Day One Of Week Three

Ok it's the first day of the week and so it should be all systems go on the job front. However once again Reed has managed to match 1 job to my search criteria and totaljobs haven't even bothered to send a message this morning, bless them. The one from Reed is actually the same one they've been sending for days, and I still wouldn't get past the CV screening phase for the job.

There is something of an urban myth being created around the number of vacancies that are available at the moment. When an employer sends out a job vacancy they tend to send the job description to a number of agencies to get the widest set of possible applicants for the job. If this is picked up by a site such as Reed then they will post each agency's vacancy as one individual vacancy on their site. So, if you look at the count made for vacancies they could include one job listed 3 or four times. It means that there are fewer jobs listed on their site than are actually available. It is the same for several of the job websites. They are not manufacturing figures; it's just that it does somewhat over inflate the possibilities that seem to be there. Then again that is the nature of hope, I guess. I was pretty much all done by about 10am today. I still need to ring one of the agencies I didn't contact on Friday. Then that's my day done.

There is a difficulty in filling up the hours in the day once the business of looking for a job is done. Again, I'm satisfying the rigours of the Jobseeker's Agreement I have with the DSS. Today it feels like an exercise in ticking boxes. I was explaining to a friend of mine yesterday why I'm not applying for 30 jobs a day. His attitude was that I should simply adopt a scattergun approach to the process. I tried, as politely as possible, to explain why this really wasn't appropriate. People are being very selective in the calibre of people they are choosing for interview at the moment. They can afford to. I also feel like each rejection is like someone taking another small piece of your confidence away. Something you can never get back.

If you haven't got the exact job specifications then you are barely likely to get your CV into the "considered for interview" pile. It's a straight no, and the automated reply sends you a rejection usually within the hour. This isn't done by the employer themselves it is done by the agency. They are given instructions on what the employer is looking for. The agency person I spoke on Friday was quite illuminating on the subject. I casually remarked upon the fact that it seemed a lot of employers had a very clear idea of the kind of people they are looking for. She proceeded to explain that employers are sometimes making exceedingly ridiculous demands for the kind of people they want to hire, or exclude. For some strange reason I was reminded of the riders that rock stars ask for. Some of those seem to have become increasingly ridiculous over the years. Perhaps job hunting is the new rock 'n' roll.

Well this isn't going to fill up the whole day. The sun is shining but I am, once again, feeling reluctant to leave the house. The routines I keep talking about are slow to take hold. I am invariably getting up and eating breakfast and doing the job search. Then it gets to about 10.30am and I sort of grind to a halt. I suddenly realise that there is nothing left that I have to do for the rest of the day. If I stay in, I needn't get dressed, no one is coming so I needn't tidy up today. If I do that there isn't exactly anything left on the "things to do" list. Staring into space, I find I may have managed to let some more time go by. I can idly surf the internet for an hour or so but even that starts to bore. I've got a pile of books to read and so I make my way through them for some of the day. Consequently I can usually make it to lunchtime before the real stagnation sets in. This is bad, and I have to find a way to stop this happening on at least more than 2 days a week.

Fortunately today I have a bit of a challenge. I'm out of bread. I purchased yeast and flour last week so I've got something to attempt to get right, namely bread making. I don't expect it will replace the buying of bread completely, but it will be interesting to see how successful it actually turns out to be. In the past my attempts have been mixed, to say the least. I'm not too bad at making bread as long as you are prepared to accept that I began by wanting to make ciabatta bread. I will update you on the process.

Well I think that's about it today. I've been listening to Mouse On Mars whilst writing this. They really are one of the few modern German bands who really seemed to take krautrock and move it on. However as the album has morphed from electronica meets krautrock into some form of mentalist drum 'n' bass thing I feel it's time I retreated to the sofa with my coffee or, if it gets any more insane, behind it.