Forgot how bad job searching was :(

well after speaking to remploy (thats who's doing the work program scheme here) they said they would look in to it as they where told i had the job 6 weeks ago and so told me.

best thing is the manager who had a go at me because i swore once in the heat of being told a pack of lies and also i sent a bit of a iffy email stating i was rather unrinated ! at them for for dropping me in it.

but she did say she would get to the bottom of it so to help "manage my expectations" no i aint making that up. i had david brent on the phone.

as for other companies il be on the look out yet again, but for the past 6 weeks iv been doing nothing because as far as i knew i had a job. hell i even refused a interview with a small firm because of all of this.

end of the day anyone on work programme dont believe anything until it happens.
 
Well after 4 and a half years at my current firm I'm back looking for new employment. I'd been unhappy with my salary for a while now, I'm paid reasonably well don't get me wrong, but I know what the market is for somebody with my qualification / experience - and I could be looking at roles paying a good £5k-£10k more.

I didn't want to do find a job and offer my firm an ultimatum so I asked for a meeting with our Finance Director and pushed my case for a pay rise. I'm one of the hardest workers at the firm, I'm the only person in my company who can do what I do, and I'm on a 4 week notice period. I know how the company is doing as I produce the financials and I know we've had back to back strong results. I felt the meeting went well and he said he would came back to me with an answer.

Well they're prepared to offer me absolutely nothing, and would like me to agree to a three month notice period. Suffice to say I'm not prepared to shoot my chances of better roles elsewhere in the foot by chaining myself to a company that isn't even prepared to negotiate on salary. Feeling distinctly undervalued - I'm going to hang out for the bonus in the May pay packet and then I'm gone.

Let the job searching begin.

Anybody want a Part-Qual financial / management accountant with masses of claims, insurance and reinsurance experience let me know!
 
Sounds awesome to be fair.


My advice for anyone considering Forensic Science as a career is: don't. The pay is bad (getting more than £18k is an achievement) and the work is dull (only a very few get to do the stuff that you see on TV). The turnover rate for some Forensic jobs is around 30% per year. Sadly the same is true of most of science: if you want to get rich doing science, stop doing it and go into management. You'll be a ****, but a richer ****.
 
i got made redundant last week, fortunately i still live at home so no overheads. i had an interview at mcdonalds and never got the job which tbf is a little bit of a confidence knock. iv even applied for those minimum wage agency jobs in warehouses and heard nothing back.

i was hoping to get back working because i really do not want to apply for job seekers.

on the plus side not having a job gave me chance to think carefully about where i want to end up career wise and iv decided to aim for an I.T based career. just bought a book on CompTIA a+ so onwards and upwards :P
 
i got made redundant last week, fortunately i still live at home so no overheads. i had an interview at mcdonalds and never got the job which tbf is a little bit of a confidence knock. iv even applied for those minimum wage agency jobs in warehouses and heard nothing back.

i was hoping to get back working because i really do not want to apply for job seekers.

on the plus side not having a job gave me chance to think carefully about where i want to end up career wise and iv decided to aim for an I.T based career. just bought a book on CompTIA a+ so onwards and upwards :P

Don't let it get you down mate. In all honesty I have been looking for work since last March. It might be an age thing in my case as I am 40 now. But I have been for scores of interviews and got nothing back, not even any feedback.

I have also suffered the humiliation of signing on at the JCP. They have forced me to work for free for the local council among other things. That is how I gained my SIA licence as they said it was mandatory I did it as there was so much security work in the area. Well to my knowledge nobody out of the class of 20 I did it with has got a security job. Many have jobs but unconnected.

I was offered a self employed teaching role by the company that trained us, that came to nothing either.

In the end I managed to build up a few NVQ Assessing jobs and looks like I have a part time role now to go with it answering phones.

I have never known a job market like this in the 20 years of my working life. Employers expectations are very high, wages are low, hours are insecure but they know they will have hundreds of applicants per role. Just keep pushing on and take any courses or anything that are offered to you.
 
Go for it I say. I had a very successful business from very little. You wont believe how much extra you are motivated when it is directly going into your pocket.

Mine declined through poor health on my side, however now I am fit again I intend to rebuild.

Only advice is get a good accountant/bookkeeper even if just for advice. Even if you do your own accountants you need to be crystal on what you can and can't claim for. My father is a tax manager so I am lucky, without his help I would have paid £1000's extra by simply not knowing what is deductible that I wasn't aware of.

I have a full time job, but I am (literally today sorting suppliers and paper work) starting my own business.

It's just that time, I'm sure everybody thinks it at one point, if I don't do it now, I'll never do it.
 
I have a full time job, but I am (literally today sorting suppliers and paper work) starting my own business.

It's just that time, I'm sure everybody thinks it at one point, if I don't do it now, I'll never do it.

Yes, there is always a risk. I had a young son and looking back to one huge risk but I felt the time was right. My full time job looked like it was getting on shaky ground but I negotiated to cover the work on part time self employed basis.

That gave me a real head start and I had already another client I was working for in the evenings and weekend. After that things just fell into place and I nailed a fantastic contract teaching African government workers in specific IT packages. The money was fantastic and I even employed more staff to cover all the new work I got.

Unfortunately my health got bad, I couldn't take time off and ended up being ambulanced off from a client. Very embarrassing and with a long stay in hospital came out to find everything was gone.

Wont bore you with the rest of the details but I had no disaster plan to deal with a situation like that.

But I loved it so much I am hungry to start again.
 
well after speaking to remploy (thats who's doing the work program scheme here) they said they would look in to it as they where told i had the job 6 weeks ago and so told me.

best thing is the manager who had a go at me because i swore once in the heat of being told a pack of lies and also i sent a bit of a iffy email stating i was rather unrinated ! at them for for dropping me in it.

but she did say she would get to the bottom of it so to help "manage my expectations" no i aint making that up. i had david brent on the phone.

as for other companies il be on the look out yet again, but for the past 6 weeks iv been doing nothing because as far as i knew i had a job. hell i even refused a interview with a small firm because of all of this.

end of the day anyone on work programme dont believe anything until it happens.

Potential employer: sworn at and sent offensive emails. Whatever they have done or not done, on what level did you ever believe this was acceptable?

Your name will be mud with them and no doubt other employers who have been made aware.

They don't owe you anything, you are the one who wants something from them.
 
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remploy are not the employer, they are the government paid body to provide help and support via the work programme, you know with tax payers money.

as for what the email contained it litrally said can my adviser explain to the accounts manager how piddled i was. nothing more, as for the swearing it was a instant reaction/slip of the tongue to being told the person i needed to speak to had gone at half 4 after being told 15 mins before they where in a meeting untill 4:30 and would be there till 5.

should i have swore no, but could you say 100% honestly you wouldn't have snapped at that ????

apologised and played niced when i did get to speak to the branch stand in manager who understands how i feel and other comforting rubbish.
 
remploy are not the employer, they are the government paid body to provide help and support via the work programme, you know with tax payers money. .

Ah ok, if they are anything like the farcical ATOS then it was probably deserved ;)

I've been in work for the past 20+ years, so have never experienced job centres etc, but have heard the horror stories. My contract is finally up next year, so i have all these delights to come.
 
Ah ok, if they are anything like the farcical ATOS then it was probably deserved ;)

I've been in work for the past 20+ years, so have never experienced job centres etc, but have heard the horror stories. My contract is finally up next year, so i have all these delights to come.


Believe me it is not pleasant. I was actually tutoring in a jobcentre as paid work.

In the mornings I had to wait outside to be let in by the security with the people signing on. You will not believe the things people shout out of car windows and comments made when they walk past.

I was actually working their and it was horrendous. I would say that 95% of the people like myself are genuinely trying hard to find work.

Yet there is a stigma that everyone is lazy and sits at home all day behind their massive flat screen TV's watching Jeremy Kyle.

I just keep my head high and am thankful that I am not the person who employs/works with people who behave like that.
 
I have also suffered the humiliation of signing on at the JCP.


I've just had the joy of my first interview after filling out the form online. Obviously I was treated as a work-shy layabout who has to be held at gunpoint otherwise I'd live off the £72 a week the JSA will give me. That's obviously going to happen, because, well, targets. More impressive was the bit where I agreed what measures I have to take to find a job. Apparently I have to ask friends, family and ex-colleagues at least once a week if they know of any jobs I could apply for. Because obviously they'll -ing forget about me if I don't keep reminding them every Monday. At least I'm told that Universal Jobsearch is now only a joke, rather than the horrifying joke it used to be. I still have to set up the account yet. And wait for the questions about why a forensic scientist of twenty years isn't applying for a night shift job stacking shelves, and thus have to explain to a halfwit that I would never be given such a job unless I did a lot of lying on my CV. I remember the saga last time, where (as I said) I applied for 214 jobs in seven months, but was told this wasn't trying hard enough because none of them were via the utterly useless UJ site.

So, I guess I need to spend some time applying for jobs I'll never get for the sake of appearing to be doing something, while the actual searching goes over their heads.
 
On Tuesday I was handed a letter from my employer's HR department. It basically informed me of a pay increase.. hip... Hip..........

For whatever reason I was far from impressed with the increase. Appreciative but not impressed.

I knew salaries would be reviewed this month. However I thought I'd have the opportunity to negotiate one with them.

Have any of you rejected or questioned a pay increase before?
 
I hated being on it....Luckily I was only on it for a month or two. Keep plugging away! Is there anything you can branch out to? i.e. a related field?
 
If it's an increase then why not. It depends entirely on the company and whether or not they are an advocate of recognising ones input to the company.

If it's just an annual increase you should be happy with what you get really.

Each to their own obviously :p
 
Perhaps I'm being unreasonable........ I don't know.

I may end up questioning it before the end of this month lol
 
Which is fair enough, if you feel that you need more then all you can do is ask.

I had to ask for more money at my current place as I could barely scrape by, otherwise I was going to have to leave. so they made a new job role for me to go up the next pay bracket.
 
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