Forgot how bad job searching was :(

I just my job a couple of weeks ago. I've signed on for jobseekers, today I've finally decided to pull my finger out and get applying for things. I've just finished an apprenticeship in mechanics and have an NVQ level 3. So hopefully I have a reasonable chance of getting a job.

What I'm worried about is that I was dismissed from my previous job, just hoping it wont affect my chances too much :(
 
Looking for some helpful advice.

I found a job I really like the sounds of. Marketing Assistant, described as helping with design, creative person etc as well as the usual assistant stuff of admin etc.
I will be writing a specific cover letter, will look into redesigning my CV (it's been changed many times recently).

I found the job on s1jobs but can't find anything on their own website, poeple's post code lottery. Would it be worth-while emailing asking if they have an application pack? Two other jobs listed appear to have one.

Also are jobcentre's actually helpful with applying for vacancies, as I have a meeting tomorow with them.
 
Out of all the jobs I've applied for over the last 9 months only a handful have had application packs as such. And they've all been terrible, old, badly formatted word document application forms!

A lot of the time a job won't be advertised on the companies website so wouldn't worry about that, it totally depends on who they recruit.

I've had someone on the phone to me today about another position, it's nowhere to be seen on their website but it's on the job websites.
 
ash_scotland88 said:
Looking for some helpful advice.

I found a job I really like the sounds of. Marketing Assistant, described as helping with design, creative person etc as well as the usual assistant stuff of admin etc.
I will be writing a specific cover letter, will look into redesigning my CV (it's been changed many times recently).

I found the job on s1jobs but can't find anything on their own website, poeple's post code lottery. Would it be worth-while emailing asking if they have an application pack? Two other jobs listed appear to have one.

Also are jobcentre's actually helpful with applying for vacancies, as I have a meeting tomorow with them.
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I've only been to the job centre twice so far but they've been relatively helpful in the 5 minutes they're alotted to see you. I think if you want more help than 'here's some jobs, go apply' you can get it, but I'm more than happy doing things on my own at this point.
 
Deiwos said:
I've only been to the job centre twice so far but they've been relatively helpful in the 5 minutes they're alotted to see you. I think if you want more help than 'here's some jobs, go apply' you can get it, but I'm more than happy doing things on my own at this point.
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Well first interview, the setting up of JSA I was asked if I was fine with interview skills etc but I may take them up on the offer. Casual "chat" like what they have I can cope with, but anything more nerves and anxiety kick in I become a bumbling mess full off erhing, aahing and umming.
 
Hmm...Been at my current place for a while now, the work is fine...Sadly its down to the money =/ I'm just not getting paid enough to be living like this, I'm practicaly going overdrawn every month :(

Problem is I have no idea what I want to be doing
 
Gah, JSA keeps asking for more and more paperwork.
They won't pay out till I now provide them with my student loan letter, but the ammount was recalculated in January so need to phone up and get the new letter sent out to me. Meaning an other week no doubt of delay. I really hop they provide back payment! Fair enough I didn't apply till 2weeks after uni and I am not expecting money for those weeks but it's been like 2 or 3 weeks since and havn't received a penny.
Also it's only been a month since quit uni and damn bored already. Found and applied for a job I love the sounds of, deadline hasn't ended yet. Applied through s1jobs and apart from sitting and waiting for a phone call don't really know much else to do.
 
I was with a work course for disibilites and just two weeks ago the entire course was made redundent thanks to the conservatives pulling funding!. The work course was actually via the jobcenter, I was looking forward to my future and getting a job!. We had my CV done but i still needed interview training and a mentor for backup, but i was basically kicked out as was all the other disabled people. Some a lot worse than me! I went into the job center, i said i'm going to do this... I'm going to push myself forward, i told them the scheme i was on.

They turned me away!!, The job center actually turned me away :(. They said we are so so sorry, we really can't help you until june. I said i need work and again they said because of your disability we have no one here to help you get your work progressing. Please come back in June when a new scheme starts.

Thankyou Conservatives you've ruined it for me, just like Labour did

Sad :(
 
Went to a job interview yesterday, won't say what the job is but it's nothing special, £9.70 an hour and you don't really require any experience/qualifications to do it, maybe a customer service job and that's it.

Okay so here is their recruitment process, first of all, you have to take an online shapes recognition test /spot the difference kind of thing ( i guess they want to filter out the retards), they said in the interview that only 10% of their applicants pass, so I guess it's working fine, there was only about 1 chav there in a group of 15 so it's doing it's job.

They also interviewing hundreds of people since I know they had atleast 5 groups just on the day I was there and there was like 15 ppl in each, okay now it's where it gets funny, there is 3 interviews, the first one, you have to take, pretty much the same retard check computer test but it's a little harder, then if you pass that test you need to provide a 5 year reference check, no exceptions, if you've been out of the country, you have to tell them, if you've had gaps in employment, you have to tell them, if you haven't been working for 5 years, tough luck. Then you need to provide a Criminal record check and a counter terrorism check or w/e its called. Oh and if you been out of the country they will need to obtain references from the country you went to (i guess to make sure you didn't get arrested in some bar fight or something).

Then after that you go to the second interview where you will have LOL ROLEPLAY exercises and a competency based interview, which I gather is where you have to give examples of times you applied customer service /helped someone? Because you know, that's not what you do every single day in a shop/call centre anyway, no you need to give specific examples as if working in a call centre/shop for 2 years isn't enough, in those 2 years you couldn't have possibly helped anyone!

and then finally, the 3rd interview is where you have 1to1 interviews and you get fitted with uniform and stuff like that.

The whole process takes an average of 12 weeks oh and they need YOU to chase down your references, this is very important as their HR recruitment team is apparently too lazy to do it.


Oh the job is also only 20 hours a week, 4 hours a day (5 days) and you have to work all bank holidays.


Then they wonder why ppl stay on JSA.
 
LOL franco 22 that's crazy. How much money does the company have to waste if they stretch the interviews on that long doing so many pointless exercises? Well it's not exactly a minimum wage job but still couldn't they just compress it into a simple interview without all those ridiculous competence tests.
 
franco_22 said:
Went to a job interview yesterday, won't say what the job is but it's nothing special, £9.70 an hour and you don't really require any experience/qualifications to do it, maybe a customer service job and that's it.

Okay so here is their recruitment process, first of all, you have to take an online shapes recognition test /spot the difference kind of thing ( i guess they want to filter out the retards), they said in the interview that only 10% of their applicants pass, so I guess it's working fine, there was only about 1 chav there in a group of 15 so it's doing it's job.

They also interviewing hundreds of people since I know they had atleast 5 groups just on the day I was there and there was like 15 ppl in each, okay now it's where it gets funny, there is 3 interviews, the first one, you have to take, pretty much the same retard check computer test but it's a little harder, then if you pass that test you need to provide a 5 year reference check, no exceptions, if you've been out of the country, you have to tell them, if you've had gaps in employment, you have to tell them, if you haven't been working for 5 years, tough luck. Then you need to provide a Criminal record check and a counter terrorism check or w/e its called. Oh and if you been out of the country they will need to obtain references from the country you went to (i guess to make sure you didn't get arrested in some bar fight or something).

Then after that you go to the second interview where you will have LOL ROLEPLAY exercises and a competency based interview, which I gather is where you have to give examples of times you applied customer service /helped someone? Because you know, that's not what you do every single day in a shop/call centre anyway, no you need to give specific examples as if working in a call centre/shop for 2 years isn't enough, in those 2 years you couldn't have possibly helped anyone!

and then finally, the 3rd interview is where you have 1to1 interviews and you get fitted with uniform and stuff like that.

The whole process takes an average of 12 weeks oh and they need YOU to chase down your references, this is very important as their HR recruitment team is apparently too lazy to do it.


Oh the job is also only 20 hours a week, 4 hours a day (5 days) and you have to work all bank holidays.


Then they wonder why ppl stay on JSA.
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mufc802 said:
LOL franco 22 that's crazy. How much money does the company have to waste if they stretch the interviews on that long doing so many pointless exercises? Well it's not exactly a minimum wage job but still couldn't they just compress it into a simple interview without all those ridiculous competence tests.
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I am not surprised.

Make it easy for people to get work and no one needs to be on the JSA especially those who want to work. This is what I mean. Employers have placed so many barriers in getting the job as they seem to be only looking for 'best' candidate or I believe as humans they only choose the candidate they particularly like during interview stages.

I have been through something similar with graduate recruitment schemes.

Me and Franco 22 have first hand experience of ridiculous interview/assessment exercises.:mad:
 
WingZero30 said:
. This is what I mean. Employers have placed so many barriers in getting the job as they seem to be only looking for 'best' candidate
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Gosh, fancy that. I mean, how dare they want the 'best' candidate for the job. They should operate as a charity and give everyone a chance, nasty employers.
 
It can be weird though, the 'better' the job the easier the interview process a lot of the time I've found.

I've had a couple of interviews lately, for pretty big companies for decent positions, 2 of them were barely an hour and not much was asked of me in the interviews. One offered me the job and I find out about another on Monday, surprised there's not any more to do to be honest.

But agree with the above, companies will want to find the best person they can for the job, and at that kind of level they have a lot of people to sort through so need ways to get the numbers down.
 
Ev0 said:
It can be weird though, the 'better' the job the easier the interview process a lot of the time I've found.
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This seems to be the truth, I know people with extremely good jobs whose interview consisted of a chat after a good lunch - I assume these companies do plenty of research about their potential candidates and what they can do in the real workplace, rather than making them do circus tricks in interviews.
 
wozzizname said:
This seems to be the truth, I know people with extremely good jobs whose interview consisted of a chat after a good lunch - I assume these companies do plenty of research about their potential candidates and what they can do in the real workplace, rather than making them do circus tricks in interviews.
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With jobs that require more qualifications/experience the pool of suitable candidates is much smaller to start with.
For your average call centre job there aren't many barriers to entry and these are the jobs you see hundreds or thousands of people applying for.

For a higher level job you may only see a handful of suitable CVs (and there will usually be an agency screening things beforehand) so you don't need layer upon layer of tests to weed out the unsuitable candidates.

From personal experience the most intensive interview processes I've been through were for graduate positions and as I've got more experience the interviews have become much shorter!
 
The other day it was mentioned on the News that there are plenty of jobs to go around but I'd like to know where?
My daughters boyfriend had a fantastic job, own house, own car and a great life but it all went to pot last year when they had to let him go.
Since then he had to get rid of his house, car and ALL of his possessions and still owes money 9 months on.
Since my daughter was in love we had to take him in and he is no bother at all but job hunting has been a nightmare.
He spends all day searching and applying for jobs and now & then gets an interest but they all fizzle out.
He's done loads of warehouse work where he turns up for 2 hours and then they send him home but that's better than when they tell him to turn up and they send him home with no hours which has happened at least 30 times.
The way that job hunters are treated is nothing short of criminal and just a simple reply would be sufficient but the power is in their hands.
About a month ago I emailed [email protected] to see if there was any available warehouse jobs but no reply.
I told him to send his CV to the same address but once again no reply.
It really wouldn't hurt company's to reply with a 'Sorry, no jobs available at the moment'.
I know for fact that he averages about 8 applications a day and he goes to the Job Centre once a week.
He was that ashamed that we talked him into claiming dole about a month ago and that has just come through.
I was able to get him work at the hospital in Health Records and they thought the light shone through his bum but they had to let him go because the work dried up.
I thought his CV might be rubbish or interview techniques so I helped him with both and then I set him up with professionals who fine tuned his CV so it should be OK (I didn't see the CV he sent to OCUK though but I told him to tune it to warehouse experience).
Once again I'd love to know where all these jobs are because he would lick the street clean for minimum wage.
There is a little bit of hope for tomorrow because on Friday he was asked to go to a well known warehouse and told that if he kept his nose clean he could end up with a permanent job but we've heard it all before.
 
dmpoole said:
The other day it was mentioned on the News that there are plenty of jobs to go around but I'd like to know where?
My daughters boyfriend had a fantastic job, own house, own car and a great life but it all went to pot last year when they had to let him go.
Since then he had to get rid of his house, car and ALL of his possessions and still owes money 9 months on.
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Alas it's all too easy these days for this to happen. I've been through similar hard times ,and despite recently graduating with a 2:1 IT degree as a 40-something year old, I'm earning less than I was 10 years ago in a less-skilled job, and was forced by the DSS to use up my life/retirement savings to support myself when I was out of work following Uni.

I'm in work again now in IT support, but having to commute at a cost £3.5k a year for a job paying relative peanuts - any dreams of owning my own home again seem to be over.
 
dmpoole said:
The other day it was mentioned on the News that there are plenty of jobs to go around but I'd like to know where?
My daughters boyfriend had a fantastic job, own house, own car and a great life but it all went to pot last year when they had to let him go.
Since then he had to get rid of his house, car and ALL of his possessions and still owes money 9 months on.
Since my daughter was in love we had to take him in and he is no bother at all but job hunting has been a nightmare.
He spends all day searching and applying for jobs and now & then gets an interest but they all fizzle out.
He's done loads of warehouse work where he turns up for 2 hours and then they send him home but that's better than when they tell him to turn up and they send him home with no hours which has happened at least 30 times.
The way that job hunters are treated is nothing short of criminal and just a simple reply would be sufficient but the power is in their hands.
About a month ago I emailed [email protected] to see if there was any available warehouse jobs but no reply.
I told him to send his CV to the same address but once again no reply.
It really wouldn't hurt company's to reply with a 'Sorry, no jobs available at the moment'.
I know for fact that he averages about 8 applications a day and he goes to the Job Centre once a week.
He was that ashamed that we talked him into claiming dole about a month ago and that has just come through.
I was able to get him work at the hospital in Health Records and they thought the light shone through his bum but they had to let him go because the work dried up.
I thought his CV might be rubbish or interview techniques so I helped him with both and then I set him up with professionals who fine tuned his CV so it should be OK (I didn't see the CV he sent to OCUK though but I told him to tune it to warehouse experience).
Once again I'd love to know where all these jobs are because he would lick the street clean for minimum wage.
There is a little bit of hope for tomorrow because on Friday he was asked to go to a well known warehouse and told that if he kept his nose clean he could end up with a permanent job but we've heard it all before.
Click to expand...

The only advice I can give is maybe try volunteering because it looks very good on the C.V.

In regards for finding the jobs, I just search every company website under careers, applying for these jobs at-least send you a reply for either an interview or unsuccessful so you know where you stand. Don't worry about company's not replying, it's simply because there's no jobs and they might be overloaded with applications.
 
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