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The job hunting support thread

Does anyone else bother with those automated tests that companies ask you to complete after applying on Indeed and the like?

I did maybe three or four and didn't get selected so now I don't bother progressing at that point. It similar IME to writing a cover letter. You put your time in jumping through their hoops and aren't even graced with a reply. I take it as a sign that the employer is too rigid, too hands on so not a good match for me.

I have a good CV. Pick and the phone and talk to me. I'll appreciate the human connection and might be swayed to work for you.

Fuck all this corporate bullshit. I'm not impressed :rolleyes:
 
ice-is-forming said:
I applied for the biggest job I've ever gone for today. I have the minimum qualification, but think I'm woefully under qualified according to the criteria. It's also in the city 4 hours away. I have no idea why I did that, just having a moment because of the ridiculousness of my current 9 to 5 ( which Im consistently moonlighting from anyway, to do way more interesting work ) Plus the wage is double what I'm on now for a 38 hour week.
It was due in by cob today, and I sent it at 4.55pm
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Omg I have an interview on Monday!
 
ice-is-forming said:
Would you believe me if I told you that the non-negotiable qualification for this role is a lived or living experience of substance use..
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funnily enough I bumped into an old friend last week who had this and a second non negotiable qualification of having injected said substances to get his current job, not something he ever thought he would have to put on a CV.
 
Puddy_Tat said:
in news here, the local but fixed term (2 years-ish) thing round here that i was seriously considering in the autumn when my job looked a bit insecure, got an e-mail from the manager involved this week saying they didn't manage to appoint (think they advertised it 3 times) and was i still looking.

hmm.

it's local authority so they would (probably) have to advertise again. but it's a grade or two higher than i'm on now.

the job i'm in is (on paper) permanent, although a particular current stream of government money (which is also funding the local job) is only certain until mid 2025, and there's going to be a general election before then so who knows what the situation will be by then.

if i was a bit younger and could risk another short term job on the CV, or a bit older and could embrace semi-retirement by then, i might do.

i'm inclined to stay put where i am (job-wise) and say no thanks.

meh.
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hmm

local job is being advertised yet again - although it's now down to a 1 year contract.

after last week's balls up (car breakdown, RAC fail and being stranded near current job that's 60+ miles from home) i'm wondering again if current job is sensible. combination of mum-tat and not being convinced current job will last) makes me reluctant to commit to moving nearer current job.

combination of pay grade of local job, and it being local, means i could squirrel away enough to last another year after it ends if it's not extended.

hmm.
 
Just a couple of Random tips. Hopefully they will be of use to some people.

Contrary to my earlier post I went against my usual stance of not complaining any online assessments before interview for the job that I have accepted. Reason being they called me and politely reminded me to do this so I assumed that they must have been impressed enough by my CV to chase me up and I was right and got the job.

Secondly I did not initially make my CV public on Indeed or Reed as normally that just attracts numerous fake "Recruitment agents" and spammers but the moment I made it public I was invited to apply for numerous legitimate jobs so it's worth considering if you are looking for work :thumbs:
 
on a CV related topic .... Ever since 2006 I have put on my CV (in the 'other achievements' section), that I am Time Magazine's Person of the year for 2006 ..... I was never asked about it, nor was it commented on in interviews :-(

PS its true :)
PPS you are prob 2006 Person of the Year too, there is more than 1 of us .... a lot more ;-)
 
Recruiter has now contacted me again after I frankly forgot to reply since there were better roles available. They whacked the pay up 9k making it basically what I was getting at the last one, its actually a ongoing thing not contract, would be at a University so unlikely to disappear in a hurry. Unfortunately its like 90 minutes away by train at the minimum and more likely 2 hours and they are rather ambiguous about where you could actually do it, is listed as hybrid, flexible working location and onsite but no mention of what this actually means which is usually bad news. Would be perfect if it was like once a month max but if its multiple days a week or something it is going to be not worth bothering with for the money v just getting a lower paid role with less hassle I can do from here and not pay to go to work on top since the train is looking like £30 a day lol plus I would have to get to the station before 7am to get back for 7pm...
 
Puddy_Tat said:
local job is being advertised yet again - although it's now down to a 1 year contract.
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decided against it.

would mean one more year without moving house, and one more job on a CV that's already got 'too many jobs' on it.

have seen something else that's my sort of thing, and is in south london, but there's one element to it that i haven't done before - they want advanced level excel including VBA, whatever the heck that is (OK, I've googled and i'm not sure it makes a lot more sense now i have.)

it might be worth taking a chance and applying anyway, but is this the sort of thing that's relatively easy to pick up? is it the kind of thing where i could say i'd do a short course before starting there, or is it the sort of thing you really do need solid experience in?

i have done intermediate excel - have done lookup tables and that sort of thing (although i'd have to remind myself how to), pivot tables are a bit above my level, and i've never touched VBA.
 
Puddy_Tat said:
decided against it.

would mean one more year without moving house, and one more job on a CV that's already got 'too many jobs' on it.

have seen something else that's my sort of thing, and is in south london, but there's one element to it that i haven't done before - they want advanced level excel including VBA, whatever the heck that is (OK, I've googled and i'm not sure it makes a lot more sense now i have.)

it might be worth taking a chance and applying anyway, but is this the sort of thing that's relatively easy to pick up? is it the kind of thing where i could say i'd do a short course before starting there, or is it the sort of thing you really do need solid experience in?

i have done intermediate excel - have done lookup tables and that sort of thing (although i'd have to remind myself how to), pivot tables are a bit above my level, and i've never touched VBA.
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Is VBA macros? I taught myself macros for use in a previous job via the “excel for dummies book and then googling for what was needed for the provided templates to match my requirements. But I only had a few macros to create and it probably took me two to three days to set them up.

There is an argument that level of work is better off done in something other than excel.
 
I am self sabotaging, I had multiple recruiters reach out, my old director offered to set me up with a department I could have taken easily, old colleagues reached out. I have done nothing, I redid my CV mostly then didn not bother sending it out. I am extremely pissed off with myself but seemingly paralysed to do anything about it. This happened before when my dad died but I made some money day trading and we were ok. Now Idk what do to.

Generally just feeling shit about it all, I hate contract work, I liked my permanent contract, even if it turned out not to be as such. That was on 50% what I was on last time but it still seemed generally less of a hassle. I don't like things hanging over me, I tried to prevent that. Now the fucking tent is fucked, the cable is fucked, the contents of the tent are fucked. EVERY SINGLE YEAR. We get one it goes up, mainly me, I say lets empty it and take it down, this gets left too long, it breaks somehow, no tent. Such a waste of money and stuff. Same happened to everything outside I am not directly responsible for, we decided on these things, I can't do other peoples stuff when my skin is falling off.
 
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Pick up the phone the to the old director in the morning, blag some reason why you haven't returned to them sooner and fake enthusiasm for the offer. Make some notes before the call if you need to. Has to be less stressful than have no steady income coming in.
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I had a recruiter contact me the other day with a role and I explained I was already on an assignment and won't be free until January. They insisted "But this is a flexible role you can do in your free time! Can I have your name and age? It's necessary information for this position?" Oh, you mean the one I've just told you I don't want? Anyway I replied with "No thank you, my free time is exactly that - free time." I hate these people who act like you should be working every day and not have any downtime.
 
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newme said:
Fecking job centre have just sent me an appt for tomorrow at basically school pickup time, its contribution based so entirely irrelevant anyway. What a bunch of useless procedure. I need to get my new CV out there.

Well paid red cross job just came up which suits fine and actually isn't backed by some bloody venture capitalists. That may make me move faster.
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I've worked for them. Wouldn't do so again. Not least because my line manager failed to recruit casual staff to cover for our holidays, told us we could carry our holidays over, then when I resigned he lied and denied it, so they effectively stole my pay in lieu of accrued annual leave from me.

And having worked for them and heard stuff about failures to properly administer and account for donated funds/grants, I would never donate to them either.
 
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Elpenor said:
Is VBA macros? I taught myself macros for use in a previous job via the “excel for dummies book and then googling for what was needed for the provided templates to match my requirements. But I only had a few macros to create and it probably took me two to three days to set them up.

There is an argument that level of work is better off done in something other than excel.
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Thanks.

I expect that what they are doing is taking a load of data that comes as excel / csv and trying to herd that data to get totals / averages, possibly excluding outliers (which i think is the statistical term for data that's absolute bollocks) as part of the process.

i'm not all that enthusiastic about it (and obviously might be pushing my luck applying anyway when i don't meet one of the requirements) but the number of possible jobs in / near london in the sort of niche i do isn't that great, and i tend to be see as 'overqualified' for anything that's not my niche.

really not sure what the position is with current job - there's rumblings of major cuts either in the coming financial year or april 2025 - although an unknown is there's got to be a general election before the latter, so there might be new central government funding. or not.

we've not got as far as consultation on anything regarding jobs, so even if cuts are from april 2024, i'll have been in current job long enough to get a redundancy payment, but i've not got enough service in to make that worth waiting for. assuming they do redundancies rather than get rid of people by re-deploying them in to jobs they don't want / don't know how to do (one of my previous employers realised this was cheaper than paying redundancies, as it usually ended with people resigning, ballsing something up so they could sack them, or getting to a point where they went long term sick so they could sack them.)

part of me is inclined just to stay put and see what happens, but it just means longer with everything else on hold, and to some extent, much of my life has been 'temporary' for 20 years or so now, and i'm pissed off with it.

i've seen a couple of other possibles - one in kent, it's a few grades lower that what i do now, but could do it (although would mean moving house). another that's in northampton and is a grade or so higher (but think i could do it) and would mean being there a day or two a week so would mean moving house (current job is get there once a month so is do-able with the occasional long day / overnight stay, this wouldn't be) and any conversation with mum-tat about the possibility of me moving house tends to result in an explosion.

i'm aware that many employers already see me as 'too old' and having had 'too many jobs' and waiting might not be wise.
 
Used to be involved in hiring people but not for a few years now. The one tip I would give is check your spelling in applications. If you can't be bothered to get the name of your potential employer right when it's written down in the job advert in front of you then don't expect a call. Given the volume of applicants, I know some letters with addresses or names spelt wrongly on the envelope were binned without even being opened.
 
I have to start applying. Job requirements have been so weird tho. One I found last week was 14-48k? Then national/wfh/hybrid and finally onsite and have to relocate, no location!
Do wonder how many were posted after a lot of booze.
 
happy new year to all on the thread.

still rumblings in the background about redundancies, but will be a few months before they even get as far as consulting on that.

three possibles that i might go for

something doing what i do now but a slightly higher level, but it's based where the home counties turn in to the midlands, and would mean moving house.

something doing what i have done, but it's in oxford - could just about commute from here short term but would mean moving house longer term.

something fairly basic admin level civil service - effectively means giving up my 'profession' (ha ha) and more a 'sit back and count down to the pension' job (although suppose i'd better not say that if i apply for it) - it's in croydon, so could live somewhere between there and mum-tat's place. moving further away probably won't go down well with mum-tat.

blargh.

part of me thinks i should wait and see what happens, but i feel like i've been doing that for far too bloody long.
 
The jobs I'm currently eyeing up:

An admin job I could use to replace Job 1 (the high paying nightmare job). Problem is between that and job 2 it'll take me up to like a 43 hour working week over 6 days which feels like way too much.

A full time paid internship that'd help me get a very well paid version of job 2, which means navigating going on secondment or something.

Difficult to know how much effort to put into Job 1 right now
 
Puddy_Tat said:
happy new year to all on the thread.

still rumblings in the background about redundancies, but will be a few months before they even get as far as consulting on that.

three possibles that i might go for

something doing what i do now but a slightly higher level, but it's based where the home counties turn in to the midlands, and would mean moving house.

something doing what i have done, but it's in oxford - could just about commute from here short term but would mean moving house longer term.

something fairly basic admin level civil service - effectively means giving up my 'profession' (ha ha) and more a 'sit back and count down to the pension' job (although suppose i'd better not say that if i apply for it) - it's in croydon, so could live somewhere between there and mum-tat's place. moving further away probably won't go down well with mum-tat.

blargh.

part of me thinks i should wait and see what happens, but i feel like i've been doing that for far too bloody long.
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The commute from where you live to Oxford would be shocking. Avoid!
 
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