Gizajobmister!

I’m still looking for work, and am still getting phone calls from charming agency people to tell me how impressed they are with my CV, and how I just missed a job I would have been great for. The fact that I’ve had no interviews makes me think they’re just being nice, so I’ve sent my CV for a review with a professional CV writing service. I’ll see what they have to say. There’s obviously something up – maybe it’s the amount of time since I was last in work. I thought world travel was supposed to be considered a valuable asset in terms of experience, but all I’ve had are questions about what I’ve been doing for the last year, and whether I think my knowledge of the work I’m going for is up to date. The search for jobs has broadened to lower-paid and further away, but I’ve been shooting myself in the foot by getting de-motivated with the whole thing and not making enough effort to apply for jobs.

The job-seeking process is a thankless, haphazard, soul-sapping one. Firstly, many employers don’t really know what they’re looking for in a potential employee, don’t necessarily even understand the job they’re advertising, so the best they can come up with for a job description is a cobbled-together wish list, which is nice in theory but unrealistic. Many employees, it seems, write their own job descriptions – so you may end up applying for the job that someone else has spent the last few years creating for themselves, based on a description that should have been shredded and started from scratch.

If you see a job you like the look of, you have two sides of A4 and a covering letter to describe your life, your qualities, and why you’re perfect for the job – too verbose and people will fall asleep reading it, too sparse and you don’t look qualified to do much more than refill the office coffee machine. Assuming you even get past an agency to the interview, you’re relying on blind luck, chemistry, and not blurting out something incredibly stupid to get anywhere. I’ve interviewed several people in the past, and for every two gems employed there’s been an absolute muppet who couldn’t organise a you-know-what in a brewery, let alone do the job they were hired for. Call me a bad judge of character, but some people’s ability to bullshit their way into anything is amazing, and the smoothest talkers have often been the worst trouble.

I’ve sent my CV off to a professional CV writing service out of desperation and curiosity, but these services are basically all about inserting power words that are designed to make your CV stand out from the crowd. If any monkey can tart up their CV, then they all still look the same. You just need to include some key words and phrases – empower, consult, board-level downwards, scoped improvements, 200% rise in retention. That’s twenty-five quid please.

Possibly related posts:

• Prayer for a Wednesday
• It ain’t half hot, Mum
• Back
• å…­å›› + 20
• At the End of the Day