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The job hunting support thread

:D yes ok, it's a "fl33t r3turns advisor", for a financial company. Going by the experience and salary I'm guessing it's a customer service job, but why the funny title for a financial company :confused: Whenever I google it, all that pops up is that ad!!
 
:D yes ok, it's a "fl33t r3turns advisor", for a financial company. Going by the experience and salary I'm guessing it's a customer service job, but why the funny title for a financial company :confused: Whenever I google it, all that pops up is that ad!!
Maybe they want you to ask exactly what the job entails? Good luck with the interview for it anyway. Not that you'll need it.
 
:confused: in that case.

Do you know the name of the actual organisation? (This can be difficult if it's through an agency)

Not that I'm asking you to state here if you don't want to, but at least that way you could do a bit of research.
 
Went to first day of job hunting seminar run by local Jewish charity. Good stuff, quite challenging. Yet again taken up on my eye contact - I keep on being sure I'm doing it and it turns out I'm looking at faces and not in eyes, and one feedback I got said I showed no self-confidence (you can rely on your fellow Jews not to hold back!), which rattled me, as I do sometimes get told I come over that way but I honestly thought I was being quite confident. I wasn't mumbling and staring at my feet or anything. I suppose it's not worth being upset about - being quite confident but needing to learn to project confidence is way easier than having to learn to have any at all in the first place!

Got really stressed out about doing the 'homework' for tomorrow in the evening - just couldn't get into it at all, and couldn't leave it too late, as I just can't do 'worky' stuff in the late evening, but gsv was really helpful, took charge of everything else and let me calm down and get on with it.
 
Right - got another interview next Friday. Going to see the 'duty advisor' at this advice charity next week, I think, who can do a mock interview for you at short notice - think it would be a good idea to up my game so that I'm not just repeating the same stuff/mistakes at each interview
 
Also following up a crazy line of network enquiry this week. For years, my grandfather has said, whenever I'm casting around for a new job 'Why don't you talk to G____?' G being the daughter of old friends of theirs, and also the CEO of one the largest publishers in the UK.

I'd always rejected this as absurd - I can't go bothering someone like that for help. But my course last week made me realise I could use that connection. I'd like to, if I could, move into commissioning non-fiction stuff, and this company has a history division and an arts & music one. If G could pass on the contact details of someone (division head, senior commissioner etc) in those areas who might be good to talk to about what it's like working in that sort of role, that'd be a start, and if you tell someone the CEO has given you their name, you'd hope they'd give you a half hour for a chat. So called my grandad, and as it happens, he's having dinner with her parents this week, so he's going to try to put in a word. :eek: Hark at me networking!
 
Good luck Cloo - having a mock interview sounds very sensible.

I've got an interview tomorrow but not enthusiastic about it at all. That will no doubt show but knowing my luck they'll fucking offer me the job and I'd be an idiot to turn to down right now tbh :facepalm:
 
Good luck, Smmudge. Hope the interview helps you to be clearer how you feel about the role. I'm not sure how I feel about this role I'm getting interviewed for - it's sounds like it's really project management, which in some ways I feel most comfortable with, and no commissioning, although it does sound as though the role has some involvement with directing the development of the list, so I will want to find out if and how that works. It could be a bit of a step back if there's really no developmental stuff, though it is in a massive company. They pay's rather poo considering their profile, but on the off chance they do offer it, I'm going to steel myself and do as they advised on the course last week - ask for more money. The agent's already said they don't want to move on the pay, but TBH, a company that size could afford to me the less than 10% extra I'd ask. The risk there is that you're kind of dependent on how capable the agent is of doing that on your behalf - I mean, they could wimp out you a bit and be all 'Oh, she'd like more money, but it's probably fine, she was just asking' and get back and say 'Oh no, they can't do that', so it's a bit of a weird one.
 
Cloo you should def ask for more money. How's the networking going?

The company who I had an interview with on Wednesday offered me the job :D I managed to pull my head out of my arse for the interview so went in keen and with an open mind, and actually the role seems better than I thought and the manager who interviewed me seemed really nice. Plus for an entry level temp role the pay is damn good.
 
Well, my granddad's at dinner tonight with the friends whose daughter is the CEO - he said he'll drop it in if he can, but only if appropriate, which is fine. But he was the one who kept suggesting I try her, so I think it was fair to ask him!

I need to email a mum from our synagogue whose daughter will be in Esmé's class at school when she starts a week on Monday - I know she runs a freelance editorial/production company, so I want to ask her who she works with, and whether there are any particularly friendly/approachable publishers she knows of.

Trying to speculatively send my CV to an education journal publishers who do have a form on their website for sending them, but it keeps not letting me attach my CV for some reason - must ask gsv to look at it. It says 'Text documents only', and I've tried sending it in every text format I can save it in, but it won't recognise it as such. Maybe it's a deliberate ploy to discourage speculative applications. ;)

Got a mock interview on Wednesday, so we'll see how that goes.
 
feeling hugely stressed today. Had an interview on Friday & was told they'd phone me today to let me know the outcome. Interview went really well & they implied i was successful, but it was all very casual and laid back and slightly too good to be true. Needless to say, i've heard nothing today. I have so much riding on getting this job, it's doing my head in having to wait for this call. Keep turning my mobile on and off and even just called it from the work phone just to check it's actually working :(:mad:

What do you think - if i've not heard anything by the end of the day - give them a call tomorow? Today? I can't bear this waiting.
 
If you haven't called them today, do call tomorrow, if only to find out what the delay is. I hate it when they don't get back to you when they say - especially if you think you might have got it. Real headfuck. Hope you get the answer you were hoping for.
 
Still not heard anything but I'm now wary of calling them because my friend who also had an interview there was told they were letting people know 'early this week'. He wasn't told Monday! :mad: So I think i just need to try and be patient and avoid coming across as an annoying, desperate pest!
 
:mad:

From my experience, you can usually multiply the time they say they will take to let you know by at least 1.5

That having been said, I've had an offer within 2 days after being told they would get back to me in a week or two - it's only casual / occasional weekends, but reasonable money for that. And it's subject to references and medical - :eek: - so not counting any proverbial chickens just quite yet as i've been in fairly crappy health for the last few years...
 
is it appropriate for me to call up if i've still not heard anything by the end of today? I don't want to create a bad impression by being annoying and pestering. But they told me they'd let me know yesterday & told my friend 'early this week'. Wednesday is no longer 'early' week, so I'd expect an answer by the end of today.
What do you think? Is it bad to call? Should i just wait? :mad:
 
is it appropriate for me to call up if i've still not heard anything by the end of today? I don't want to create a bad impression by being annoying and pestering. But they told me they'd let me know yesterday & told my friend 'early this week'. Wednesday is no longer 'early' week, so I'd expect an answer by the end of today.
What do you think? Is it bad to call? Should i just wait? :mad:

I'd include Wednesday in "early in the week" by my calculation above.

Frankly, if you have to ring up, it either means they haven't made their minds up yet (maybe some crisis has overtaken them) or the answer's no and they haven't got round to telling you. Or possibly that you're second choice and they are waiting to see if the first choice says yes, but they won't tell you that and will say they are still thinking about it.

I'm not sure anything good will come out of ringing up.

Sorry.
 
well i emailed them today - just couldn't keep hanging on not knowing any longer. Had a response pretty fast, apologising, and saying they were still interviewing and sorting out the vacancies list and would be in touch Friday.
Hope is not lost :) Had pretty much assumed the lack of response meant i was unsucessful. Just have to be patient until Friday now....
 
Managed to get 3 schools interested in giving me work experience. One is through a special scheme set up by the teaching agency and is for one whole week. The other two I had sort of arranged myself, but I may drop out of one as I am not sure if I can commit to two terms if I'm looking for work. I don't want to waste their time as they would be paying for a CRB check. Still, I shall go and meet them and see what they say.
This of course brings up a whole load of new problems wrt to looking for paid work. Still, it's a step forward after months of flapping uselessly.
 
Well done OU - good luck.

Practice interview today went pretty well - guy said he reckoned I was doing well and only had minor criticisms. The real thing will be another matter, though. Looking at it now, and I realised I need to speak to the agent to find out some more detail, as I don't feel clearly in the picture about exactly what the role is and what it covers. The part of the company it's concerned with produces shitloads of stuff, so it makes me doubt that this role is intended to cover all of the publications - it looks to me as though it must be one of several parallel posts, and I'd like to know if it's specialising in specific areas, and are they recruiting for one person or several to fill the role.

I feel that, if anywhere, I'm most likely to come unstuck on the online stuff - the websites I've worked on are, I'm sure, far more basic than any of their online products.
 
It's good to be going for somethig a little out of your comfort zone i reckon, cloo. Perhaps even necessary in this climate.

I think I may have to start looking for evening work, in order to volunteer in the days, so that means poorly paid evening service/call centre work I guess. :hmm: Better than dole I suppose, but not great for finding somewhere to live or repaying any debts anytime soon.
 
It mostly familiar stuff as far as I can tell - I think some of the main differences will be to do with working in a really massive organisation and all that that entails.

Would be nice to get it, as I then might have some good news for my belated 'leaving' drinks (combining with another colleague on his way out) on Friday week.
 
Managed to get 3 schools interested in giving me work experience. One is through a special scheme set up by the teaching agency and is for one whole week. The other two I had sort of arranged myself, but I may drop out of one as I am not sure if I can commit to two terms if I'm looking for work. I don't want to waste their time as they would be paying for a CRB check. Still, I shall go and meet them and see what they say.
This of course brings up a whole load of new problems wrt to looking for paid work. Still, it's a step forward after months of flapping uselessly.

This is excellent. You can finally see once and for all if this is what you want to do.
 
I had a visit today and a few potential volunteers were shown around a school by a couple of year sixes who had been picked as ambassadors.
I was so impressed with how proud they were of their school as they showed us all their brilliant displays and photos of them and their classmates. It was great talking to them, so I already feel good about this. :)
 
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