Your typical unemployed day

[Fusion]

No, you DO have a chance. I have interviewed a lot of people. I interviewed someone last week. A pompous boring ***hole with a shiny CV lasts 10, maybe 15min. A confident, eager and bright candidate with an average - above average CV will most likely get a call back. I want to see from candidates that I will make the right decision employing them. Whether it's shooting the **** about last week's football in the staff room, pitching clients, hanging out at the bar during company nights out, etc. Come in and charm me, and your CV will most likely remain unopened and offer of employment issued to you.

This is good advice. Browsing for jobs online and sending off applications is not the most efficient means of gaining employment by a long shot. Look at the sheer volume of online job searchers on here alone- now think how many tens of thousands if not more are browsing Reed et al. Networking is very important- use your personal contacts. You can get a foot in without ever writing a CV, I've seen it happen.

To those that say to not bother with "menial" jobs as they will destroy your sense of worth- how wrong could you be? Do you think tossing it off at home and browsing these forums seven hours a day is going to make your CV shine or develop you as a person? All that and you'll be skint, too. You should never feel dejected about having a job of any kind, you're already above the 2.5m+ that don't have one plus the masses that are falsely claiming incapacity benefit, disability and god knows what else.

I agree with AcidHell, no job should be considered beneath you- whether you're a Molecular Biology grad or not. No-one owes you a living unfortunately.

 

[SPARC]

Since my college course finished on 4th of June my routine has been ...

Around 9am Get up, shower, dressed (well clean boxers at least)
Check torrent sites for American TV
Watch downloads from the previous day
visit various web sites (OcUK, Lifehacker, bit-tech, Autosport, etc ...)
Play BFBC2 (just got it a few days ago currently lvl 5)
5pm - 6pm Diner
Start again from the top
10pm read (last book in The Night Angel trilogy)
~11:30 Sleep

So far it's been ok, just patiently waiting for the 2nd year of my course to start in September. Guaranteed to be ripping my hair out by August.

 

[alx]

Wow Amp34 I must say your experience and insight match exactly with mine as you may have noticed in other threads I always agree with your posts regarding job hunting.
As I mentioned before if you are a fresh graduate especially a science/engineering graduate you are immediately blocked and damned. Also I so much hear about degree skills being transferable especially technical degrees; but to me it is b##l****. My engineering degree (aerospace) hasn't helped me one bit in looking for like airline jobs, officework, cad design, mechanical engineering design jobs etc. I wonder if I can go staight in accountancy jobs with engineering degree or if I need to do another accountancy degree?

I've found that a lot of finance/analyst jobs are more than happy to take on engineers. So far I've had interviews for a business analyst position at Capital One, an analyst position at Tesco HQ, a performance analyst position at F&C Asset Management and I've got an interview with KPMG on Monday - these are all with a Chemical Engineering degree.

So it's not all doom and gloom, there are quite a few half decent analyst jobs around that don't pay peanuts if you know where to look. I've had quite a bit of success with some of the non-mainstream recruitment agencies.

 

[.Lethal]

Lots of liars here posting "3pm-4pm" browse websites ocuk etc yet they posted at 10pm.

 

[utajoker]

If you are not joking then I feel sorry for you. I have applied to a few more jobs online today. Tomorrow morning i'm having my 'interview' at job seekers. Best iron my favourite wife beater and have the special brew in the fridge so I can fit in

It was great at the time as I was addicted to wow.

It's quite easy to stop stop searching for jobs when you have been doing so for 3-4 months, you just lose your motivation. But I much prefer getting a nice wage every week now

 

[Creelers]

Lots of liars here posting "3pm-4pm" browse websites ocuk etc yet they posted at 10pm.

Because everyones schedule is definite and doesn't change at all

 

[.Lethal]

Because everyones schedule is definite and doesn't change at all

Said post was not serious, mr. so serious.



seriously

 

[Beasty]

The only thing that stopped me going bananas was helping out at a charity shop nearby, nothing like steaming out a dead mans suit to chase the blues away eh.

monday tues wed was:

8 - get up get sorted
8.30 - head off to charity shop

1.20- get home, have some lunch do daily quests on wow, log back off, the game felt more like a job 3 or 4 years in, fav lunch was sainsburys hot and spicy pizza with fennel sausage peperoni and chillis while watching peep show! they dont make it any more

do very litte in the afternoon until raid time on wow, after that went to bed usually, rinse repeat till thursday.

thurs-fri

did nothing at all, Christ knows what I got up to, don't even remember, lots of 4chan I think and being part of the crowd that would harass people broadcasting on those webcam sites.

Was a lot like this for my year of 3 days a week college, come to think of it!

Halcyon days! Or not when I look how far I've come as a human being.

 

[shampa]

General Discussion

I passed out my time as you did,Its tough be to be unemployed. Its one of the most difficult tasks you may face is structuring your time. Thank God! I overcome all these days.

 

[cm1179]

is anyone else becoming border line depressed by being unemployed? i find my motivation is diminishing by the day and cannot be bothered to get out of bed and it hasn't even been 2 weeks and the weather's nice! if it was winter i doubt i'd get up at all

 

[Nix]

Routine is a must, as is exercise. Don't turn into a hermit; get out the house now and then.

As silly as this sounds, you need to make sure you wash and change everyday. Don't stop taking care of yourself as it starts a viscious cycle.

 

[Guest2]

As silly as this sounds, you need to make sure you wash and change everyday. Don't stop taking care of yourself as it starts a viscious cycle.

Yeh I did this for just one day, woke and got up at 8am but didnt shower or clean teeth until about 5pm for some reason. The day after I felt like doing the same but went for a run and then was back to normal. I can see how some people easily fall into the trap of not bothering to do anything at all

Had another interview today, been exercising and went home at the weekend to see family so feeling quite positive at the moment (as positive as I can be about not having a job)

 

[Teaf]

Any of the unemployed peeps ever thought about starting their own business? (online or otherwise)

I actually did this about 18 months ago when job searching. I still probably only make what I would have done on dole per week, but I guess I feel a bit better for actually making the money myself. After I started on self employment I stopped actively looking for work to focus on self employment, been doing that since, but now it's just not enough money so probably having to go on the dole again whilst I find work :/ really not looking forward to doing it.

Reading some of the replies here though, I'm not sure what people expect everyone to do everyday for job hunting. Sure, when you start job searching you can actively do it for 8 hours a day, there so many places to apply to, agencies to visit, online sites to browse (etc). But after a week or two the jobs aren't cycling fast enough for the time you are spending looking for them, and you're just looking at the same jobs you did the week before so I'm a bit confused on how you're expected to even last 1/4 of that 8 hours searching without repeating yourself.

I guess in a way it's a question, because I'll probably have to be doing it myself soon enough.

 

[steve-h]

Wake up
gym
study/work on a coding project
look at lack of good jobs
fail @ working on CV/cover letters
bed

Routine is a must, as is exercise. Don't turn into a hermit; get out the house now and then.

As silly as this sounds, you need to make sure you wash and change everyday. Don't stop taking care of yourself as it starts a viscious cycle.

very much agreed!

Also, why don't you unemployed people do some voluntary work?

 

[dl763]

I became unemployed so I decided to become self-employed, now I dont have to search for a job.

 

[James J]

Due to finishing uni for the year and having the entire summer off until the start of october, not a great deal lol. Financially im totally fine so atleast I don't have that burden but if the money situation was different I'd be up brown creek.

Due to my age (25), getting your average job in places like mcdonalds, KFC and other similar places (all 5 mins walk from me) is zero due to being paid a higher min wage by law compared to some 16 year old school leaver. Its quite depressing getting knocked back but im trying to keep some sort of routine going.

Basically its get up at around 8-9am, get food and play with our dogs for abit then check my emails + uni emails and check the student union job board as thats my best chance of getting work to suit (ie not permanent full time work due to going back in october). After that I usually have a look through RBS feeds for news related to my degree to keep upto date with events and then play some pc games with my dad. Night usually ends with watching films or random shows.

Its annoying to think ive still got a few months of this potential cycle before I can get stuck right back into my work lol. Hang in there though guys!

 

[firefilesuk]

i've seen plenty of older people in places like kfc, macdonalds and ikea, sure they may have to pay a bit more minimum wage but not much and they'll get better prouctivity from older members of staff in general.

 

[rypt]

When not at work (part time) I tend to just wake up at 10 or 11, watch some oldie tv show, or film on pc, surf the net, do some exercise, surf the net some more, do some design/planning for hobby stuff, read a book, watch some more stuff, um ... yer

 

[Ivan Drago]

All these wasted manpower hours that could have been spent finding cures for cancer or something.......

 

[V4NT0M]

Worst thing about being unemployed is that time goes by so quickly! I'll be starting a new job this month but had been unemployed for over a year, I'll be honest I was never going to be the type looking for jobs 24/7. But I just don't understand where the time went, when I say to myself I was unemployed for a year it just sounds so wrong and makes no sense in my head!