Class distinctions

Training is like measles. You get it once and then never again. In this blog I'm going to have a look at the subject of training after you've signed on and become a 'Job seeker'. And then take a peek at Corporate training.

EoTP says don't get me started on religion. Oh you did. Your fault

Job seeker - sounds vaguely biblical doesn't it, like after you've answered the knock on your front door and been confronted by a small weird man and his smaller, even more weird partner? 'I'm a seeker of Job' the small man squeaks, 'Would you like to be a Seeker of Job too?' nodding furiously and offering you a handbill printed using a John Bull printing outfit. 'No' I say 'but how would you like me to come and knock on your door and ask whether you would like to be part of my Pagan Cult and worship oaks and ash trees and dance around wearing white tablecloths and pointy hats and chant about fairy folk?' They always leave at that point.

Don't be proud, be humiliated.

In my experience it's always better to sign on. Come on, don't be proud you're entitled to the money, (well pittance actually, money is an exaggeration and insult to the term), and your National Insurance gets paid (for your stunning State pension of course) and we all like to be officially demeaned in front of complete strangers who undertake the equivalent of a public financial strip search whilst asking us to sit on chairs screwed to the floor. Sounds great doesn't it? Who'd want to miss such an experience?

Impulse power only. My impulse is not to go.

Training is available but not as we know it Jim. My initial training, when I first became a 'Job Sneaker', was in how to use a computer. For 'Executives'. Yes, I know, I know. OK so not everyone in the early 1990's had used a computer to be fair. The venue was a shabby outhouse attached to the Job Centre 12 miles away from the Job Centre in the town where I lived. I pointed out to the extraordinary caring and supportive Job Centre person ('Can't do anything for you can we, you're not eligible for training unless you've been unemployed for 18 months and are dead.') that I didn't have a car and there was no bus service to the other town except on Sundays. 'Not right bothered' seemed to sum up her response. As you HAD to go on this training to keep your Job Weaker payments (so no change there then) I eventually found a way to get to the town only to find that the computer equipment consisted of Amstrad green screen computers, no mouse, and badly typed instructions on how to type a CV. There was no way to save, electronically, the CV you had typed and the printers were line printers with hole feed. Classy.
This pretty much sets the scene for all the other training at that time. All training courses were given dynamic and thrilling names such as 'Leap into work', 'Bound back to employment', 'Replace', 'Restart', 'Renew', 'Give in', 'Reluctant to go but do you still want your dole?', 'Do I really have to?', 'Surrender to the inevitable' and 'We have Tasers, come out from under the table'.

This sums up my experiences:

• Shabby facilities.
• A trainer who clearly had much better things they'd rather be doing with their time and had a degree in Patronising.
  
• One flip chart with two sheets of paper left, six marker pens, all dry.
• An overhead projector, no bulb, no replacement. Screen that only came down half way.
  
• Old desks and chairs.
• Training that could be done in 15 minutes by reading a handout but was strung out all day so the trainer could claim a day rate.
  
• A coffee machine from which came brown warmish liquid regardless of the input you gave the machine; coffee, tea, hot chocolate, orange juice, warm stoat piddle.
• One person in the group to be trained who clearly was going to do their level best to be as disruptive and obnoxious as possible. If training proceeds at the pace of the slowest member then most of the training I went on actually went backwards and I came out knowing less than I started with.

I'm told that training has now improved. You can really tell the difference in taste, apparently, between the hot liquid that comes out of the coffee machine but which is now so hot that it is actually melting the plastic cup that holds it and your fingers are burning as you rush to put it down on a table somewhere. It is a while now since I was last on a training course - when I signed on last year I was told that 'You are too well qualified for any further training. Now how much money have your children got in their piggy banks it all counts for means testing.'
The relief.

Of course corporate training, when you are employed, is so different. Here even more dynamic phrases are used to justify it such as '360 degree',' 1-2-1'. 1-on-1', 1x1=2', '180 degree only so we can really criticise You in public', 'Customer is king, queen and on-hold on the phone something should be done', 'Telephone techniques to keep the customer on-hold on premium lines so we make more money from them whilst telling them we value their business with a recorded message' and so on.

This sums up my experience of corporate training

• Always booked at hotels miles from where you work or live and are in the middle of an industrial estate.
• Hotels that have just opened and are desperate for any occupancy.
  
• The food is on a plate. You know it is food only through the fact that it is on a plate. There is no taste or texture but is always given a French description 'A wheelcover of mange tout lovingly coated in a moue of une Mars Bar with a garnee of les fruits de la catering pack of vert bits'
  
• The shower delivers one small jet of lukewarm water unless you shower at three in the morning.
• The room is overwhelmingly hot
• The training room is overwhelmingly hot.
• The staff are underwhelmingly undertrained.
  
• A trainer who clearly had much better things they'd rather be doing with their time and had a degree in Patronising.
  
• One flip chart with two sheets of paper left, six marker pens, all dry.
• Role plays - I so hate role plays. 'Hold onto this telephone hand set with no cord and pretend to deal with a difficult customer'. How about we pretend I'm bludgeoning an overpaid trainer?
  
• Training that could be done in 15 minutes by reading a handout but was strung out all day so the trainer could claim a day rate.
• The bar has the attraction of an 1950s Eastern European police station (but is always engagingly called something like 'Antonio's Well' (good I hate an ill bartender) yet five members of staff will stay at the bar drinking until they pass out. Every night.
  

There's always something that you can learn from any course, I used to think.

Well, of course, you can be upbeat about life or stew in your own cauldron of despair and I know what I prefer.

However thinking back about training please pass me the matches, I need to light the fire to heat up the water.

The lie of the land

I looked down the garden and saw my then three year old son poking around in the long grass looking intently for something. Thinking Teddy might have made a bid for freedom from the daily indignities imposed on him by a three year old boy, some other special toy had been lost or there was some particularly interesting cat pooh I walked down to talk to him and see what he was doing. 'I'm looking for the fairies that you and Mum said were at the bottom of the garden' he said. Yeah that's right, in a moment of whimsy the previous day one of us must have trotted out, unthinkingly, the myth that fairies could indeed be found at the bottom of the garden.

So what other untruths have we told our kids I wonder?

Father Christmas
Snow at Christmas
Peace on Earth
The tooth fairy
The Easter bunny
The DFS sale will finally end one day
You can do and be anything you want to be
Education is the route to success, happiness and wealth

Let's examine those last two.

Can you be anything you want to be? This is the line peddled to children as they grow up. Hard work, focus, dedication and a commitment to your dream will make it come true. Except of course, for the majority of people it simply doesn't and you can't. I mean you can't have more than one President of the USA at the same time (unless the Americans come up with an innovative job share scheme), or British Prime Minister and if they then get re-elected then you end up as old as John McCain hoping that, in his 70's he's going to make it to the POTUS at last but, darn it, some youngster pips him to the post. You might want to pilot a 747 but if you have spectacles with lenses that are as thick as double glazing and you can't see the the ends of your fingers let alone through the window then your options are sadly limited, though I suspect the pilot that landed the aircraft that bought me back from Paris the other night on Ryonjet might have slipped through the net. I think he thought we were the Mole from Thunderbirds as we tried to drill into the runway on landing rather than bowl along it as is normal practice.

That's not to say we shouldn't encourage our youngsters.
We tell them that they should always try hard, they should be the best they can be, that very few things come easy in life, that things you worked hard for are much more worthwhile than things that come easily, that if they do not clean their bedroom we'll have to declare it a health hazard with the World Health Organisation, that teenage spots really do not mean the end of your life and girls really don't mind, that school shoes do not clean themselves and that drinking more than six pints of Best Old Badgers Piddle is bound to have severe consequences the following morning and you can clean the toilet. No, we perpetuate the myth that you can do anything and, if you can't make the dream, then you are, by definition, a loser.

We then compound that by defining success as money or possessions. We don't say 'Wow fabulous bunch of great friends you have there, they'll stick by you through life and never let you down' or 'What a fantastic appreciation you have of art/literature/philosophy' or whatever or even 'What a lovely partner and beautiful kids'. No the emphasis is on salary, house, car marque, possessions and, if you don't have them, then you must be a failure. Instead the world seems to favour the arrogant git that has a large German prestige car, is on his third wife, his kids hate him but, because he is the MD of Consolidated HooHahs and Tinkly Winkly Bits Inc and lives in a large Tuderbethan new build on an anonymous but strangely desirable estate built over an old plague pit, it is a good thing. How come?

But by not being honest and telling our kids the truth that, yes some people do make it to the very top (and that they just might) with even fewer making it to the top without trampling over the souls and lives of many others to get there, and actually luck plays a huge part in what happens in life seems to me to be just wrong. I am surrounded (well not literally of course because that would make this room very uncomfortable and far too warm and I'd have to keep making them all coffee and offering biscuits) by irritatingly smug people where I live (and they are usually men) that say such things as 'S'funny the harder I work the luckier I seem to get, anybody without a well paid job is just shirking and doesn't want to work' and then looking at me in a meaningful way. If I were given one super power I would wish to be able to shrivel to the size of a gherkin anyone who says that. Do they not realise that they have been supremely lucky not to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time like so many others? It's not your innate skill and loveliness that has kept you in a job matey boy, it's largely luck and having had opportunities. Oh how I'd like to kick some butt like a bad ass mother sometimes. But being British I just tut, tut.

Let's consider education. I can count to ten in Latin, vaguely remember stuff about ox-bow lakes and Pingos (as opposed to Pingu who is far more interesting), recite a few poems by John Donne and Wordsworth and recall the periodic table. However what people who pass exams are very good at doing is repeating back some barely analysed information you've been told to the very people who told you it in the first place. You could argue that it is the 'University of Life' and what you learn after you leave the education system that is more important. You get older and wiser in the ways of the world and discover that knowing the structure of an iambic pentameter is not helpful when Sales are telling you that the order bank has fallen off the edge of the known world or HR want to sack 50% of the workforce. Lots of people are very intelligent in some ways but stumpingly dim in others. Have you noticed that the IT support team can often fix a networking problem but have no idea how any real world application works i.e in other words the very thing you need to finish the quotation for a very important customer who wants to give you large amounts of money. "Just reboot and that will fix your Excel problem'.

Then, armed with all these qualifications, you enter the world full of hope and badly managed expectations: 'You can be anything you want' and a B.Sc. degree in Badger Care and Squirrel maintenance is a passport to wealth, success, regular sex and a new iPod every six months (might get one of those degrees then). And then you find that half the world is anti-academic 'Oh no I don't value those GCSEs and degrees, everyone has them, give me someone from the School of Hard Knocks, Illiteracy and Obsequious Fawning' or 'Look, this is my opinion OK that's all you need, just find me supporting arguments to back it up and make me a coffee and take the dog for a long walk while you're at it'.

So older, wiser and vastly experienced we 50 + year olds are, with much eclectic and valuable business knowledge at out fingertips (and I can still complete the declension of mensa, mensam plus discuss elementary badger care as well). So why is so difficult to find a full time job after a certain age? Is it something uniquely British not to value enthusiasm, experience and knowledge and do we all have to emigrate to somewhere like the States where they seem to do so, although they also value personal ownership of assault weapons and powerful handguns which is much less of an attraction.

Remember I am going to get that superpower. Then there'll be a lot more gherkins around soon.

________________________

I've just read a review of a new book, 'Outliers' by Malcolm Gladwell that goes into this topic in more detail. For example 'Bill Gates was lucky enough to attend a school in Seatle that, very rarely for any school in those days, had a computer connection to a manufacturer...his talent for programming was given an...opportunity to flourish...came of age just as personal computers became a reality...he had talent and entrereneurial vision...but also opportunity and luck.' The Times: Books: Saturday November 22 2008. So there.

And this (thanks Neil) - you couldn't make it up could you?

Bored position

When my job was made redundant for the first time, in the recession of the early 1990s, I swore to myself.

I need to finish that sentence; I swore to myself that I would do anything to earn money rather than sign on the dole. I duly went along to the Job Centre, a misnomer if there was ever one, as during the last major recession there were virtually no jobs where I lived unless you were prepared to relocate to Kirkaldy. The Job Centre person looked at my qualifications, of which I have a fair few, and said 'There's nothing we can do for you is there? Any job we have here will bore you in a few days.' And that was that. Sign in triplicate that you promise to look for work really (wink, wink), see you in two weeks and next please.

This presents us with a dilemma doesn't it? The answer is yes if you're still thinking about whether it does or doesn't. If you thought 'no' then the rest of this blog would seem pointless, although some would argue it crossed over that line many months ago. When the unemployment numbers are rising faster than flood waters of the summer of 2007 and the number of jobs are falling at an equal or greater rate then if follows that finding a job is gonna be a bit tougher than usual.

I wanted to shout (explain patiently yet assertively) at the Job Centre person that you need to let me worry about whether I'll be bored or not because my prime aims are to stop the bank repossessing my house and to feed my wife and baby and for that I'll need an income. Even if that means flipping burgers for many months which I would be quite prepared to do. But no, prospective employers clearly do a paper shift and instantly exclude anyone with too much experience. Or any experience in many cases because they don't leave enough space to put in more than one GCSE on the application form. And if you lie on your application form then that excludes you as well. Perhaps I no longer want to commute for hours each day but be able to walk to work; perhaps I no longer want to deal with the daily doings of hundreds of members of staff; perhaps my experience would help a company survive during the recession?

Some one left this comment on an earlier blog of mine 'There's no age discrimination now, of course, so I'm getting replies of 'too experienced'. Too experienced for what? Too experienced to do the job you're advertising? What will happen if someone too experienced did the job being advertised? Maybe they'd be too good at it. That would never do.' Well quite.

Personally I'd prefer a fully trained pilot flying the aircraft I'm on rather than someone young but cheap. And if the paramedics have to be called I don't want to see them stop and look at a handbook before treating a serious injury or calling Control and asking for the best way to stop excessive bleeding.

Marvin the Paranoid Android 'with a brain the size of a planet' ends up parking cars for the restaurant at the end of the Universe. At least he got a job. I end up wondering just why, if companies need part time labour, most automatically seem to exclude any one who is, or seems to be too experienced, whatever that means. I read there are plenty of jobs available 'but no applicants.' I apply for these part time jobs and all you hear are the sounds of the tumbleweed blowing through the abandoned town with the faint but ghostly cry of 'too experienced' in the wind.

When I was first made redundant I thought 'OK if I am too experienced for some jobs I'll take some of the free training on offer and be retrained to a level where I am just trained enough for a different sort of job and would therefore be considered.' Got to be creative when you are out of work and looking for a job. But the Job Centre wouldn't have this at all. 'No Mr EoTP you are well qualified already and therefore too qualified to qualify for training for different qualifications. Do I need to qualify myself?' I asked whether they had heard of 'Catch 22' but they stared at me blankly. I did manage to blag my way onto a course at the local university aimed at senior managers who were long term employed. I'd only been out of work for a few weeks but had to find some way of getting more training. The course was filled with senior managers, in their early 50's, most of whom had worked in the financial services industry (isn't that all very spooky?). See what experience brings? I've seen all of this economic downturn before, it's just Groundhog Day all over again. And the way to solve it is...well I'm not telling you because you won't employ me. No you'll be sorry, you wouldn't take me on because you thought I'd be bored. No I really am sulking now.

However I've had a rant once again. Let me leave you with an upbeat message with these two quotes from Marvin the Paranoid Android that, I feel, best sum up the whole 'you're too experienced' thing.

'Well I wish you'd just tell me rather than try to engage my enthusiasm' and 'Wearily on I go, pain and misery my only companions. And vast intelligence, of course. And infinite sorrow.'

Interim results

We had a careers office at my school. To enter to it you had to get past the school leopard guarding the entrance way, scale the 250 metre high turret that had every third stair removed, get through the barred and locked substantial wooden door that was booby trapped in many cunning ways, smoke a Players full strength cigarette without vomiting or turning green and then recite a substantial portion of Ovid, in its original form, to the guardian of the room, a wizened and ferocious goblin (well actually the school chaplain but the lighting was poor). He would then give you one of two dog eared and fusty career pamphlets and encourage you to a) join the army b) join the police or c) be fed to to the school golem. Being a public school you were expected to go straight to Oxford or Cambridge and then into the Foreign Office or some such Civil Servant career. Anyone that said they were considering anything that smacked of being an artisan was considered a dangerous Communist and probably a Russian spy.

Where am I gong with this? I'll tell you if you are still with me. When you go to many career councellors, after 'R' day*, they often take a similar line but without the Players cigarette. They listen sympathetically, note your full career path to date, nod wisely at your cores skills and competencies and then wince when they note your age. 'Ah' they say sagely savouring the moment, 'have you considered consultancy or interim management?' and then sit back as if they have delivered the meaning of life. We'll deal with consultancy another day but let's have a short wander through the fields (or back lawn anyway) of opportunity and interim management. I feel that there are things you need to know, much like a career in the army - did you know that people shoot at you it's not all international travel and marching up and down in lovely uniforms.

Interim management is a numbers game. There are X interim management companies. There are Y to the power of five possible candidates. Yes, there are many, many more candidates than positions. Therefore, to have any chance of even being considered for an interim position, you have to register with (and I have calculated this in Excel) 3427 agencies in the UK.

If you are then selected for an interview (or win the Lottery, the odds are similar) you then have to make your own way, at your own expense, to the place where the interim job is. It could be anywhere. Well philosophically speaking I suppose it always has to be somewhere. Anyway, as it is an interim position they, the prospective slave master (I mean temporary boss) does not have to treat you in a fair and meaningful way during the interview process and can end the interview on the basis they don't like your suit and tie or skirt, or both if you are feeling particularly bold that day. And in my, limited experience, when you get the job you are often on a very short period of notice, 'just finish your coffee and be off with you'.

There are, I'm told, people who do very well out of interim management. I'm also told there is gold to be found at the end of a rainbow. I'm also told that the successful interim managers also spend over 25% of their income on marketing themselves so that they can move quickly into the next position so as to avoid 'resting'. This is actually quite a problem. Here's an exemplem from my own life, once again.

EoTPs exemplem for this week, plus a recommendation (for free)

I had a very successful run as an interim marketing manager for a local company who wanted marketing support but couldn't afford a full time marketing manager - I worked for them for 6 days a month for well over a year. I was on a one week contract renewal. Failing quite spectacularly to heed my own advice I stopped looking for alternative work after about six months as it was all going so splendidly. Then suddenly it wasn't. Economic downturn, very sorry, you did wonderful work, still here? And that was that. What I should have done was
a) charge much more (to cover the hard times, but it so hard when some one says what is your daily rate and you so much want the money and are afraid to sound grasping, and expensive, and yet not desperate.).
b) work very hard at looking for alternative interim management work whilst actually earning.
c) sign up to another 3425 interim agencies as I was only registered to two and one of those had gone belly up during the year.
So, if you find this sort of life appealing (or you find the idea of actually earning an income again instead of being offered sous chef positions at your local Job Centre) then go into this eyes wide open and not be seduced by the careers counsellor. A good question for them is 'Have you actually ever done any interim management yourself?' Watch the body language and for other clues such as 'Well Mr EoTP next client is here, must go', exits stage left at speed.

EoTP hasn't quite finished.

There is one other aspect to interim management that should be mentioned and that is you are never quite a member of the team. Now interesting dynamics start going on here especially without the formality of having a particular place in the organisation's hierarchy. No body seems quite sure how to place you - are you important/dogsbody/secret consultant looking for victims/in the wrong office? I mention this only as I recall, as someone on secondment once, going to a confidential meeting one day, sitting there listening to all these secrets and stratagems being discussed only to realise, after a while, that I was in the wrong meeting - and no one had questioned my presence.

I apologised to Mr Blair and the rest of the War Cabinet and made my way out.
They've never asked me back.

* That would be Redundancy day, do keep up.

Parent company

I don't think they believe me.
My parents that is.
We spoke the other day, on the phone, and I made a fundamental mistake. They asked me how the job search was going and would my contract be renewed early next year.

My fundamental mistake was that I told them.

Now do you remember Zaphod Beeblebrox? I'm sure you do. One of his heads wore glasses, as I recall, that in the event of danger would become completely opaque so that he could no longer see the danger and therefore could not panic. My parents are like this. I think it stems from living during the war. 'Eh lad, thou cannst no longer hear sound of t'V2 flying bomb, so thou's safe'. Or was it the other way around? Anyway they're from Yorkshire so that explains a lot I feel.

They deal with every crisis of whatever magnitude in two ways. A cup of sweet tea and a denial that it is happening. 'What are those multiple mushroom clouds and large bangs our lad?'. 'Put on kettle our wife and t'finish Telegraph crossword.' would be a typical reaction. So I've learned over the years not to tell them anything that does not have a positive spin and makes the whole world sound utterly lovely and full of fluffy bunnies and pink field mice.

They must have got me at a moment of weakness because I launched into an explanation of the difficulties of finding a job, CVs, recruitment agencies, experience, age, salary expectations, the state of the economy, the Amercian election anything and everything. In fact it was a mini rant. 'But', they said after several minutes of puzzled silence, 'you've got lots of 'ologies'. (Hands up all of you who remember the BT ad then). I then compounded my mistake by trying to explain the difficulties of job searching and the over/under/wrongly/too/not enough/not quite/if only you'd had one more days experience matrix that is used to weed you out provided you even pass 'he must be so totally kidding shred that CV and use it for the hamster's bedding' first filter.

Well I suppose it makes some sense. My father was a Civil Servant so worked for the Government all his life, retired on an index linked pension and had never heard of the word redundancy. My mother never worked (Mrs EoTP has pointed out that anyone saying that a woman who has brought up a family and managed a house hasn't 'worked' is asking for more trouble than they've seen in a long, long time and suggests that person recants...if they know what is good for them. I recant. I meant hasn't been in paid employment. Close call there.) No one else they know seems so have racked up such an impressive ability to have their job made redundant during their working life as I have done, so they are puzzled as to why I can't get another full time job. I think they think I'm shirking, slacking, swinging the lead, possibly not making enough effort and living on the vast earnings of Mrs EoTP's renaissance career. Make it so. Only it ain't so. If their lovely son can pass all his 'ologies and get two degrees then he must have something very wrong with him and be unbalanced. Let me tell you I am a very balanced individual - I now have chips on both shoulders.

Having made this error I am now seeking to retrench my position by taking a Panglossian view of the world and its many opportunities with my parents and refusing to say anything that doesn't seem as if is only a matter of hours before I'm snatched up by some desperate organisation seeing me as their saviour of the moment. They clearly prefer this approach and have not questioned me anymore about the job search. Their house is full of fluffy bunnies again.

I'm off for a drink now. A Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster will do me. According to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy it is the best drink in existence and says that the drink's effect is similar to having one's brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick. The Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster has also been described as the alcoholic equivalent to a mugging: expensive and bad for the head.

Beats tea anyday.

Premature speculation

This is a subject that affects everyone, I'm sure, over a certain age. There's no need to be embarrassed; it's just better if we get it out in the open (no joke intended) and talk about it. Once we've done that you'll realise, I hope, that you are not alone and that you can be treated and no ointments or surgery are required (joke intended).

'The problem is premature speculation.'

Now there are two objectives to this blog. One is to mark my progress in finding another full time job after my fourth redundancy whilst in my early 50's. The other is to be noticed by a major publisher and be offered a huge advance to publish my memoirs which will then be taken up as an option by Hollywood and David Tennant would be perfect to play me. Sorry drifted off for a moment there - the other objective is to help anybody else in a similar position by attempting to describe how it feels trying to find another job and all the stuff you have to do (and not do) and then make all our lives feel better. Substantially. When we get the next job.

Back to premature speculation then.

The symptoms:

• You've been out work some time and you've cut back enormously on spending (you need to do this as that redundancy package you have may not last as long as your unemployment, even though that holiday in the Maldives does look raaaather tempting and you can't believe you'll be out of work for more than a month - hey, go read the newspapers.)
• You're now driving around in your partner's 15 year old 2CV and telling all your employed friends with big company cars that 'yes it feels really good to have a much lower carbon footprint, should have done this years ago, will never go back to a car with a CO2 emission greater than that of a turnip, think I'll convert the driveway into an allotment', turned the heating down, started wearing the jumpers your Mum knitted you in 1967, thinking that the local Oxfam shop might have interesting clothes after all and cooking with offal that cost no more that £1.50 a meal but looks, well, like offal.
• You've sent off bucket loads of CVs but with absolutely no response.
• In fact no one has called you back, responded at all to your speculative CV and everything on Monster jobs seems targeted at 18 year olds.

And then, out of the blue, comes a request to come for an interview. You haven't had an interview for months, can't even remember applying for the job really. You look at the job spec, well actually first you look at the salary , then the job spec, decide you'll say you can do it whatever it is the job entails ('Yes I have substantial experience of fighting polar bears and breeding guinea pigs and have been to the centre of the world lots'). You have the interview and the interviewer seems slightly interested, might call you back for second interview and/or definitely put your CV in front of their client.

EoTP bangs on about recruitment agencies. Again.

And this is when it will start happening. You begin to start speculating about what it will mean to have a regular income again. How you could use what's left of the redundancy package to go on a decent holiday, have the 2CV scrapped (bloody awful thing) and buy a 6.0 litre 4X4 SUV for your partner ('that will show them at the golf club that I'm still standing'), get a plasma screen TV, convert the patio into a Elizabethan knot garden - and so on. It's no good standing there and saying you'll think no such thing 'cos we all do it. And, as I have learnt to my cost, it is totally pointless because until you actually have the offer letter in your hand, all the blandishments of the recruiters are - well whatever it is you could use it on your new allotment for the vegetables.

In my experience virtually all recruiters are too scared or unprofessional to say 'Great meeting you but you're not what we/our client wants, now get out before I call security.' Most would rather get you out of the office leaving you with some vague notion that you actually may be just what they want and will be in touch very soon (define 'very' and 'soon' - 2020?). The reality is they have 25 other candidates to see and have already forgotten you.

And by giving you this impression you start to dream the dream about a salary again and all the possible opportunities for consuming that go with it.

The prognosis:
You've got to be tough. You have got to be moving onto the next application even though you might have a second interview. Whatever you do, don't indulge in idle speculation because, when the rejection comes, not only do you get the wobbly lower lip because you've been rejected (again), it hits all the harder because you've already spent the salary in your mind. However that is not as bad as actually spending the salary using your credit card. Even worse if you've mentioned to your partner and or kids that you'll buy them that expensive thing they've wanted for ages when the job offer comes in. Your disappointment will be trebled when that happens.

I'll bet you're glad you came to Dr EoTPs' surgery today so we could sort that out. Any other problems before you go? How about some CV implants, boost those last two positions a little shall we, make them a little perkier perhaps?

Confidence tricks

A year ago to this week Mrs EoTP started back in full time work for the first time in sixteen years. A week later she had turned into a complete jelly, a metaphorical jelly that is not real one of course, as that might have caused some problems in the staff room and certainly with her driving.

Why the jelly thing? Because, despite being fully qualified with the degrees and lots of letters after her name, Mrs EoTP thought she could no longer handle the work load.

Now a year later and Mrs EoTP is barking out orders left right and centre, managing her working time time to the second, taking on additional management responsibilities and generally showing a fair proportion of the rest of the staff up for being complete woosies and shirkers. And she's giving me a hard time too. You should see the list of things I was expected to do today.

And that's the subject of this week's blog. Confidence and where does it go? To hell in a handcart is the answer. No, there's more.

'Winnie-the-Pooh plasters do not solve confidence problems' says influential report

When you've lost your job it is, to put it mildly, a bit of a blow and it can't be fixed with a Mummy's rub of the sore knee and a Winnie-the-Pooh plaster. The job search itself can be a long, hard and, dare I say it, distressing journey. Mainly because the journey involves REJECTION. Time for another exemplem from my own life.

So far, over the last 18 months, I've applied for well over 70 jobs. I'm still here rambling on about redundancy in your 50's so I would describe the time as a journey rather than a destination. Now I've had a number of interviews during that time, a little over 15% of the total applications. Ignoring the part time job I have, that's a 100% failure rate to get a new full time position and 11 interviews also with a 100% failure rate to get a new position. That, I put it to you, is a fair amount of rejection for one person in a short period of time.

The effect of this multiple rejection is, sometimes, a feeling that actually you'll never be able to manage to make toast in the morning, let alone be responsible for people and a business ever again. It's daft really but, if someone tells you you are rubbish repeatedly and not wanted, you develop a sort of learned helplessness, and a corresponding feeling that you can never again be thrusting and successful as General Manager of Consolidated HoHahs (now merged, because of the economic climate, with Incorporated Whatnots). Little over three years ago and I was managing over 400 people in a business with a £24million turnover. Today I cleaned our baths and toilets.

'Stiff upper lip needed' says EoTP. And sense of humour. And lots of tea.

How to handle this then and make your job seeking life better? Substantially. Let's start with the jelly. After sixteen years of not working Mrs EoTP took just three weeks to get back into working life. After twelve months you wouldn't think she'd ever not worked. Though you may think you can no longer hack it, the fact is that within the week you'll be right back in it wondering how to choose a company car above your grade and whether you can travel business class on an aircraft. Last week I had an interview. No really I'm not kidding, really did. Problem is, the recruitment agency told me three days later, is that there is a recruitment freeze at the company. 'So why did you interview me and have me travel miles at my expense' I wanted to scream but there you are. During the interview I was asked about my Excel skills as they would be important. I almost turned into jelly there and then and yet, yet, I am totally fabulous with Excel, no really. However I found myself thinking 'Oh no there's no point in going on I don't even remember how to launch the application let alone enter any data'. See, confidence slipping because I can't believe that any organisation is interested in me - despite being interviewed. Hmmm, flawed logic.

Stop planning ahead. I mean it, listen to me. Take one day at a time, cliche I know, but there's no point in fretting about something you have no control over.

'If they don't want you that's their big mistake'

Don't give up. It does not matter how many rejections you get, just do not give up. I have been told I am overqualified, under qualified, wrongly qualified, the wrong type of snow and at the wrong meeting but you just have to keep going. Mind you I don't bother with the 'would you like some feedback on your interview' anymore. I can only take so much kicking after all and, anyway, every organisation is so different that it's just their opinion, and as their opinion involves not taking you on you know it must be deeply flawed anyway and definately not worth listening to.

Reading this back this all sounds a bit sanctimonius except that being out of work is painful, can be demeaning but cannot be ignored because there are bills to pay. There's always something good that comes out of the experience. My toilets are gleaming for example. I'm not going to let anyone use them for two days.