Friday

Let's deal with Friday first. That's easy. I didn't apply for any jobs.

Oh, hang on. I did manage to squeeze one job application out. Thank goodness for my Access database that recorded this fact. It was a no-big deal job in a no-big deal part of England (where vowels are shorter).

My total number of applications for the week were: 13. And I got quite a few bites as well.

These bites are reassuring as it means my c.v. looks right to people.

Weekend

If this was a list of things I didn't do then it would include things like:

- update my own web site
- link it to this blog, like I said I would
- finish off the web site I'm designing for a friend
- learn a bit more Finnish

But it isn't. I did very little except learn a bit of XP.

Today

Absolutely, definitely didn't apply for any jobs today. I've learnt that in the current IT economic climate Monday are very quiet.

My all time favourite jobs web site www.jobserve.com has changed.

Apart from a frontpage which now has more choices there is one other important change. It runs like a pig on Valium.

I always look at Jobserve first but had to give up today. So, I went to my second daily port of call, www.monster.com. That worked but there were no jobs for which I could apply. (Actually the worst recruitment agency in the world heavily advertises there but I don't respond to their posts.)

Then I looked at www.gojobsite.co.uk. This doesn't have a very selective search selection so I looked at all jobs which included the word "manager" over the last few days. There were almost six thousand. Fortunately I can speed skim so I quickly shifted through them - there were none for which I could apply.

Then back to Jobserve. They too now have a less efficient search engine. You can choose the sector in which you're interested. For me that's "IT". But "IT" roles exist in all sectors so I had to search by "Any" sector.

Worst, apart from being slow, their database kept bringing up error messages and wrong data. Eventually I sent an email to them. I was nearly tempted to send my c.v. as well.

I also received a big reinforced letter from the British Computer Society. It contained a certificate confirming me as a Chartered Member, rather than mere Member. I'm already a Chartered Engineer and Chartered IT Professional. Thanks guys. I don't think it changes the letters after my name but it was jolly nice of them to send it to me anyway.

I sometimes think that my post-name letters should be uCEng and uCITP - the "u" standing for "unemployed".

When I was in London I attended their seminars on a regular basis. Initially this was purely to use them as a networking opportunity. The BCS very much approves of this. I got nowhere.

But then I found that the seminars were quite interesting. That doesn't make me a nerd (BTW what is the difference between a nerd and a geek?). A lot of the seminars were about management level issues, very non-technical. One was even about gender management and a lot of top birds attended that one.

So I started going to them because they were quite interesting. And that's when my networking improved. I gave out my business cards and even got names of people I could contact. No difference, I still got nowhere. Incidentally I also got nowhere with the top birds at the gender management conference. I wonder why?

Well, I'm now a chartered member of the British Computer Society and if that doesn't make supermodels jump in bed with me then I better go buy a Porshe.

Continuing syndrome

I phoned the agency handling the job in Duesseldorf. No change, it's still live but the client seems busy recruiting for more urgent roles (really, can you think of a more urgent role than IT service analyst manager? Casualty surgeon, perhaps).

Good news on the terrorism front. The recruitment agent handling the contract job in Cork is still alive. I phoned him today and he said the client hadn't got back to him yet. Which was surprising considering it was supposed to be an urgent role. (Maybe our friends over the water have scared them off.)

These are two examples of a certain syndrome: companies saying they have an urgent requirement then prevaricating like pravarication was an Olympic event.


Finally, here's a job advert I saw today:

"My client is looking for an experience [sic] Helpdesk Manager. You will have a minimum of 3 years [sic] experience working in a large coporate [sic] environment. An enthusiastic and manager focussed candidate will be ideal!!! You will have strong management skills and be responsible for building and maintaining strong relatioinships with clients at all levels. You will be monitoring the call system to ensure all faults are being logged, updated and resolved very eficiently. You will be working with stringent service levels and must be capable of enforciing and working to the SLA!!! Call me if you woul like to hear more about this exciting oportunity!!!! with a fantastic company!!!!"

[I got fed up putting sic everywhere. The above quotation is exact, okay.]

I never apply to jobs with less than five exlamation marks at the end of several sentences.