Forgot how bad job searching was :(

Manbatius · 8 Jan 2015 at 21:30

kai said:
I have a job interview tomorrow for a premier league club

I am been in my current role (Microsoft) since graduating 5yrs ago, so a little rusty on the old interview scenario.

Odd question: I always have stubble, very finely trimmed - year round! as after shaving I have bad, redskin so I avoid the redness.

Would you always clean shave for an interview, or risk turning up like a red dot?

I personally have always clean shaved for an interview, can you not shave the night before to minimise redness?

Also visit the manly shaving thread some time, I used to have terrible skin reaction to shaving until I started using a double edged safety.

Like you I went a long time without being clean shaven!

DAIR · 12 Jan 2015 at 11:00

kai said:
I have a job interview tomorrow for a premier league club

I am been in my current role (Microsoft) since graduating 5yrs ago, so a little rusty on the old interview scenario.

Odd question: I always have stubble, very finely trimmed - year round! as after shaving I have bad, redskin so I avoid the redness.

Would you always clean shave for an interview, or risk turning up like a red dot?

This league club wouldnt happen to be Arsenal?!

kai · 12 Jan 2015 at 11:14

Nope, I live in Wales

*seriously narrowed the option (s) down.

Well I shaved few hours before attending, went well - just waiting for feedback.

parting question, while walking out was how long is your notice period. Hope that bodes well, and I am a not reading too much into it!

DAIR · 12 Jan 2015 at 11:20

kai said:
Nope, I live in Wales *seriously narrowed the option (s) down.

Well I shaved few hours before attending, went well - just waiting for feedback.

parting question, while walking out was how long is your notice period. Hope that bodes well, and I am a not reading too much into it!

If anything it shows they're still interested.

NickK · 12 Jan 2015 at 11:24

Update for me:
* slow/no progress for December - unsurprising
* got a Penna coaching session - part of the redundancy package from my old company
* Will hear back from an application that I sent in November according to the agent.. then fingers crossed - some interviews.
* Heard back form the local company - they have had applications from stronger applicants.

PaulStat · 13 Jan 2015 at 11:55

Bit of an odd one this, I have a feeling an agent is lying to me.

I had an interview on the 12th December, which was my first interview and I felt it was OK, not brilliant though. In fact I wasn't expecting it to go anywhere, a week after hearing nothing I chased the agent and he said yes the feedback was positive and they'd like a second interview with me in the New Year, great!

So the beginning of last week I contacted him and said had he heard anything, to which he said he believed they would try to arrange something for this week and would get back to me when he had spoke with them.

Come Thursday I still hadn't heard anything so I phoned, agent was out sick. OK so I phoned again on Friday and he said he'd been out but would try to get back to me by the end of the day. Didn't hear anything. Switch to this week I email him yesterday and say sorry to pester but I already have Wednesday booked off this week so if it could be then that would be perfect. ' no worries, let me chase this up and I’ll get back to you.'

Still didn't hear anything, so tried calling him this morning, spoke to someone who I think sounded like said agent, but he said 'oh sorry x is on the phone right now I'll pass on the message'

Am I being led up the garden path here? I'm confused.

PaulStat · 13 Jan 2015 at 13:47

^ Thoughts? It's driving me to distraction!

I haven't had a call back.

DAIR · 13 Jan 2015 at 13:50

I hate it when agents behave like this. Something is clearly up and for whatever reason he cannot be bothered to do the decent thing and let you know what the deal is.

Sadly all you can do is wait.

Mr^B · 13 Jan 2015 at 15:13

My thoughts are that you got put on a waiting list, and they've probably either filled the role already and/or have closed the role down.

In my experience agents have limited social skills (odd for their choice of profession) and don't like telling candidates they've been unsuccessful. If you have to chase that much, I'd give it up as a lost cause. I've had that happen before, and it's extremely vexing.

XeNoN89 · 16 Jan 2015 at 12:50

So I've started job searching properly since the new year (after having a little look around before Christmas)and there seems to be a hell of a lot more jobs around now. I still haven't had a single interview yet only chats with a few recruiters (90% of the time I don't eve get so much as a reply though).

A couple of things I've noticed:

If you set your cv as viewable to recruiters on any job website your phone will not stop ringing all day with recruiters ringing about all sorts of jobs that are completely irrelevant to you.

I've also noticed a lot of jobs that advertise at x salary, and then once you actually speak to the recruiter the amount is suddenly dropped a few K and they refuse to budge...

I'm getting sick of this already, luckily my current job is safe (I think) but i'm looking because it's currently stagnant here - I have a 3 year pay freeze and no way of progressing within the company at all due to massive cost cutting. I know I can get paid anywhere from £4-10k more for essentially the same job that I do now but in London, so I'm applying for stuff exclusively there!

Hopefully something comes along soon!

PaulStat · 16 Jan 2015 at 13:03

Mr^B said:
My thoughts are that you got put on a waiting list, and they've probably either filled the role already and/or have closed the role down.

In my experience agents have limited social skills (odd for their choice of profession) and don't like telling candidates they've been unsuccessful. If you have to chase that much, I'd give it up as a lost cause. I've had that happen before, and it's extremely vexing.

Agent did eventually contact me, my application is on hold for 1-2 months whilst they under go a 'restructuring', they are apparently interested in proceeding once this is done

InvaderGIR · 16 Jan 2015 at 13:17

XeNoN89 said:
I've also noticed a lot of jobs that advertise at x salary, and then once you actually speak to the recruiter the amount is suddenly dropped a few K and they refuse to budge...

Sounds fairly normal and it is annoying, what's even better is when a job is up for one amount and the recruiter thinks "it's a perfect fir for you" then they ask what you're on, they turn round and say "we'll put you in at x" substantially less than the asking and not much more than your current wage.

They seem to like underselling me, which means I don't get interviews for the level of jobs I am capable, because my salary says I can't be that good. :rolleyes:

These days I don't use job sites like reed etc. I have a vast collection of recruiters that email me jobs and there are a select few that I will actually respond to because I've dealt with them before and they aren't total morons.

That being said, I dealt with one last year who did the salary cut (advertised range was up to twice or even three times my current salary due to multiple roles being available) and put me in for a relatively small gain and once I was unsuccessful she was extremely poor with bothering to inform me.

If you're in a comfortable job and don't need to change but would like to, depending on the type of work you do you're probably better off having your CV hidden from recruiters and only contacting ones for a specific role and then telling them that's the only role you want to deal with them for.

I very much cherry pick job adverts I receive via email these days (and I get multiple daily despite not being on job websites) and if I speak to someone about a role I say I'm only interested in that role as I'm not properly/fully looking, shuts them down well.

DAIR · 16 Jan 2015 at 13:20

Next week will be my last week with my current employer. I start my new job (accepted a little over two months ago) the following week. HOWEVER, on wednesday I went along to another interview!

To cut a long story short things went well and I'm now waiting to see whether I'll be invited back for a second interview. I'm fairly confident I will be. My only concern is that I may not get their final decision before the end of next week... If offered I think I'll have to gazump the offer I received all those months back in favour of a more familiar (and possibly higher paid) role.

XeNoN89 · 16 Jan 2015 at 13:34

InvaderGIR said:
If you're in a comfortable job and don't need to change but would like to, depending on the type of work you do you're probably better off having your CV hidden from recruiters and only contacting ones for a specific role and then telling them that's the only role you want to deal with them for.

I very much cherry pick job adverts I receive via email these days (and I get multiple daily despite not being on job websites) and if I speak to someone about a role I say I'm only interested in that role as I'm not properly/fully looking, shuts them down well.

Yep i learnt after a single day that having my CV viewable was a bad idea

I am being quite picky about what I go for as I'm not in a rush, I work in IT support so there's always lots out there!

Manbatius · 26 Jan 2015 at 17:53

So I have an interview a week on friday.

Any advice on what I can revise for an hour long excel test for a performance manager role?

Probably irrelivant what I revise anyway at 4pm on a Friday I will be asleep, will definately be asleep in the interview at 5pm.

semi-pro waster · 26 Jan 2015 at 20:09

Manbatius said:
Any advice on what I can revise for an hour long excel test for a performance manager role?

An hour long Excel test? What sort of performance management?

I'd probably spend a bit of time practicing some basic formulas including vLookups, sumifs, ifs and that sort of thing as well as pivot tables and some basic graph manipulation. If you can't do it with those formulas then there's a fair chance Excel is the wrong tool for the job...

Strife212 · 26 Jan 2015 at 20:37

There's a job on the Bank of England website which requires visual basic coding skills for excel which I saw the other day

Manbatius · 26 Jan 2015 at 22:21

semi-pro waster said:
An hour long Excel test? What sort of performance management?

I'd probably spend a bit of time practicing some basic formulas including vLookups, sumifs, ifs and that sort of thing as well as pivot tables and some basic graph manipulation. If you can't do it with those formulas then there's a fair chance Excel is the wrong tool for the job...

It's a performance review advisor role for the police,.

The job description is rather generic though. "interpret statistics", "identify data", "produce reports"
oh and the key one "be experienced in advanced features of Microsoft Excel"
depends on their definition of advanced!

My current role is a data manager I use excel a lot, however once I set up my systems everything is rather automated so I worry I will feel rusty!

Thanks for responding btw.

Mr^B · 26 Jan 2015 at 22:31

Strife212 said:
There's a job on the Bank of England website which requires visual basic coding skills for excel which I saw the other day

"We" have loads of legacy applications which are just too complex to re-write in VBA and Excel. Having skills in those areas is still valid, and you can charge a reasonably high rate too.

PaulStat · 29 Jan 2015 at 14:34

Oh FFS, had an interview a couple of weeks ago, agent said at the end of last week I was still the strongest candidate they had seen but still had more interviews to conduct.

Just been told I was pipped to the post by someone who has experience developing software for that particular industry. So close!