Tuesday 27 July 2010

looking for work

I'm not sure any semi-regular experience comes close in the horrible stakes to job-hunting. It's so ridiculously soul destroying and demoralising that it leaves you unconvinced as to your ability to do any job at all. And I say this as someone who has only received one rejection letter to date.

Let me start from the top:
I found out last week that the company I work for is in severe dire straits. This was confirmed for me on Wednesday when it was suggested that instead of my usual work, it may be best to prepare a CV.
This was duly completed and the job hunt began, if not hastily, earnestly. The problem was (and indeed remains) that not only am I not particularly clear what I want to do, but my career to date has not really been targeted enough to give me a proper fall back.
The obvious contender for a holding role is to do some design work, admittedly that's far from obvious looking at this blog, but it has been the key thread through my career to date. Thing is, these days everyone wants to see a portfolio. I'm not organised enough to keep a portfolio. I had trouble enough remembering where the my work was on the server. Finding work I did 3 or more years and 2 computers ago is like looking for a needle in a haystack. When someone forgot to provide the needle.

I can do other things of course. I mean I can write, or at least I hope I can. If you've made it this far then at least I can write a bit anyway. But once again employers want to see a strong portfolio of work. That tends not to mean a hideously untargetted blog and the occasional note on rwdmag.com. Besides, the few jobs I have seen that do exist have balls and all to do with what i know.
'Do you have a passion for luxury hubcaps?' Does anyone?

To save repeating myself down the list of skills that I have in some measure, it's essentially the same story. I can do the job but either don't have a portfolio handy, or haven't been doing it professionally for anything like long enough.

Luckily I do have a way of amusing myself even in these irritating times. On seeing one job that I considered I had a chance for, I replied, 'are you looking for the ultimate all-rounder? Well look no further!'

Yes I know what you're thinking, that's either breathtakingly arrogant, mind numbingly stupid, or both. Frankly I'm not sure I care, after another day in our rotting corpse of an office, I needed some entertainment, I was tired of typing up the same empty platitudes and maybe, just maybe someone arrogant and stupid is just what they were looking for.

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