.
Hey, I get it. Technically at the moment, we're in an employers market because jobs are more scarce than the amount of people qualified for them. The recession and all that meant that suddenly people are aiming at jobs that they're overqualified for. Here's a question - if companies know that they're overqualified and that has previously been a reason to reject people (that's what one of my rejections for a Saturday job once said - I was pretty proud, except the whole unemployed thing) tell them that! Instead of saying, wow, you have way too much experience for this and are probably going to just use it to get back on the ladder within a more stable company, you're hired, why can we not get to a stage where employers realise that employing someone who was previously a manager into an admin role, they'll probably stay for maybe six months, someone like me who's trying to get off the bottom rung of the ladder is going to be there longer, because you have to build your experience.
It physically winds me up that I get rejected from jobs for having less experience than other people, partly because it's a fact of life that people that are older than me exist and there's nothing I can do about that, but also partly because I have worked my ass off to have the experience that I have now.
I started admin work with the companies my parents work for from my early teens. I worked part time whilst I was at college, I worked through the summer before university and I had, at least, one job the whole way through university. Every time a holiday came around, I was signing up for extra hours and not just for the money. I was doing it so I could leave university not just with a fancy piece of paper, but also with a pretty decent base of experience behind me.
To put this very simply, I'm 22, have a 2:1 degree, four years of solid work experience, and I self-published a novel, and yet 90% of the companies I apply for don't actually get back to me. I get that I'm often 1 in 100 or more applying, so it's not so much that I'm mad at the companies for not responding, but it is just a thing of asking what the hell more can I do? I was even applying for jobs on Christmas day because it meant I had time to do a bulk of applications.
I've been for some pretty cool interviews. I got to go up to the 33rd Floor of 1 Canada Square in Canary Wharf and I had two interviews in Buckingham Palace, but even getting that far through the process drives me mad, because I am more than capable of doing those jobs, and more than willing to throw everything I have at them, but 'lack of experience' is getting in my way.
Ah well. I was brought up believing that everything happens for a reason, so I'm sure that the right thing will find its way into my life. I just wish it would put its bloody skates on and get here.
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