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The older I get, the more cynical I get. It is not a fact I am proud of, but it is a fact. I disbelieve just about everything the establishment and the media tell us. I am convinced that we are manipulated into being the submissive, law-abiding robots that we have become. It grieves me greatly.

Monday 13 February 2012

Today Matthew, I am going to be a jobseeker

This evening I have Sunday night blues - it is the thought of Monday morning.  I have dreaded Mondays from an early age - since starting school in fact.  My mother is fond of bragging that I went to school full-time from the age of three.  The woman is actually proud of the fact that she blighted my life at such an young age. 

Now I am one of the long-term unemployed, I still suffer from triple 'S', or sleepless Sunday syndrome, a little recognised but much experienced syndrome that I have just made up, but that I believe to be quite common.  It is odd, however, that I should still suffer from it when I am unemployed.  When I was travelling, I loved Mondays.  It was the day on which I did the most, the day on which I got the most joy from everything, the day on which I remembered just how blessed I was in having the opportunity to travel. 

Unemployed Mondays should be like that.   "Yes" days without the need to call your boss in a croaky voice and feign illness.  (Yes days are a phrase coined by a friend of mine, who pointed out that however guilty you feel about lying before and during the call, once you put the phone down the guilt is gone and you realise you have the whole day just for you, at which point you just feel 'YES'). 

This brings to my strange little mind another point.  We rarely put the phone down any more.  It has become an ancient custom, along with waiting for people to get off the tube and saying please and thank you.  Where once we would have ended a telephone conversation by replacing the receiver and hearing that satisfactory little click, now we continue to hold our mobiles in anticipation of further communication.  It is the virtual equivalent of walking around all day with your mouth open, just in case you need to utter another word.  Break the trend people, put the phone down.  Not me, obviously.  I am unemployed, and therefore surgically attached to my gizmo.  I have a lot of time to fill, and Angry Birds hits the spot. 

However, I digress.  Tomorrow (which is now today) I have to get up and look for a job.  I don't want a job, but I do need a job.  I haven't worked for 14 months.  The irony of this situation is that being unemployed makes me less employable.  You apparently have more chance of getting a job if you are already in a job.  This I fail to understand.  If you want to hire someone, would you pick the person who you know is spending their employer's time brushing up their CV, looking at job websites, sneaking out for interviews?  Would you pick the person who will have to work out at least a month's notice?  Would you pick the person who may let you go through all the hassle of recruiting, interviewing, drawing up the paperwork, releasing all the other prospective candidates only to possibly tell you that she or he isn't going to take the job after all because the current employer has matched the salary, given him/her two extra days' holiday per year and the staff summer party is going to be in a really cool club that half the cast of TOWIE go to?  Yes, you probably would, and so would most other employers.

Apart from the huge disadvantage of being immediately available for work, another obstacle to overcome is that the person who is filtering CVs for roles is rarely the person who knows how to do that particular job, or, in some cases, how to do any job.  The second theory is most evident in the apalling grammar and spelling in most job vacancy notices.  First line CV filterers work in HR or recruitment agencies, therefore their skills are unlikely to be in your field of expertise, unless you are looking for a job in HR or recruitment agencies.  They have been given some information on the role by the person who will be managing you, and have made up the rest, or taken it from the role description.  Role descriptions do not describe roles, they serve no other function than to meet some target fad, and to wave in front of you when your employer is looking for a way to pretend you haven't been doing your job.  When HR call you in to discuss your role, you know your number is up.  Unless you work in a bank, then they start going through your expenses.

I need a new approach, because ridiculing all the job adverts and despising even the thought of a 9 to 5 life is not getting me far.  Even my despising falls short of the mark; nobody works 9 to 5 anymore.  I have just seen a role with hours from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. as standard. 

I don't yet know what form this new approach should take.  I have brushed up my CV, put an updated profile on Linkedin, with a picture - only because I had a very good hair day last week, and am attempting to "link" to more people.  How do you do that?  I hate it.  My linkedin was virtually a carbon copy of my facebook list - people I know and like.  I don't want to accost people I once worked with and hardly know.  My cousin tried to help me, but we didn't get far.  She kept on calling people out from my Linkedin-generated 'suggested links' list and I kept dismissing them for eminently sensible reasons.  Some I completely despised; many I liked but was sure they would not remember me or at least would not want to remember me; one or two I had slept with - and these could equally well fit into either of the other two categories.   Therefore my new contacts list was limited to people I like who are new to Linkedin, and people I liked but was not certain they would remember me however was almost certain they wouldn't object to being reminded. 

I looked on Google for tips on getting a job.  Tip number one, don't rely on the internet, get out and meet people.  Which leads me back to networking.  The people I like and want to stay in touch with, I do.  The people I don't dislike, those in the acquaintance category, are not people I feel comfortable about using, i.e. I haven't kept in touch with them, and if I contact them now it is obvious all I want is a job.  The people I dislike, I don't want to work with again anyway, so why try and meet them for coffee or lunch just to remind us both why we didn't get on?

It is now 2 a.m., I am solving my "triple S" problem by not actually going to bed.  I could solve dreaded Mondays by sleeping through them.  Not long-term solutions, but solutions.  I can put that on my CV, providing innovative and cost effective solutions. 

Tomorrow/today/later I shall give some more thought to my networking dilemma.   The reality is probably that it will be assigned to the same category as my housework dilemma - i.e. never to be tackled until I have an assignment deadline to avoid.  All of which has served to remind me that in three weeks I have an assignment due and I haven't started the reading.   I can avoid jobseeking by preparing for the assignment, until the deadline draws near and I can avoid that by looking for a job, an innovative solution indeed.

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