I was going to tag this onto an existing thread about asking for advice on writing CVs in /job/, but it just spiraled into a rant, so I thought I'd post it here.
I've always hated jobhunting. But, this is the first time in five years that I've been unemployed. I would have probably tried to find another job during the time I had the one I had last, but I hate jobhunting so much that I couldn't bring myself to do it. Now, I'm forced to. I'm hating it even more than I did in the past, probably because I've grown up and gained a more mature perspective on the world of work.
I don't lack confidence in looking for a job or in my expectations of finding one before too long (I took out unemployment insurance years ago, so that I'd be able to keep paying my mortgage, plus I've some money put away, so I don't have the fires of hell under my arse yet) but as regards writing and/or amending my CV, I feel like I've stumbled into a carnival fun house designed by a madman for the explicit purpose of luring others into the depths of insanity.
Firstly, the infrastructure of job acquisition is ludicrous. I've been told that during the sixties and at least early seventies, you could walk out of a job in the morning and be working on the floor of your next job that afternoon. Obviously the low unemployment rate in that period was one factor, but it also meant something else; one person applying for one job, meaning that 0% of applications were rejected for certain job postings. We are told that these days, there are thousands of people applying for single positions. We are forced to accept this, but it's madness.
We now have a situation in which the process of selecting appropriate candidates has been rendered so difficult that automated computer searches through the piles of CVs are used to gut them for snippets of metadata, despite the fact that the results are often completely erroneous, just to select an elite few actually considered worthwhile reading. We are told, however, that our CVs ought to stand out from a crowd. This means that your CV needs first to conform to a general standard of content, formatting and with the correct set of whatever buzzwords happen to be in vogue at the moment, but thereafter somehow stand out. What?! At the very least, it should be apparent that since everyone is expected to make sure their CVs conform to certain standards, that those standards are, in fact, wholly irrelevant and simply exclude those whose skills do not necessarily include the ability to dick around in Word for hours on end. For the vast majority of jobs, this is not an essential skill.
The advice on writing CVs (not from you guys, but “official” sources) seems to completely ignore the realities of what workplaces are actually like. We are told to use 'active' words- achieved this and slashed that, as if we're all captains of industry or something and actually are given the opportunity make any sort of difference or contribute to society at all. The vast majority of us begrudgingly turn up for work every day doing the exact same shit for no other reason than because someone is forced to pay us to do it. What the fuck does a gas metre reader achieve beyond reading the requisite number of gas metres? How does a checkout assistant meaningfully contribute to anything? What does anyone actually get out of doing customer assistance in a bank?
It's pretty disheartening if you've never had a job before, but for those of us who've been in the world of work before- I mean, come on. We've all worked under bosses that had no idea what they were doing and qualified people who are completely incompetent. We've known environments where the one person who's good at their job gets passed up for promotion year after year in favour of a usless kiss-arse. We know privately that anyone could pick up our job after two weeks of faking it, because that's exactly what we did. We know that people keep turning up for a job that they detest because they're afraid of the vague and confusing world of jobhunting, where nothing makes sense and there's no guarantee they're going to match whatever paltry income they're on now.
We're always expected to pretend like we give a shit, like we've achieved anything, like we stand out from the crowd, that we actually want whatever job we're applying for and would be a valuable addition to the team, despite the fact that everybody knows that we're all just going through the motions. No doubt many of us lie to ourselves and tell ourselves otherwise, and many of us perhaps perceive the insanity of it all and, seeing so few others speak up against it, assume that, in fact, there's somehow something wrong with our selves. But, beneath that, we all know
In order to write a CV the way it's expected to be written, we have to ignore these realities, which means essentially negating our own intelligence in order to stupidly present the illusion of intelligence in order to impress a stupid computer to then, thereafter, impress someone you don't know in order to fulfill criteria you don't know, who probably doesn't give a shit about their job and actively resents having to hide that fact and is also, most likely, not even particularly good at their job because they got hired through an identically opaque and pointless process.
So, here I am, following the recommendations, doing as I'm told, jumping through the hoops. I'm trying to tailor my CV to what's expected of the hypothetical ideal candidate. I can't stand it, but I'm doing it. I suppose I'm posting this in the vain hope that one of you acerbic pricks will give me a good solid telling off, sort out my misconceptions, and thereby enable me to shit out a CV that'll land me a job I won't hate and deeply resent doing. I don't hold out much hope.
>>22096 If it makes you feel any better, I really enjoyed reading that. You're quite a decent writer of rants.
More constructively, it sounds like what you're actually opposed to is the entirety of the capitalist system - have you ever considered joining a left wing political group?
Go public sector lad. I was the exact same as you until I landed a job in the nhs, and it seems like everyone here (excluding the pricks who've never even known the reality of private sector work and landed in their job fresh from uni) seems to share similar sentiments.
I can't imagine ever going back to that kafkaesque nightmare no matter how much they paid me.
Doesn't the way that the Trusts are managed boil your piss in the NHS, though? I have to admit, public sector does sound tempting, but so many of the advertised positions seem to require some sort of obscure qualification I've never heard of and can't afford the risk of getting if it doesn't actually land me a job in the end. That goes for the private sector too, of course.
Not really, but then the particular trust I work for is probably one of the more old school red-blooded ones seemigly resistant to any and all changes jut for the sake of being stubborn.
All in all I think you'd find them far more willing to overlook lack of qualifications and so on if you can prove that you have the sort of capabilities the job requires, far more so than any HR drone working for a big business at least. Besides that there are plenty of jobs that don't require them, despite all Are Dave's effort there is still a lot of public sector non-job beauracracy you could likely make a cozy living out of. Then you can rest easy at night knowing you're taking the state for a mug, not the other way round.
>>22105 In general, recruitment in the public sector is a box-ticking exercise. If you tick enough boxes, you're in. Increasingly qualifications are going down as "desirable" rather than "essential" when they're not mandatory. Even in cases where they are mandatory, you'll sometimes see a "junior" post advertised where there's an expectation that you'll become fit to practice on the job - accountancy is one that comes to mind, where you can join as a trainee a grade below your colleagues but still be paid the professional allowance. They're also handy if your work history is patchy. Private sector might not like the look of you if you've got a few spells of a few months' unemployment, but in the public sector if you tick the boxes then as part of the "fair and open competition" rules they have to consider you.
>>22106 That's not true. Increasingly, the public sector does more or less what the private sector does. In fact, the NHS, crown commercial services, etc, will not hire you if you have any gaps in your CV. Depending on which sector you apply to, they will need you to provide proof of your education, jobs, etc, with references going back three or five years. Any gaps will need proof as to what you were up to. Bank statements for "holidays" and benefits, etc. It isn't as easy as you make it out to be.
How did I end up with my job then, considering that my work history has as many gaps as swiss cheese and none of the fuckers would even think about giving me a reference?
You're talking out of your arse mate.
Fact is they ASK for that stuff, yeah, but it's not a concrete barrier to employment.
>>22109 I don't know how they hired a moron like you, but I know enough since I worked for HR in different parts of the public sector. First, there is no they; applications are anonymous and they pass a sifting stage where only your answers to questions, past work history, and the criteria you fulfil are looked at by the dreaded "computer." Once you pass this stage, then your application stops being anonymous and the hiring manager will look at your CV and application. You will be called in for an interview if the manager likes you, and that is about it. This process is followed for most public sector recruitment campaigns; even lowly AOs.
Now there is an initiative called Guaranteed Interview Scheme, where you will be guaranteed an interview if you have a provable disability, but that is about it. For all its faults, the public sector recruitment campaigns are well run and try to ensure no cronyism takes place. Granted if you pass the anonymous sifting stage, cronyism can take place, but there can only be so many checks placed in a system.
>>22117 The fact that you worked in HR, and would therefore be mentally incapable of understanding anything. Case-in-point, you failed to grasp that you're not responding to the same person.
What you just did is entirely dismiss first hand evidence that your claims are incorrect, and go on to simply repeat yourself.
B-b-but my precious computers! That's the only reality I know and therefore it must be identical across the entire country and there definitely aren't any managers anywhere who would ever thing of breaking the Ten Holy Commandments of the Human Resources Hiring Policy document SOP-951-C! This is inconceivable and thus I will call you a moron!
Fucking hell mate sort it out. Go send some busybody e-mail about unclaimed annual leave pay or something you tedious cunt.
I've no idea what he was trying to achieve in the first place other than to prove OP's point and discourage him from making any attempts to take his career in a better direction.
Whatever departments HRlad has worked for, it's probably no surprise that they are dysfunctional shitholes. With cunts like him in charge of hiring you're obviously never going to find anyone good.
>>22127 Sigh. I don't pick people. A computer sifts through the best candidate, then after they get interviewed by the hiring manager, they get hired. HR barely has a hand in it.
Why are you lot being twats for? What have I done?
>>22130 Then why are you lot getting angry that you don't fulfil the criteria? How does this make sense? It is not that different than making a spreadsheet with all the relevant details of the candidates, filtering, and then picking the best ones. What is the problem?
It's blatantly unfair on people who don't know how to play the game. Before I went self-employed, I was working in the IT sector. My CV was gratuitously stuffed with every keyword imaginable to get through first-line filtering. I wasn't writing my CV to usefully communicate my suitability for the job, but simply to trick a bad filtering algorithm. It was like the worst kind of pre-Google SEO. I'm certain that much better candidates than me missed out on good opportunities because they weren't as cynical about the recruitment process.
HR departments frequently insist on all sorts of absurd "requirements", because they're so far removed from the actual work. Particularly for highly technical roles, they have no idea of what the job demands and what makes a good candidate. I can't count the number of times I've seen job ads requiring five years of experience in a technology that has only existed for three years.
