Latest podcast now available; dealing with age related questions during an interview.

I live on a road with a 30mph limit - the law says motorists shouldn't exceed that but, guess what, some do.

You shouldn't, except in rare circumstances, be asked age related questions during job interviews but, guess what...

My latest podcast considers what you may be asked and how you might respond (politely, though at times that's sometimes a little hard).

Listen here

Sanguinem infernum. Difficile est. Stercore

Well, just had another rejection for a job I applied for. 

Nothing new there you might say, I could show you a long list of rejections if you have the time, goes with job searching, move on.

What really puzzled me me about this one is that I'd worked in the sector for many years,  closely evidenced every skill and knowledge in the job spec and yet didn't even get an interview. Now I'll never know why that is but, sitting at home, and I'm being honest here, I'm feeling more than a little put out. I can rationalise not making it through an interview but really, there were other candidates 'more closely suited..? If I'd written the job spec myself my skills and knowledge could not have been more closely matched. My opinion natch.

How much has age played a part in this decision being made? Or am I just crap and lucky to have held down any job? Or are there other things going on in that organisation which meant the job was never really 'open' to outside applicants. Yes I know it's pointless to speculate but I was really quite put out. Had I mentioned that?

I've been working on a taxonomy of job applications to see if there is a discernible pattern to rejections or if it's all a giant misunderstanding with a brutal, uncaring, unfeeling universe. I think I know which one it is.

This is a ranked list of rejections reasons with (1) you know there was 'no chance' to (7)  'tolerable chance of an interview.'

1. No qualifications for the job whatsoever - applications made with a 'click and send' borne out of frustration. Zero expectation.
2. Tenuous qualifications for the job - might be able to spin the CV to look like there is a match but you know there isn't.
3. Vastly over-qualified and low salary - experience and skills exceed the job spec but worth a go as there's nothing else in the pipeline. Zero expectations.
4. Quite over-qualified and moderate salary - much as above, possible chance but, really, is there? Very limited expectations
5. Skills match but different sector - possible chance but, really, is there? Deep down you know it's No.
6. Close match - same sector and skill sets align - but no interview. WHY WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE? Must calm down.
7. Close match - same sector and skill sets align - no interview. Totally perplexed

As you may have noticed there have been very few of (7). None actually. There have been a couple of interviews following some (4) applications but they were a long time ago.

I seem to have found a special place between being far too qualified at one end and not getting interviews at the other.

I am perplexed. 

I have been unemployed for 6 months now.

Some days are great. Others not so much

New podcast; staying positive and being creative

Being unemployed is not a holiday despite the regular comments I get along those lines. 

My latest podcast is about staying positive during those sometimes long days and I suggest some ideas to stay creative. They've worked for me,

You can listen to it on iTunes, Soundcloud, Sticher and Tunein radio.

I'd love to hear from you about your experiences of unemployment in your late 50s and 60s. How about an interview for an upcoming Podcast via Skype or FaceTime?

MWAA and MWAWAD

Hello

I want to introduce you to MWAA.

MWAA is a phenomenon I've observed during most weekdays around the area I live.

It appears I am both an observer and participant. This came as a bit of a surprise because I thought I was the only one. A bit like Tigger.

It is something that seems unique to my circumstances but there is also MWAWAD which appears to have a number of similarities but with two fundamental differences. About which you will shortly learn.

MWAA is Man Wandering Around Alone.
MWAWAD is Man Wandering Alone With A Dog.

You see, as someone unemployed and whose partner works, I have a fair amount of time on my hands. True I have many interests. My baths and toilets sparkle, the paintwork throughout the house gleams, my podcast uploads are on time, my cooking is not always a disaster zone. Therefore, instead of driving to do stuff, I usually walk. Sometimes with a purpose (food, library, free wine tasting, the bargains reduced in price on the shelves in M&S at 7pm, looking at the Screwfix brochure and wondering what that tool is actually for) and sometimes because the weather is just too nice to stay in, I go out for a walk with no destination in mind. And there they are. Like a Zombie movie wandering around. Other MWAA. Because I am British there is, of course, no way I'm going over to introduce myself and find out why they are MWAA. That would take 25 years of tacitly noticing them and marginally inclining my head in their direction before we could move to a brisk 'Morning.' If I was American we would have formed a club after a few days, meet regularly, wear baseball caps with logos and be having bonding sessions in smoke filled Yurts in the wild woods of Wales by now. I mean, I've been saying hello to Mrs Lodge who walks down our road for 27 years now and only plucked up the courage to formally introduce myself and find out her name a few weeks ago. We do not want to rush these things. 

In the absence of evidence therefore, I conclude that these MWAA are like me - unemployed and wandering around for much the same reasons. We'll never know because we will never ask each other of course.

And then there's MWAWAD. These men have dogs. All sorts of dogs. Macho alsatians to those horrid things you feel you could put in your pocket. They all look a little sheepish to me. The men I mean, not the dogs, because if they were taking sheep for a walk I'd suspect rustling was going on. It's as if there has been a conversation at home along the lines of 'You COULD go out and take the DOG for a walk for THREE hours because my friends are coming over and we want to talk about our lives and womanly things without MEN being around and messing up the place and offering opinions or trying to mansplain things.' Or something like that.

So these men and their dogs wander around, the dogs doing their doggy things and then men carrying the little blue bags of doggy pooh and trying not to look slightly foolish - although they all do. 

I thought I'd point it out in case you saw me. But don't try and talk to me unless you've been passing me for at least 25 years. And then I can't guarantee anything more conversational than a comment about the weather. At least not for another 5 years. Then we will see.

New Redundancy podcast; 10 tips to help improve on line job searching

My latest podcast is now available on iTunes, Soundcloud, Sticher and TuneIn radio.

This one focuses on job searching on-line and gives 10 tips to make the whole experience more successful.
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Give it a listen and I'd love to hear your views on how you tackled/are tackling unemployment. Maybe you'd like to appear on the podcast (Skype/FaceTime). Let me know

We are super excited. Are you super excited and passionate?

When I applied for my first job at 14, dishwasher, at a local hotel I found the advert on the notice board of the Co-Op.

I recall it said something along the lines of 'Dishwasher wanted. Hotel Jolly Canoeist, Llarerggub. Transport provided to and from the town. Call Llarerggub 123123.'

Now that's what I call descriptive. 
I know what they want. 
I know where they want it. 
I know how to make contact. 

I got the job and, guess what, I washed dishes, washed them very well indeed and got paid. In retrospect I'm not entirely sure I should have been operating the monster dishwasher all alone for hours on end in a steam filled dungeon at 14. Health and safety had a more relaxed interpretation in those days.

My next job was via the milkround at university. This time the companies recruiting were on a printed list. On a noticeboard. I applied to three, got offered one, took it, my career took an unexpected detour but I got a company car, expenses, lots of travel and a bad attitude which took years to detox from.

If you wanted a job elsewhere you had a few channels to try - trade magazines, professional  subscriptions, Times Educational Supplement and, if you fancied you were ready for CEO of Consolidated Hoo Hahas, then the Times, FT or Daily Telegraph were useful. Occasionally I would resort to paying for a weekly newspaper (typically a Thursday edition) to be mailed to me with the local jobs from a location I thought I wanted to work in.

Jobs were advertised in specific sizes of column inches and employers paid for a number of insertions so they had to be very precise at describing the job, the candidate they were looking for and the salary  The text was often a cross between the mysterious text of a telex (oh come on, you must remember those) and the necessity of cramming enough description in to attract candidates just like an early Tweet limited to 146 characters. The temptation to use a font size of 4 must have been immense.

But
You knew what they wanted - to some extent
You knew where they wanted it, the location
You knew how much the pay was likely to be.

Naturally you wrote your CV, or if you were cutting edge, would type it, and send it off. I do seem to remember a few recruiters did ask for a SAE so they could send you a prescribed form. Weeks and months might pass but I recall you always got a response from a recruiter if you hadn't been successful

In the mid 90's I was a marketing manager and, as you do, looked around at other likely positions. There were several marketing magazines around crammed with jobs and this is where it started to go weird. These periodicals were packed with jobs that sounded if the entire team was off their collective heads all the time 'wacky, creative, fun loving agency, huge energy, long hours, great team, needs like minded individual to kind of produce something the client may want every so often, did we say we were totally wacky, ring now, London area, competitive salary.'

Most of them were like that. You had no idea of who they were, where they were actually located (I mean what is the definition of the 'London area'?), had no idea of how much they were paying (who was defining what competitive was?) and little idea of what they wanted from a candidate. As long as you were a gregarious, stoner, party animal who knew the difference between above and below the line marketing you were just the very thing. In the end I became convinced that most of the jobs didn't actually exist, it was just the agencies playing some sort of psychological battle with their competitors trying to show they had more clients than anyone else and needed to recruit, recruit, recruit or checking if their own staff were trying to leave.


And so to contemporary job seeking. Everything is on-line, Just a few clicks and hundreds, thousands of jobs appear on your screen.You recall that sequence in the movie The Matrix where the data comes down a green screen. That's how it feels to me as I undertake my thrice weekly job search.

But something else has changed. No longer do companies want competent, responsible, reliable employees to come and and do a darn good job day in day out, no longer is it enough to be tolerably interested in what you do or manage to get through the day without slumping with ennui on to your desk. No, now you have to be;

• Passionate about, well whatever it is they are doing. And if they do something else then presumably you have to switch the object of your passion which sounds a little promiscuous to me.
• You have to be excited as well - how does that play out then, running around like a demented puppy, like winning the lottery?
• Then you are expected to be proud of what you do.

Don't forget you have to go the extra mile as well. Not just stay on for a few minutes each day without pay just to get things ready for tomorrow but you have to go miles, scale unscalable peaks, be committed. 

That's a lot of emotions. Do you have to exhibit them all at once, in sequence, weekly? I don't know.

And then, because everyone seems to have run out of adjectives to describe these emotions or they need even more of them, a superlative is added - now you have to be super excited, super proud, and super passionate. Passionate means to 'have strong feelings' but this isn't enough they have to be even stronger. People will explode.

As I skim through these jobs on line a great weariness comes over me. 

Here's just a few examples taken at random. Actually not that random, they are the first four jobs I've clicked on.

• Passionate about all things digital 
• A commitment to excellence
• A passion to understand shopper data (really, someone has a passion for that?)
• A passion for wine (OK that works for me), but then goes on to spoil it with 'a passion for luxury brands.'

None of them say how much they pay. Only 'it's competitive.' This is also a nonsense. How do I know whether to apply if I don't know the salary range the company is working to? They must know. They've budgeted for it. Maybe they have a Passion Based Salary Meter (PBSM) which generates a possible salary based on the electrical discharge the passion, commitment and going the extra mile creates at interview. 'Crikey the PBSM has hit 83%, we'd best consider a tad over minimum wage.'

There we are then. The world seems to be filled by people who are at maximum passion all day long, or MaxPass as I think I will now call it.

I prefer the idea of the pilots flying me to my distant destination to be highly competent professionals who quite like their jobs and getting me there safely without drama, being in the hands of a well trained dentist whose hands are steady as she deals with fillings and finds parts of her job to be far more interesting than others and not hurting me. All this passion for stuff sounds very exhausting. How on earth did we mange the industrial revolution? If only all our Victorian predecessors had not been such slackers.

Discrimination when applying for jobs; new podcast

Discrimination when applying for jobs; new Podcast

There's a new podcast available on iTunes, Sticher, Sound Cloud and TuneIn radio

Listen now - if you have nothing better to do.