Hope over Experience. Job applications and graphic language (the script)

This is the redundancy podcast.

The purpose of the podcast is to share the challenges of finding a job in your late 50s and 60s.

In this second mini vlogg I’m going to discuss some graphic language. The graphic language of job applications. As we all know to get a job you have to, of course, apply for a job unless you get the very rare and unexpected call from a head hunter who offers you the job of your dreams out of the blue. I’ve seen more unicorns than had calls like this.

When it comes to job searching I believe that each week starts full of hope and promise. I like to think that I'm a fairly positive sort of guy in the circumstances, or possibly misguided with a tenuous grasp on reality, you can take your pick, but sometimes I find the ducks of promise are quickly shot down by the gamekeepers of despair.

I think most of us travel in hope. You know the sort of stuff: your teenager might spontaneously clean their room, they might change their underwear more than once a week, they might have a conversation with you that includes words with more than one syllable and lasts longer than 20 seconds, they reply to your emails, someone in a call centre is actually able to sort out your problem, that sort of thing. However hope is usually tempered by experience and often our plans end

up in remote rural bus station late at on a Saturday night after the last bus has left and there's not another bus until Monday. Next month.

So it is with applying for jobs. Unless you are applying for a job so ludicrous and so far beyond your abilities and qualifications (and I still don't understand why the American Constitution won't let me run for President) then you cannot but help but hope, some teeny weeny goes against all probability speck of hope that you'll get the job you applied for. And, because you have this teeny weeny goes against all probability speck of hope then, like a grain of sand in an oyster, a little pearl of optimism starts to grow and glow faintly in your heart - go on, don't deny it, it does doesn't it, and you start to visualise yourself in that very job, start to think about the commute, the dress code, whether there’s a staff restaurant and how many days vacation will you get. 

Well it's no good, this has to stop for your own peace of mind.

Therefore i've produced a scientifically based series of graphs to demonstrate this tendency in a variety of job seeking circumstances and to help you all quit hoping unnecessarily - it’s a bit (but only a bit) like a Government Stop Smoking campaign except with a lot less money involved and no pile of cigarette stubs outside the door where everyone goes with coffees to have a drink, smoke and a serious slagging off of the organisation and management and have you seen what they've done to our budgets, slashed them how can I run a department on 35p a year? I call these graphs the HOE curve.

HOE = Hope Over Experience.

I have five scenarios.

I’ll start with the 'applying for a job on a on-line job site'. Here you can see that once you have submitted your resume you may as well go and free the pet hamster, sell the car, disconnect from broadband and go and live in remotest Peru because you are never going to hear from them. Ever. Again. Notice on the graph how one doesn't even start off with any hope at all as we all know that a giant set of electronic points is directing all Resumes into space as part of the CETI project and, even now, aliens on the planet Thorg are involved in the universe's largest ever job paper sift which fortunately will prevent them from launching their Earth invasion fleet until 2506 at the earliest.

Next we have the job application where your skills and experience exactly match the job specification, so much so that your Mother must have written it. Note how you start off with such high hopes and then, as time passes, those hopes decay a little and then you start hoping again, then fading steeply and rising so that the graph looks like a little range of mountains such as Hobbits might have to climb whilst they follow the quest of the Ring. Perhaps tomorrow the call to an interview will come.

Now here we have the graph that shows the HOE curve for those jobs that we think we might have a bit of a chance with. You know dark horse, got to be in to win.

Note here that despite all the evidence and knowing that there are 603 much younger candidates for the job we still can't stop ourselves having just a glimmer of hope and that we'll hear. Something. Anything.

Next up is the ‘l applied for this job so long ago it would just about do if I were offered it, but I’d forgotten all about the application and suddenly they’ve called me for an interview.' Here we started with a modicum of hope dropping quickly to zero and then, after an eon of nothingness, climbing vertically back to the hope zone. Then, just as quickly, plummeting like a downed duck. 

Finally we have the ‘Employment Centre insists you apply for three jobs a week if you want to be able to continue claiming unemployment benefit' HOE curve. Even though there are zero vacancies in your sector but 35627 job seekers we know, they (the Employment Centre) know, the recruiters know, even the aliens on Thorg know that this is just plain silly but we we must abide by The Rules. But then you never know.

So there it is . Scientifically graphed evidence that demonstrates that you might as well forget about 99% of all job applications the moment it leaves your hand/PC/Mac/iPad/quill and indeed you might as well shred some of them yourself straight away as it saves time later in the process - if you are gong to be contacted then you will be, so no point worrying unnecessarily. The Gamekeeper of Despair has just reloaded both barrels. You're not going to make his day are you?

But...

If there is one thing I’ve learned, well two things actually because I also know not to eat yellow snow, Persistence pays off. We must not forget the HOE curve because it shows that, sometimes, the ducks of opportunity get away and leave very large messages on the head of the gamekeeper of despair. And that message says 'never ever give up'. Yes, you have to have some luck as well, and sometimes that luck comes sooner and sometimes later.

So I leave you with the last graph. It’s tough. But don’t give up.