Tuesday job scowl

I am not a digital guru. I refuse to apply for jobs that specifically ask for a guru of any sort. Do they even know what guru means? Would they ask for a digital spiritual leader? I don’t care if they think it is a short cut to asking for help with new media – it just means they are the sort of company that rely on buzz words and business speak to cover up ineptitude. Confucius says no.

I’ve noticed there is a worrying trend to obviously save money in my profession by way of lumping together very different roles. See – it’s all New Mee-dee-arr and therefore designers should be developers and do marketing and editing and content creating and picture researching as it’s all on the web, innit? And the folk they find should be happy to work for a minimal salary and a biscuit, in fact they should be darn well ecstatic to have landed a job at all. Sneaky little employers… I think I might stick with freelancing. Not that those jobs are thick on the ground, but at least there are interesting opportunities…Like my last assignment was writing about puppets on television (Basil Brush, Thunderbirds, the terrifying Emu). Bliss!

Another annoying thing is that you’ll see a job that sounds interesting listed through an agency, but on applying the agency will announce in funeral tones that the job in question has since departed, and then try and get you on their books. (And once you agree they try and send you to Slough. I have had two agencies so far try to tempt me to Slough – I keep telling them the round four hour or more commute would kill me, but so far they are ignoring this small trifle. I feel the need to go around to their office and mark out on a map exactly where I live.).

The job scowl this week has turned up a few possibilities, although I’m not totally convinced in them. Let’s see, what sort of things we have here…

Work with ill folk! Ill folk are really ill, but they love using the web anyway! This is an opportunity to make illness fun for ill folk!

o0o

This is a grand opportunity to be the assistant of an assistant to an assistant of a really busy person! You’ll be the dogsbody, but it will be artistic, it’s a gallery! Apply now!

o0o

We’re dynamic! We’re so dynamic we had to tell you twice in twenty words! Work for us and be dynamic too!

o0o

Even if they are not written with exclamation marks everywhere, I tend to read all job adverts as if they are being recited by a breathy over-excited twenty year old. I really have to stop being so cynical.

Interview!

Hooray – one of my hugely long application forms cast out into the world has netted me an interview next week! I am really pleased, firstly as I didn’t think this would happen until next year, and secondly as the job itself sounds really interesting. I shall have to do a ton of research between now and then, but already I can feel my confidence return in bubbling rushes, like the fizz sparkling through newly-opened champagne. Phew – considering much of that was fast pouring down the plug hole, it is brilliant to feel happy again.

When being asked about my availability, I would love to answer in excited gushing bursts, like below:

‘Yes! Of course I am available! What date suits me? Whenever is best for you! Six in the morning, eight in the evening, anytime! I can jog alongside you reciting successes while you are in the gym, I can shout my CV over a bathroom partition, I can serve you tea and pass my portfolio along with the biscuits! Anytime, I don’t mind!’

But of course that didn’t happen. Instead I consult an imaginary calendar, (as am very-imaginary-important) and we settle on a date / time in a grown up and adult manner. It is only when I am off the phone do I yell ‘yippee’, caper around the living room and phone J to excitedly gabber down the phone at him. He excitedly gabbers back. Woohoo!

And even if I don’t get this job, it is all good experience at the end of the day, so it really is a win/win situation. I have shortlisted a few more jobs to apply for this week as well... but all of a sudden I feel inspired to edit the novel instead. Confidence and happiness work wonders!

Bendy working practices

‘You should have a very flexible approach to work…’ says the form – my problem is I just read this as ‘bendy’. I have a very bendy approach to work. A very wiggly advance on employment.

Yes – I am still bobbing along (bobbing along) at the bottom of the beautiful briny sea of application forms. The places I am applying for all interview in January, but I really didn’t expect to get somewhere before Christmas, considering the various crunchy state of my chosen industry. I think they are all waiting to see what Santa brings them (Santa being the Financial Director of course).

The only problem with bobbing along (bobbing along) is that I should be full-speed ahead on the book, but every job application not only takes me ages, but takes my thought-process miles away from being creative. It’s all formal and grown up ways of expression, and although my book is not written in the style of lolcats (I can has novel?), it’s not written in the style of application forms either.

Oh well, the end is in sight with the current form so if I just stop thinking ‘wiggly’ when I see the word ‘flexible’ I shall get there. Let's end the post on a giggle...

On the Job Hunt

Early: Hm. ‘Must be fluent in Dutch’. I click on the link anyway, just to see if the job advert is just teasing about the language skills involved. Ah. Dutch embassy – probably not. I slink out of the link hopefully un-noticed.

Mid-morning: Hm. This looks promising, mainly because it pays a stonking fortune. I click on the link anyway wondering what the catch is – usually something that involves java and multi-platform and programming, in which case I shall yet again slink away. My job searches so far seem to involve a lot of enthusiastic but random clicking and then a slight pause for reading job spec before backing away feeling a bit thick.

Lunch: What is one good at, anyway? Oven bleeps madly from downstairs. Oops, I appear to be over-cooking the fish. Will scrub ‘chef’ from job applications.

After lunch: ‘Please state why you are applying for this post’. Ah, if only I could, dear application. It would go something like this:

I am applying for this post as I am skint and want your money. I think I more than likely can do your job, at least it all sounds fairly ok apart from that programming bit but I am sure someone can just show me the html thingie and all will be well. I also have never worked in that part of London before and wonder what the shops will be like. Pip, pip!

But instead I have to cover such realities with words like experience and competent and deliverables and website infrastructure. Sigh…

Snack-time: I think I will gnaw off my own fingers if I have to write my specialist skills essay one more time. Why can’t there be one form to rule them all, in the style of Lord of the Rings?

After-school: I have totally lost the willpower to do these forms. The job description is interesting, it’s just every time I try to start a new section on essential or desirable skills my brain opens the sneaky hatch behind my left ear and slopes off to watch children’s TV downstairs. I might as well fill the form out in crayons and seal it with chocolate for all the good I feel it will do me.

Before dinner: Suddenly gone all efficient. Why now? Six sections yet to complete, but the fact I have filled in three means that I am amazingly pleased with myself. I may celebrate by watching something mindless. Or I shall continue with form as on a role (and it has to be sent away tomorrow, on pain of death). Hm, best carry on then.

Job Applications

I spent all last week preparing a cracker CV with which to impress potential employers, and the first job I apply for doesn’t want CV’s, as it has its own application system online…

I managed to connect my wibbly wobbly mobile Internet early this morning, and then clicked on the job description. The page slowly unfolded before my eyes – a veritable online assault course of an application form complete with clicky hoops for my Internet dongle to jump over. I narrowed my eyes at the dongle; it saucily winked its blue connection light at me. Healthy enough at the moment, it seemed to say, but you just wait until you want to submit that form ho-ho!

I told it sternly that I’d had enough of its shenanigans over the weekend (it took me simply hours to watch the whole series of Moondial on youtube) and set to with the application form. My word. I have never applied for a job that seemingly wanted me to sweat blood through my finger tips and pass out over the keyboard in order to get within sniffing distance of an interview. When I started that form, I thought the job sounded interesting and it was worth a punt. When I ended that form, I thought if they don’t call me back tomorrow first thing straight away with interview date / job offer then I shall demand their heads on a pike. Seven hours that form took me – that was a day’s work just even applying! It’s not like I’ve asked to be Prime Minister, or a brain surgeon. I’d understand if it took seven hours then, and possibly a multi-choice quiz. And of course the dongle loved me trying to press submit – oh the fun we had!

I’m sitting here at the moment with all my windows open, which is very strange for me, but I’m desperate for some fresh air. This is because the whole house smells of bad fish. Sigh. It really has been one of those days.

My mum said to me there was some smoked salmon fillets in the fridge if I wanted some for lunch. This is the same mum that once made me green bread sandwiches to take to school – the day blindly trusting youth went in the bin along with the sandwiches. So, ever wary, I went downstairs at lunchtime and poked at the salmon fillets – use by October 9th, said the label. Not a chance, I thought, but it was then I made my first mistake. I put them back in the fridge.

Later, mum was home and clattering around in the kitchen. I, upstairs with the door to my domain firmly shut, didn’t notice anything odd until I felt a slight rumble of tummy and decided to go downstairs to see if there was anything worth rumbling about in the kitchen. One step outside and the smell almost bowled me over. Mum, oblivious, had decided there was nothing wrong with fish smelling fishy and thought she’d cook the little blighters anyway. Cue teenage like explanations of why you shouldn’t cook old fish (‘Yuck! Urgh! Oh My God I’m going to die!’) as I whipped them out of the oven, into a bin-bag and away down the garden.

So now I am back, door once again closed, internet connection all perky from its daily bit of fun, and am off smoked salmon fillets for life. Apart from that, all is well. I might try and watch Moondial again…