Life on the bench: in my dressing gown

[chef]

game of global thermonuclear war?

WOPR: no thanks i'd rather a nice game of chess

[RichardCranium]

My sister-in-law phoned this evening to check I am still alive.

She's been job searching lately and went on and on an on about how depressing it is job searching.

I said "None of that applies to me, I'm a contractor. It's different for us."

I don't think she wanted to hear that.

[RichardCranium]

Didn't get much searching done yesterday.

We've got some friends staying this week, so yesterday was spent cleaning and shopping. Finally got around to job searching about 23:30. Applied for 3 gigs! All crappy ones though. Hey ho. But crappy gigs pay infinitely better than bench-polishing.

Got up at 7:30 full of Zip! and Go! and Zoom!

It took me until 8:40 to finish the washing, FFS! There's only five of us, how can there be such mountains of washing up to do?

Tired now.

So I've since then been going through my applications records and removing the ones which have 'died' (i.e. heard no response after 4 weeks). There's 16 of those since I haven't done any weeding of my records for a week.

All my 'follow-up actions' have been done, so now it is back to the routine: check email / Jobserve / other lists / CUK / drink tea.

OK, drink tea / CUK / check email / CUK / Jobserve / CUK / other lists / CUK.

Hmm. I really must remember not to stir my tea with my chutney spoon.

[RichardCranium]

Agents can break your heart, they really can.

I had two messages yesterday from Rullion about a role; they wanted a tailored CV for a role I applied for. So after dinner with the guests last night, I set my laptop up at the dinner table and wrote and sent said CV.

So today I get a call: they have to have names of managers at an outsourcer I have worked with and names of managers at various sites in the past.

She went on and on about how essential this is. She had not even opened the CV I had sent.

I total, I have spent about two hours on this role this past week. Just so the Rullion can get some contact names.

Not that I told them anything.


For the benefit of others:
Their approach was to have a junior resourcer advertise a role based on a fake job description. He gets you to send a CV with a covering letter. Then he's suddenly "on leave". A real agent then takes over with the hard sell. You get a job description but only vague details "because I'm doing a favour for the absent resourcer". They get you to do a tailored CV. You are now committed by the time you have spent. They then drop in an outsourcer's name, be vague about the location, never quite specify the client but go on and on about how essential it is they have some names.

What a waste of my time.

Most people will fall for this approach, I expect.

Recruitment agents. Heartless liars and timewasters too.

[DimPrawn]

Have you considered Twitter?

[d000hg]

Have you considered Twitter?

Even better, type your thoughts into notepad and then at the end of each day, close without saving.

[RichardCranium]

Have you considered Twitter?

Yes, thanks.

[alreadypacked]

Yes, thanks.

Don't worry, August is a bit of a dry patch. Plan to do something else during the day for at least a week, only go on jobserve after you get home in the evening.

HTH

[zamzummim]

oh Richard, you have a record of applications?

I just apply right left and centre, and when the agents call, I have no idea which role they are talking about, but I tell them to go through it again with me, so its all cool. If they don't call then I don't notice, cuz I wouldn't remember if I applied or not lol ...


But its true August is not that active normally, however an agent told me that July has been the best month he had this year!!

[AlfredJPruffock]

Even better, type your thoughts into notepad and then at the end of each day, close without saving.

I like your style dh000hg.