This and that

Today it's been a bit grey and damp. But enough about my underpants.

Start of the week

Today I applied for five jobs. And I got a bite from one.

Also, an agency phoned me about a PM role. That's nice.

Yet despite already hitting my weekly target I don't feel it's been a good start to the week.

The PM role was totally unsuitable. My skills are elsewhere. After reading the job spec I phoned the agency back and told him so. At least they know I'm upfront about these things. (And they already have my name for a more suitable role with the same client).

The bite I got was in response to an advert I'd seen for a contract helpdesk/support manager type job. After sending my c.v. I phoned the agency. He was all rather matter of fact about this and said he'd forward my c.v. to the client. Just like that.

Of the four other jobs to which I applied today:

- one agency rejected me, by email, within an hour of me applying(I had applied to the same job fronted by other agencies who had rejected me for lack of recent experience)
- one agency rejected me when I phoned them, for the same reason - lack of recent experience.

I also received an email from a recruiter who had, about a week ago, put my name forward to his client despite me not having all the essential skills.

Apparently all the people he had put forward had been rejected. I'm not too surprised. The client was recruiting for a similar (or the same) role a couple of years ago. And that recruitment campaign soon died off.

Bad, bad agency

Just over a week ago I had a spate of agencies calling me about the same role. The first agency which called I permitted to put forward my c.v. The rest were too late and I told them that.

I phoned one of these agencies today to see if they had any other role. I reminded them of their initial approach last week. They then told me that they had put my name forward to their client anyway. That is, having been told I was being considered by another agency and therefore without my permission.

That is so unprofessional and unethical.

I didn't go into meltdown mode but if this ever happens again ...

Suck

I spent most of the weekend looking at venture capital firms in the Nordics and trying to work out how to create a reasonable cash-flow sheet. (There are loads of guides on how to create a cash-flow sheet which doesn't take into account VAT, but few which cover this rather important item).

I also read The Sunday Times on-line.

In their popular technology section (Doors) they had an article about sites which find out information for you.

They mentioned www.hoovers.com

Of course, I've forgotten about about this site. I gave it a whirl and it returned some basic financial information about a sample company. Which is more than on the company's own web site. In future I'll use Hoovers to find out key stuff about companies.

Jobs you don't want

Also in The Times, Saturday's edition, was an article about the worst jobs you could do (culled from The Idler magazine and probably not a proper survey). Third worst was IT Manager. Damn, that's the job I've been trying to do again.

Corrections

I asked my retained language expert, Frank, to review a version of my c.v. He's a Spanish to English translator, specialising in the academic business area.

(Or is that "academic-business area"?)

He only posed a few corrections and these were mainly based around the lack of hyphens. I've been putting things like "first line support", or "US based company" when, of course, it's "first-line support" and "US-based company". Oh, and one sentence definitely needed a comma.

The rest was fine. Which is a relief. As it was, it was a very pristine document. Very few English people would have noticed the mistakes that Frank picked up. But now, it's even more pristine.

Networking not working

I'm a strong believer in networking. I have my own business cards, my own web site and I attend appropriate IT seminars whenever I can. I've also visited exhibitions just to talk to people. I talk to agencies even when they haven't got anything suitable for me

Furthermore I've recruited people from this network and have even been recruited myself.

Having been on outplacement courses I know about building your network ("could you name other people to whom I could talk?").

Except.

It's not working at the moment.

I think there's several reasons for this:

- I live in England
- I don't currently live in a metropolitan area
- my industry is particularly poor at networking (some parts to the point of autism)
- the current downtown in this industry (from which it's now recovering) has hit it so hard that it's very difficult to network

Just over a year ago I was more into networking. The result? Two people I talked to were themselves made redundant shortly afterwards! I hope there wasn't a connection.

I received several leads from people but they all came to nothing. Not even a bite or interview.

I have a gut feeling that my efforts are better expended on responding to adverts than trying to network into companies. Also, I have the feeling that it'll be easier to network once I'm in employment again, as long as it's in a city.

My advice to anyone would still be to look at networking but not just because you're job hunting. It should be a near-daily activity.

Important

Readers will be surprised that I don't have a wife, girlfriend or girlfriends. Okay, I've been long-term unemployed and a bit disfigured recently. But the disfigurement has now disappeared (even doctors can't see it). And I did a short-term project management assignment recently.

Moreover I'm setting up a business in the Nordics, have one of the grammatically-better c.v.s and a kick-ass blogsite (you're reading it).

Nevertheless, it's true.

What do women do when they can't get a bloke? Apparently they eat chocolate, meet up with their girlfriends, maybe get a cat.

What do blokes do when they can't get a girl? One-word answer here: gadgets.

Of course they'll get the gadgets anyway. And they'll do other things which a family-orientated blog like this (which has only mentioned the word "cunt" once) wouldn't go into.

Again, from The Sunday Times, I saw the gadget of my dreams. It's a digital pen which doesn't need fancy paper. It writes in ink on normal paper but also stores the scribing in a nearby memory device. The stored images can be uploaded to your computer or PDA.

If this is as good as it says then it'll improve my life no-end.

Er, what has this got to do with job hunting?

Well, it means I can use it in my next job and it'll be just great. I won't have to worry about carrying around loads of notebooks or fear losing them. With one of these who needs a girlfriend?