Life on the bench: in my dressing gown

[RichardCranium]

This week is not off to a good start.

I try to use the weekend to get up to date with email and all the job sites, ready to hit the gig-searching on Monday morniing.

Saturday was spent visiting an elderly relative in hospital on the other side of the country who has had a stroke.

Yesterday was spent preparing for a landlord's inspection which never happened.

This morning the Missus has to go into London to be interviewed first thing by Panorama about her forthright views on the Royal Mail so we're up early to get her to the station.

And I have been up all night with an eye-watering toothache. At about 3 a.m. as I was trying to apply more Oil of Cloves, my shaking hands dropped the bottle so I lost the last of that. Damn.

So I am shattered, in pain and not up to date with my gig-searching. I think today I might take a sickie.

[TheFaQQer]

Have a (manly)

Take the day off, and come back to it when you are in a better state.

[TheFaQQer]

Bollocks.

Consultancy I was talking to about a new gig didn't get the work. If they had, there was work there for me.

Bugger - that was my part time one that would have given me a bit more freedom to do some other things too.

[RichardCranium]

Bollocks.

Consultancy I was talking to about a new gig didn't get the work. If they had, there was work there for me.

Bugger - that was my part time one that would have given me a bit more freedom to do some other things too.

Have that (manly) back again.

(I missed a cracking part-time gig a few months ago for which I thought I would be perfect. It would have been 3 days a week for the same money for which I had been doing 5 days.)

[RichardCranium]

Taking on board what AlreadyPacked said about my CV needing looking at ... I have a day long session with a CV writing service. It's free, it's local and it is unlikely to do any harm. I might learn something.

And that's today's activity.

[scotspine]

best of luck rc. don't forget to let the rest of us know of any gems that turn up. and sorry to hear about the tooth. i broke one about 2 weeks ago and was in pure agony for over a day till i got seen to. hope it all gets sorted soon!

[RichardCranium]

best of luck rc.

Oo-er. I've attracted the attention of a moderator. I'd best be on good behaviour from now on.

Thank you, kind sir.

don't forget to let the rest of us know of any gems that turn up.

Recruitment agency accounts that have access to uploaded CVs on the decent job boards costs tens of £000s.

Whenever possible, agencies select applicants from uploaded CVs rather than paying to advertise a role.

Companies use agencies because they are cheaper than advertising and because they cannot afford the staff necessary to sift through 600 CVs.

By using agencies, companies can claim they are using best practice and conforming to equal ops.

Once agents have the 3 CVs they need they stop looking. It is not the best 3 CVs they forward, it is the first 3 that match. You need to be in those first 3.

Make sure your keywords are on your CV.

Uploaded CVs should be no more than 2 pages.

Nobody is interested in what you did 10 or more years ago.

Agents do not read covering letters attached to job board applications.

Make sure you are on LinkedIn; agents do use it.

There was loads of other stuff that I knew already about interview technique, how to search job sites, what a CV should look like and generic stuff that does not apply in IT.

What was interesting was seeing a JobSite search being done by the bloke (who used to be a recruiter) and seeing the field "only include CVs uploaded in the past how many days?" defaults to 7 days. Also that the default sort criterion is "relevance" so make sure you repeat the key search terms in your CV!

For a recently unemployed professional permie (the target audience) the course was very, very good indeed. For an experienced, clued-up contractor who reads CUK, you should already know 90% of what we were told.

and sorry to hear about the tooth. i broke one about 2 weeks ago and was in pure agony for over a day till i got seen to. hope it all gets sorted soon!

(Oh bugger. A moderator with toothache. We know what happens when a moderator has toothache.)

Yes sir. Thank you, sir. I have two appointments on Thursday to fix all manner of toothy badness, sir.

[alreadypacked]

RC; there is knowing it, and there is the doing it. Uploading your CV every couple of days can be a pain, but that's the job when you are on the bench.
Also send Linkedin invite's to the agents who are posting roles you are interested in. Some on here would not approve, but they already have roles.

[HairyArsedBloke]

What was interesting was seeing a JobSite search being done by the bloke (who used to be a recruiter) and seeing the field "only include CVs uploaded in the past how many days?" defaults to 7 days. Also that the default sort criterion is "relevance" so make sure you repeat the key search terms in your CV!

A pal of mine worked that out by himself and said that he was uploading his CV first thing every morning.

[suityou01]

A pal of mine worked that out by himself and said that he was uploading his CV first thing every morning.

If only I could get that message across to everyone.

I learned a while back that RC really really really knows what he is doing, and is a pass master and gig application (and does not need any help with this, he could school most on here - I'm not just tickling his balls, he is fine for advice). The sad situation now is that he is so honest his CV has a gap and that is prolly why he is getting looked over. He did an awesome job of finding the truth about virus lists this weekend so I wonder if I could bung him a fiver and he could fan that into a month's gig for MyCo.

Seriously it could take some stretch of the truth to kickstart things. That way a future ClientCo is thinking "Bit of a gap there, but got back into things recently so what the heck" rather than "NEXT!"

Not a huge advocate of blagging the CV, but also find it heartbreaking to hear that a well decorated PM is budgeting wether to put the heating on or not.