Job hunting in a recession

This is not my most favourite task and I am sure that it is not yours either. When I started looking for work I bemoaned the task on twitter whereby two different people responded to me. One saying: “you need to look at these big web sites such as monster, Irish jobs and recruit Ireland”. And the other saying “don’t look at those sites it is all about who you know and networking”. So who the hell was right?  For me – neither was right. 

Then of course you hear the advice from people saying “the jobs are out there, you just got to be fast and get in there at the right time”   Ah hell! How can quick can I be?

My advice to anyone looking for a job right now in this tough economy is to try all angles and don’t leave any stone unturned when you are looking.  I have written down a few key points for you to follow when you are job hunting in a recession.  These are tips and pointers that have worked for me recently. 

Know what job you are looking for. 

This sounds a bit obvious doesn’t it?  But if you are not sure what exact job you want, how will whoever reads your C.V know that too.  So you have just finished a job where you were mostly doing administration and secretarial work.  But you want to move a step higher or in to the same area.  You need to define your skills and figure out the answers to some questions.  

Are you someone that is more secretarial and administration? Are you an office manager? Or, are you an operations manager.    

Think about these jobs mentioned, they all fall under the same hat in my opinion in one way or another.  You could have experience to complete all jobs in this list.  But if you are going for the Operations Manager position, you don’t want your C.V to look like the secretary position.   

Remember that you want your C.V to be targeted for the specific job you are going for. So make sure you know what you want from a job and then think about what the employer is looking for.

Target your C.V to the job you want.

So you are looking for a secretary position so that you can get working as soon as possible, but ultimately you want to be an office manager.   This means that you will need two C.Vs – this means two different job profiles and descriptions.  Remember both jobs are different, and will require different qualifications and experience so you need to ensure you that your C.V meets these.

My recommendation at this point is to look at job descriptions of jobs that are already out there on the internet.  Take a look at those buzz words in the description and try to work them in to your C.V.

You need to make sure that the person reading your CV knows that you can do the job.  Most important make sure you can do those jobs and have examples of when you completed the tasks for when you are asked at the interview stage.

Take a look at this picture to help branding yourself on your CV.

 

Large Websites

There are many jobs websites out there for example Irish Jobs, recruit Ireland etc.  Be careful when using these sites. I found that sometimes when a job was advertised on these websites, if you went to the actually company whether it is a recruitment agency or the actual company, the job was no longer available or it was initially published months ago.  So whilst it is great to use these – use your head too and make sure you are applying for jobs that are still active and not dead in the water from months ago.

The one thing about using these websites is that it expands your own knowledge of recruitment agencies out there. It also allows you to connect with many recruitment personnel who may be able to help you in future.  My one advice on these websites is to be careful.

Target companies in your area

Have you ever thought “oh I would love to work for X company?”  Then isn’t now the perfect time to try.  Look at their website, is there a careers section? Take a look at it and see what information is available. Can you sign up for notifications on vacancies?  If not, save it to your favourites and visit it once a week to check out if anything is available.   

Networking

Networking is important; making those connections that can help you will stand to you in the longer term.   But if like me you find it hard to ask people you worked with for favours than something like linked in is perfect for you.  Linked in connect you with people that you work or have worked with.   It is basically an electronic version of your CV, whereby people can also write a review about working with you and endorse your credentials.   But as it is real time, when you change job or are unemployed you can put the call out subtly to your contacts for help – without actually asking.  Hopefully someone will notice you are looking and maybe be able to help.  Remember any dealings that you have in a work or recruitment capacity, make sure you follow up with a linked in connection.  This will make your network bigger and allow you to make connections further afield than your own company.     There are pitfalls to linked in so make sure you don’t connect with your boss and than broadcast out that you are looking for another job! Big mistake. 

It is worth looking at other methods of job searching as well such as twitter.  Again remember to use correctly as the person reading it could be your future employer.

 

Internships

Internships are currently being supported by the Irish Government as a way of getting people back in to the work place.  Whilst I wasn’t initially a fan of these preferring to see them more as cheap labour than someone actually getting experience.  Being out of work for some time now has made me realise that maybe an internship isn’t so bad after all.  If I get out and get back that reason for getting up in the morning – even if it is for crap money – isn’t it better than sitting on my ass watching it get bigger and bigger.  You bet it is.  So please don’t rule out the fact that an internship will help you get back to work, get yourself respect back and most importantly ensure that your CV doesn’t have a big hole that you really don’t want to have to explain.   Consider it! It may just work for you.

While I understand that job searching isn’t easy in a recession I also understand that a few little steps as discussed will make things that little bit easier for you.  So remember these steps and put every effort in to them.

1.       Know what job you are looking for.

2.       Target your C.V to the job you want.

3.       Large Websites

4.       Target companies in your area

5.       Networking

6.       Internships

What worked or working for you?

S

 

Preparing your house for Christmas.

With less than one month to go to Christmas my thoughts have turned to preparing my house for the upcoming festivities.  I love the holidays, that holiday cheer that everyone has. It is defintely my favourite time of the year.  However, not only are my thoughts going towards putting up my Christmas decorations but I am also thinking about cleaning the house for the holiday period.  I suppose it is my version of a spring clean but a holiday clean.   So I have decided to plan everything out so that come Christmas week I don’t need to do too much other than the basic every day cleaning and enjoying the holidays.    So what’s on the to do list?

I am starting by listing each room in the house out on an excel spreadsheet, I don’t have a big house to clean so we are not talking major amount of rooms, but it is an average size house. 

Target date	Room
05/12/2012	kitchen
10/12/2012	Utility Room
10/12/2012	Hall / Stairs / Landing
12/12/2012	Living Room
14/12/2012	Tv Room
15/12/2012	Bedroom 1
17/12/2012	Bedroom 2
19/12/2012	Bedroom 3
20/12/2012	Bathroom

You can see from my grid above that I have set a target date to tackle each room on. This means that from 20/12/2012 I will have a perfect pristine house just in time for when those visitors start calling over. I won’t need to worry about opening a cupboard and finding something out of date, or opening another cupboard and items falling out on my head. 

My schedule is a little spread out and I would love to be done before 20/12/2012 but I will just have to see how it all works out.

Each week I will post an update on the big Christmas clean up and let you know how it goes.  I feel the most important rooms to start with are the Kitchen and the Utility room.  Starting with the kitchen will allow me to go through the cupboards and actually see what food is in there, what is still in date ( shameful face) and what I need to throw out or buy for the upcoming holidays.

I have scheduled my hall/stairs and landing and the living and tv rooms for the same days that I intend to put up my Christmas tree and decorations this means it will all be done in one day in each room and I will be stressed out in to when to put these things up when I don’t have a room I am happy.  I am hoping to have these rooms cleared out alittle before then as I have junk cupboards and drawers in there that I would dearly love to eradicate completely.  I may just be wishful thinking here but I think it is worth a go don’t you?

There are countless blogs out there that will help you become organised for the holiday period, to schedule your cooking, cleaning and baking.   Try popping over to some of them to get some fantastic ideas on how to arrange your rooms so that organisation becomes a key component to your holiday season with little stress and fuss.

Keeping the house clean during the holidays

Let’s start cleaning now so that we can enjoy the holiday season.

S

Odlums Brown Scones - Baking made simple!

I have always loved baking and cooking shows.  I love how easy they make it look to bake and make something fantastic.  Being between jobs aka unemployed I decided now was as good a time as ever to try and bake something.  Having absolutely no baking utensils I decided to start off slowly and make some easy bake scones. 

Easy bake scones I hear you say, crazy but it was a packet and you just added water.  Yes, that simple.   But having only ever made chocolate rice krispies buns from school days I figured starting easy was the best way to go.    And now, I have found a passion and a hobby that I am actually quite good at. 

Ok so I have started off really slowly by making scones from a packet.  But I can’t believe how easy it and how much I loved baking so much.  So much so I made an apple tart recently.    I will blog about that another time, but for now I will tell you how my brown scones worked out and how easy they are to make.

I bought a packet of Odlums Brown Scone Mix in my local tesco supermarket and read the simple easy instructions.  Just add water! 

I put the mix in a bowl and added the water and knead the scone mix until it was dough. I rolled it out and as I didn’t have a cookie cutter I used a knife to divide up the mix.  I used my hands to round off the dough in to a scone shape.  Popped in the over for 15 minutes and badddaa boom – I made scones that turned out pretty darn good.  Take a look here at my results.

I know this was an easy start but it gave the pride and knowledge to know that I can do it.  It gave me the pride to know that I can start a new hobby at 35 and be good at it. 

Look at how fantastic they turned out!  Yes I had already taken one to sample from this little bundle of loveliness. For those wondering I worked out that there is 6 ProPoints per scone.

 

Obviously being on weight watchers I am being careful about what I am going to bake and cook – but I hope to find some fantastic recipes to share here on my blog and hopefully make a nice little recipe book to share with you all.

What do you like to bake?  Do you have anything easy to recommend that I can try?  Link me up in the comments.

S

I'm back with a great attitude and adventure - Restarting my blog

Hello World,

I started this blog when I first lost my job – I thought it would be exciting and an adventure and mainly give me a reason to get up every morning. I lost track of something and now I am actually finding myself again.

When I started this blog, it was a little place for me to sound off, share some ideas and thoughts and generally just get my thoughts out.  As I days rolled by I began to look forward to writing something for my blog, but then I noticed that no one else really had noticed my blog and I wondered why am I actually doing this if no one cares!  So I just decided to stop!  

BUT when I stopped I got myself in to a little rut of depression, self loathing, laziness and generally crappy moods.  I have returned recently from my favourite holiday of all – the Big Apple and I realised that I needed to get the hell out of my funk.  When I was there I was listening to the stories of some of those that survived Sandy – many losing memories and homes.  What struck me most was the attitude of the people in NYC – the resilience in the face of adversity.  One moment has stuck with me more than anything else.  

One night I was standing outside my hotel and I was speaking with the door man when a guy and his dog walked passed.  He regularly walked past the hotel each evening and they both started talking about how the hurricane had affected them.  The dog walker said that each evening he stopped by the hotel to look in the window at the news as he had no power in his building.  The window was his saviour letting him know what was going on further afield in NYC.  I asked him how long he had been without power – a few days he said.  “Everything in my freezer started to defrost – so I gave it to other residents in my building who weren’t so lucky with food” His building has gas stoves so they could cook easily.  He didn’t really know the other people in his building but couldn’t let his food go to waste and see others hungry.  He spoke about how he carried his little dog “bo” up and down 14 flights of stairs for his daily walk.  How the dog became a little superstar in the local bank where they allowed people to just sit there and charge their cell phones. He spoke about the great management team in the building and how they stopped by each day to check on every one.  They brought water from the pool on the roof to each apartment so people could “flush” their toilets.  (pool on the roof – some posh apartment building! )Notice something about this story? This guy didn’t moan or complain once about the situation he was in.  He wasn’t moping about; he was getting on with his life as best he could during the worst storm to hit NYC.

This one conversation between the doorman, the dog walker and myself has struck such a chord in me that it has helped me get out of my funk!  It has made me say come on, get on with things and look towards to the positive. 

When I was in NYC I bought Bethenny Frankels book “ A Place of Yes” I have only read the first chapter but this quote has stood out for me “ A place of yes is about taking responsibility for moving forward, even if you have to climb over a mountain of obstacles. You are in charge, nobody else”.

As I said above, at the start this was a little place for me to come in to, share, talk and chat even if it was to myself.  Now, I realise I need to find that part again and not focus on who is reading and why people aren’t. 

So here it is – my journey through the crap little hand of life that I have been dealt at the moment – Unemployment.  I am not the only person in this country or in the world that is unemployed at the moment and hopefully some of my little posts or ideas/thoughts will mean something to someone if they stumble across my blog.

In the meantime if you do decide to read this blog, please let me know by either leaving a comment or following my on twitter @mynextendeavour.  

Let restart this adventure together.

S