I've just received a firm offer of my next contract after a couple of weeks of looking. starting on Monday. Yay! A few things annoyed me about looking this time and prompted me to have a look back at my successes of the last few years with some interesting results. I have no idea how I haven't noticed this trend before:
Since 2006 (can't look before then as I had a computer crash that wiped my email history and taught me about the importance of backups) I have been involuntarily benched for 7 weeks in total. I have had 12 separate contracts since then at 9 different clients, not including renewals.
How I found my roles:
3 through personal/business contacts
3 through agents contacting me after finding my CV on Jobserve
1 through an agent contacting me after finding my CV on Jobsite
2 through an agent I've worked with before finding me work after I've sent him a "my contract finishes in a month" email
3 previous clients asking me back and contracting directly
I'm pedantic about keeping emails, notes on agencies who have contacted me and outcomes. This allows me to see how many roles I've directly applied for on Jobsite, Jobserve, CWJobs, LinkedIn and Monster. In total, since 2006, I've applied for over 200 advertised roles on those sites and had these results:
- 25 agency replies. All agreed to submit my CV to the client.
- 18 of those became "unavailable" when I tried to chase. Just tell me the truth, even in a form "thanks but no thanks" email, I'm a big boy and can handle it.
- of the remaining 7, I got 5 interviews. Thank you to the two agencies who had the decency to tell me I wasn't selected.
- 2 interviews were an utter waste of my time as the agency had mis-sold me as a temp/perm candidate and the client really wanted someone who they could try before they employed
- 2 were a different type of waste of time as something major had been missed from the spec. One was that it was 50-75% travel, the other was for a client who really wanted a BA rather than PM.
- the last interview was fairly successful but the agent told me one rate and the client another with over £150p/d difference. We couldn't reach a mutually agreeable compromise and decided to go our own ways. A very unhappy agent.
What that's said to me is that I've wasted my time hunting for jobs in the massed market of the F5-apply crowd hunting for advertised roles. Over 200 individually written cover notes, most of which were probably never read, along with targeted CV rewrites wasted a lot of my time. Next time I need to find a role, I just won't bother with advertised jobs unless I'm getting desperate. It's a fairly depressing thing seeing all that effort either ignored or wasted.
Since 2006 (can't look before then as I had a computer crash that wiped my email history and taught me about the importance of backups) I have been involuntarily benched for 7 weeks in total. I have had 12 separate contracts since then at 9 different clients, not including renewals.
How I found my roles:
3 through personal/business contacts
3 through agents contacting me after finding my CV on Jobserve
1 through an agent contacting me after finding my CV on Jobsite
2 through an agent I've worked with before finding me work after I've sent him a "my contract finishes in a month" email
3 previous clients asking me back and contracting directly
I'm pedantic about keeping emails, notes on agencies who have contacted me and outcomes. This allows me to see how many roles I've directly applied for on Jobsite, Jobserve, CWJobs, LinkedIn and Monster. In total, since 2006, I've applied for over 200 advertised roles on those sites and had these results:
- 25 agency replies. All agreed to submit my CV to the client.
- 18 of those became "unavailable" when I tried to chase. Just tell me the truth, even in a form "thanks but no thanks" email, I'm a big boy and can handle it.
- of the remaining 7, I got 5 interviews. Thank you to the two agencies who had the decency to tell me I wasn't selected.
- 2 interviews were an utter waste of my time as the agency had mis-sold me as a temp/perm candidate and the client really wanted someone who they could try before they employed
- 2 were a different type of waste of time as something major had been missed from the spec. One was that it was 50-75% travel, the other was for a client who really wanted a BA rather than PM.
- the last interview was fairly successful but the agent told me one rate and the client another with over £150p/d difference. We couldn't reach a mutually agreeable compromise and decided to go our own ways. A very unhappy agent.
What that's said to me is that I've wasted my time hunting for jobs in the massed market of the F5-apply crowd hunting for advertised roles. Over 200 individually written cover notes, most of which were probably never read, along with targeted CV rewrites wasted a lot of my time. Next time I need to find a role, I just won't bother with advertised jobs unless I'm getting desperate. It's a fairly depressing thing seeing all that effort either ignored or wasted.
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