Forgot how bad job searching was :(

bakes0310 said:
:(

How come it seemed quite along time ago that you first mentioned this, have you done anything about it?
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In short I have no idea what I want to be doing long term to be honest, so end up fleeting from IT Job to IT Job as it's all I know if that makes sense.

Bit annoying, considering I'm 30 next year and appear to have no idea of what to do :o
 
Delvis said:
In short I have no idea what I want to be doing long term to be honest, so end up fleeting from IT Job to IT Job as it's all I know if that makes sense.

Bit annoying, considering I'm 30 next year and appear to have no idea of what to do :o
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Didn't you want to do something in art? Surely there must be some evening classes you could do. Maybe theres some good online courses that might be worth considering. Try and do something, it feels great once you start :)

Edit: im 30 this year so it aint all bad.
 
bakes0310 said:
Edit: im 30 this year so it aint all bad.
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I'll be 42.. but still have the mental go-get of a 32 yo...

From experience - live life, make mistakes and then learn from them.. problem is once you're married, mortgage etc.. other people don't share the same view on risks ;)
 
Agency`s destroy your CV and put into what they think is relevant format. Generally this is done by the incompetent 15 people in the office out of 17. So you might get lucky.
 
bakes0310 said:
Didn't you want to do something in art? Surely there must be some evening classes you could do. Maybe theres some good online courses that might be worth considering. Try and do something, it feels great once you start :)

Edit: im 30 this year so it aint all bad.
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This is true, my trouble is time usually and of course money to fund anything.

The creative industry isn't really the easiest to get in to as it's usually a case of you have it or you don't.
 
Got my final three days of retail work left, before I start my new job with Police Scotland (doing resource management) in a couple of weeks. I've wanted to work with the police since forever and even did a degree in Police Studies to help with that, but I lacked decent life/work experience and didn't interview well either, then ended up falling into retail (as a "temporary thing") after the budget cuts hit and recruitment was scaled-back. That was mid-2009.

Still can't quite work out how I'm feeling about the whole thing. Excited obviously, but incredibly anxious too because it's going to be a huge change for me and I'm terrified that I've set my heart on something for so long that it can't possibly live up to how I've imagined it would be. A lot of disbelief too, that I'm finally being given the opportunity to prove what I'm really capable of and do something that in some way actually makes a difference.

Anyway, just wanted to say all that in case there's anyone else who's in a somewhat similar situation and is losing hope that they'll get to where they want to be. I certainly was just 5 or 6 months ago but my life feels like it's finally on-track again and I'm having a great year so far. :)
 
InvaderGIR said:
Lots of people say to keep it down to two pages however I don't agree with that at all, if you need more pages to show your experience, run over to more but don't waffle with it.

Below is mine and as you can see I run it on three pages. The first being the 'about me' page which is headed by my name, address and contact details, with general profile, education and skills following below. The second and third being my previous related roles followed up by my interests outside of work.
For each role I just have the job title and company and how long I have been there with roles and achievements as bullet points, no waffle, simple and clean. I also use the same font throughout although with my blurring you can't tell that.

As I say, in my industry (software / web application development) it's done and doing me well so I see no reason to change it. A CV doesn't need to be pretty, shouty or fancy, it just needs to be clean and to the point.
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Formating and some minor cuts will bring that down to two pages of content, making it easier to read relevant stuff for the role your applying for.

Title for instance should just be Name, email, Phone number, they don't need anything else. Phone number and email can neatly be on the same line.
Education should probably be much less than you have it. My last CV was as a grad with old a small amount of work experience and two degrees, and it had less space dedicated to education than your CV does.
As you go back further in time, roles should have less and less information as they won't very relevant to the work you are doing.


Two pages for a CV is still a very good rule of thumb, with the exception of very senior postions and academia where you can have more, or at the beginning of your career where 1 page will do.
 
Judgeneo said:
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As I've stated (even in what you quoted), my CV despite being 'long' is working very well for me and has for the last few years when I've had it in that format. As soon as I send it in to agencies I get call backs about phone or face to face interviews, I must be doing something right with it. ;)


Anyway I had my second / reinterview today which I wasn't totally sure if I went better or worse than the previous one but I got to meet some other members of staff and had a look at the sort of code I'd be dealing with which was cool.
As I'd taken the day off I arranged to actually meet the recruiter face to face for a debrief at their office. Whilst having a chat about how I felt it went and going over some of the stuff I'd said and how I'd spun negative stuff positively the company phoned him for their debrief. He went off and had a chat with them and when he came back said it's not bad news.
Basically, the company have decided they'd probably like to offer the role to me but they have a couple other interviews lined up from other agencies and they'd like to have them just in case someone better comes along. I should find out next week if they want to offer. :)
 
I have a telephone interview with British Gas in approximately 2 minutes. It's my first one ever. Nerves don't quite cover it.
 
OMG! I'm shaking. Isn't it strange how some situations stress you out, make you nervous, and some don't - a helicopter crash in the Irish Sea and I'm fine - 20 minute telephone interview and I'm a wreck. :)

It's all done and I am through to the next stage, so I can't have been that bad. :D

I could feel myself getting more and more stressed as it went. My voice gets lower, quieter, more mono-tone and my wife just told me she could hear me and was wishing me to 'cheer up' :)

I could hear the interviewer typing and when she stopped it was like a warning sign - 'You're waffling, stop it!' Curious job. Asking scripted questions, writing the answers, then 2 minutes to assess answers and give a go, no-go. I can't imagine doing that day in, day out.
 
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Delvis said:
In short I have no idea what I want to be doing long term to be honest, so end up fleeting from IT Job to IT Job as it's all I know if that makes sense.

Bit annoying, considering I'm 30 next year and appear to have no idea of what to do :o
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Considered the game development industry? I did 10 years in enterprise software before I got sick of it and jumped ship into games. Very refreshing, working on fun projects doing interesting work with an office full of people who enjoy their job. Plus there's a whole array of different disciplines you can expand your skills into, including 2d/3d art, animation, sound, music, production, design etc. etc.
 
Figured I should post an update on this...I was offered the job but for various reasons I've turned it down and I'm not going to be searching for a little while now. It would have been a good job and place to work I expect but sometimes you have to pass on these things.

It's made me very aware that I'm quite capable of increasing my salary quite dramatically should I come to be looking again in a few months, but also that recruiters really are not people I like to deal with at all.
 
With regard to CVs I had mine completely revamped. The person doing it pointed out that in a sift process people basically just look at the top half of the first page and then decide if they want to read further. So that top half needs to tell them who you are and what you can do. After that, put in what you've done - your job history. On the second page put your hobbies, interests, education, driving license etc.
 
Which is what I did. It's also the advice given by the coach I saw and from the national careers service website.

I'm now desperately trying to find my GCSE and A Level exam certificates. It's over twenty years ago and if I can't find them, I may well be screwed!
 
BadMojo said:
Which is what I did. It's also the advice given by the coach I saw and from the national careers service website.

I'm now desperately trying to find my GCSE and A Level exam certificates. It's over twenty years ago and if I can't find them, I may well be screwed! ��
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Has someone asked for them as proof or have you forgotten the results? :p
 
mid_gen said:
Considered the game development industry? I did 10 years in enterprise software before I got sick of it and jumped ship into games. Very refreshing, working on fun projects doing interesting work with an office full of people who enjoy their job. Plus there's a whole array of different disciplines you can expand your skills into, including 2d/3d art, animation, sound, music, production, design etc. etc.
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Hi dude, completely missed this. Can you elaborate at all? 'Games' is something I've been interested in but unless you have some mega portfolio it seems ridiculous to get in to? That and there probably isn't anything near me :p
 
Well 10years with the same place in few differing roles I think its time I move on aswell.

Currently hunting with CV out on a few job boards so we'll see what bites
 
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