Finding work

[craig1]

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.

[northernladuk]

Am sure companies are annoyed having to put effort in to marketing and sales activities to get business but that is how it works and comes with the territory. If work just landed in our laps everytime we made a phone call every man and his dog would be contracting.

[Langkawi]

Hi Craig1,

Very interesting and confirms my own anecdotal experience that the contracts I apply for as a "perfect fit" lead to nothing - often no response at all. Whereas the contracts I've landed last few times have all been ones where the agent found or already had my CV when the contract landed on thier desk.

Not sure whether this is down to agents being useless and not knowing a "perfect fit" CV when they see one, or perhaps in the recent state of the market by the time a contract is advertised is gets massively oversubscribed and your chances get diluted accordingly. I guess probably a mixture of both.

Either way it seems that having your CV fine tuned and out there on the right job sites then sitting back and waiting for the agents to contact you is more fruitful than wasting time chasing the advertised roles.

Thanks for the analysis though as certainly squares with my own experience last few years.

Cheers,
Alan

[Brookster]

12.5% call back ratio is pretty decent. Are you nice and polite to the agents ect, are you straight to the point or more expensive than your competition?

Totally agree with the agent contacting you back to tell you if didn't win - reps to the few there are with balls.

I have one standard CV and don't do cover notes - I am what I am and I sell myself well.

[cojak]

The contract I started today found me, which go goes to show that agents will trawl through the databases looking for prime candidates for more unusual contracts, then put them on the boards if they can't be found.

Monster is the best place to put my CV - I never bother looking for work on there but all agents who contact me tell me that they've found my CV there.

[oracleslave]

The contract I started today found me, which go goes to show that agents will trawl through the databases looking for prime candidates

1) Agents wouldn't know a prime candidate if one bit them on the arse

2) How come you got the gig then

[Contreras]

The contract I started today found me, which go goes to show that agents will trawl through the databases looking for prime candidates for more unusual contracts, then put them on the boards if they can't be found.

Monster is the best place to put my CV - I never bother looking for work on there but all agents who contact me tell me that they've found my CV there.

I'll second that. Jobsite & cv-library generate the greatest quantity of cold calls for me, by far. Joint runners up are Monster, theitjobboard, jobserve, totaljobs & cwjobs. Not forgetting linkedin and Google of course.

I've not had any success in applying for "ideal match" jobs, ever. I reckon it's more to do with the agents being overwhelmed with applicants rather than the roles not existing. When I do upload my CV the phone is usually ringing pretty quickly. One agent told me they can put contractors on a watch list so any status updates they are notified by email immediately.

[SimonMac]

I fire off an email/cv and forget about it until I get a phone call, no idea how many I have applied for, for me it doesn't matter, I only care about the ones I get

[SueEllen]

Hi Craig1,

Very interesting and confirms my own anecdotal experience that the contracts I apply for as a "perfect fit" lead to nothing - often no response at all.

Some agents and clients' store CVs.

I've gotten emails from agents and clients, who I know by checking my email history for names and email address, asking me if I'm available months later when I definitely haven't applied for roles through them.

In 2 cases I've managed to get a contract that way.

[TOSH1]

I fire off an email/cv and forget about it until I get a phone call, no idea how many I have applied for, for me it doesn't matter, I only care about the ones I get

Exactly what I do