Final post

The last week taught me an important lesson; you have to take care of your own bussiness, and that means cutting out the middleman.

I've lost count after 45-ish, but I'm well over 60 applications made during the week. I've had 2 automated responses pointing me to further tests, but that is all.

I've had a few tips and I'm going to follow, which are mostly about to take a face and use it for personal approach of jobs.

Take care, and don't rely on agencies.

Sunday

I took the day off in the sense of fixing the laptop of a flatmate. Haven't had much luck aside of that. I've read a forum topic on gumtree, looks like it's not only me having problems with agencies. They most probably are after the commissions and you, as the candidate have nothing to do with that unless you match the job they have exactly.
And that is the smaller problem. They don't seem to ever get back to candidates to tell what the problem is exactly with their application, they just hum along and pretend to have never heard of you before.

Pathetic.

I am taking another approach, as in addressing companies directly.

Day 6

This is ridiculous, It took me 45 minutes to fill my data then another 45 minutes to fill a test about various hotel environments, along the lines of what is missing from the picture. I felt like I was having an IQ test and all this for a linen porter job. I know they have to filter applicants, but an hour and a half for that? Are you out of your freaking mind?

Day 5: Black Friday

On friday I had no success whatsoever, applied for a few low-profile jobs, no answer.

Day 4 : High Wycombe

I had an interview yesterday which went quite smoothly in spite of all my fears. High Wycombe turned out to be a lovely town after all, I like how the whole thing feels.

The company is doing VoIP and resells of BT landlines, so the job would be mainly about supporting other resellers, I wouldn't say it is hard at all, but speaking in english for 8 hours a day would definitely take a toll.

I crunched some numbers and looks like I can move to High Wycombe if it is inevitable, but give me a straw and I'm hanging on to in in London.

Still no answer for my applications. I would advise everyone to keep away from the 'big' jobsites, waste of time and motivation.

Day 3: Dark clouds

I managed to churn out 6 whopping applications yesterday. And I still haven't got a single reply. I may just as well give up big sites. Having spoken to a recruit agent we are now both on the same opinion that they are all rubbish. Jobs posted there are non existant and I think they are mainly for gathering data. I see double-triple posts for urgent and immediate starts with the same wording paced out in a few weeks time, and I am now in the firm belief that they do not worth a minute of your time. Or mine.

Today I am going to have an interview for a job I will not take due to the distance I would have to travel each day, so one could say it is wasted time. May be wasted, may be extremely well spent, compared to reed and monster it is still busy work.

Day 2: update

While I haven't made any applications, or at least not any considerable amount I still think that today has been a great success. I accompanied a friend as she was applying for a nanny vacancy. I had a little chat with the agent and she offered me a few answers to my swarm of questions. She was pessimist about what the future might bring on the job market, recession has been a great success so far, better than wars at burning excess money for sure.

Today I was contacted by a company located a few miles outside of London. They were about to hire my girlfriend as a programmer but we couldn't solve commuting so we had to turn the offer down, now it seems the coin is showing the shiny side, because they contacted me, that they have a job tailored for my CV. I answered a few questions about my approach to people and work and now am waiting for them to get back to me. There is one possible spot I can fail on and that is my spoken english.