Malvolios Blog

So one week of fairly solid job hunting down and time for a progress report.

Phoned up about 9 roles during the last week. Spoke to four people; as usual the other five exist in some inaccessible limbo land where nobody can reach them. All four liked the CV and thought it was relevant. It’s been submitted to the client for three of them. The fourth one I bailed out of; not only did the “person specification” (five pages of it)  not match the job description (only four pages for that one), they wanted someone to do everything for them on demand, work long hours and weekends on short notice and pay peanuts. Sorry, not interested.

However, the other three…

One, the client won’t take on anyone without Local government experience. No matter that the role is one where the job to be done would be the same regardless of where you were last time round, we only want people who already work here. So much for bringing in external expertise then; all they are going to interview are people from a limited and almost certainly out-of-date pool.

Two,the agent  hasn’t heard back yet, a week later. Given this is a “must be free to start immediately” role, that seems a little surprising. Then again, while the work is interesting the rate isn’t that special and the location is frankly horrible – just too far to commute, nowhere civilised to stay, not even very nice scenery. Still, not dead yet, merely sleeping.

Three, again no response from the client to the agency as yet. so either that’s a dead one or once again the job isn’t as urgent as they thought it was.  Heigh ho…

Talking with an agency the other day was a bit worrying. We mostly realise that the agencies aren’t actually that interested in the contractors they’re supplying these days, but it seems that any role will garner 100+ applications within 30 minutes of it appearing.  More worryingly, the standard business model is to send in as many CVs as the client wants to see (usually 3-5) so they’ll use the first ones they come across with all the relevant key words in them (that’s anywhere in them; they aren’t going to waste time reading what they say after all). Which makes it rather tricky to sell your services, when you think about it.

Perhaps I should stick to writing. Anyone got an good ideas for  an international best seller…?

Well, trying to, anyway. Have had a nice two weeks basking in the sun and doing absolutely nothing, now recently returned home to start looking for the next gig. 

My God, isn’t that a depressing exercise…

Basic parameters are something reasonably senior, preferably a bit difficult, ideally within two hours of home:  having had six months of living in hotels the other end of the world, it would be nice to have the option of coming home for the evening. The skill set is mostly Service Management but I’ve run big programmes and have a couple of solid interim roles under my belt, so I’m not that worried about which industry or even which label they want to put on it.  And I have clearance at the moment, so neatly avoiding  the obvious excuse for not considering me for work.

So, out of around 50 roles in my scope, I’ve applied for five this week. Bear in mind I’m more than capable of doing all of them: I’m not going for work I can’t do, the only real filter I’m using is to ensure the rate means I actually make a profit at the end of the day. I’m not going to work 100 miles away for £250 a day, I’m afraid.

So first one, CV goes in, follow up with a phone call, no answer. Try several times, no answer. try calling at 6pm (cunning plan to avoid the switchboard), no answer. OK, scratch that one

Second one. CV goes in, follow up phone call, speak to the agent!! Sadly he’s working on filling a couple of support roles right now, will be looking at this role in about two hours. Never hear another word (and by the way, he’s working on two support roles at £30 an hour tops rather than one senior one at £500 a day and likely to need more staff – where do these people learn their economics? Toyland?)

Third one – “Fill in this form” says the website. So I do. No contact details so no follow up possible.  Last I hear of that one.

Fourth one. Good match, fairly local, and I talk to an agent that has a brain. He’s going to submit the CV, will send me a confirmation email later today. Three days on, no email.

Fifth one. No contact number on the ad (Why, FFS? Aren’ t you supposed to be a sales organisation?). Ferret one out from Google and LinkedIn. Call in. Nobody available, leave a message. Yeah right, we know all about write-only Answerphones

Had a long talk with an agency I do know. Seem their “recruiters”  haven’t put me forward for roles because “He can’t do it” – in whose opinion, may  I ask? – or because I don’t have some paper qualification or other, despite me having been using that methodology for the last 20 years . Get me the sodding interview, I’ll show them I can do the bloody job. Who’s the expert here, me with thirty years mostly senior experience or some double glazing salesman with attitude? (If you want a real laugh, look them up on LinkedIn and see just how well qualified most of them actually are…)

I think this is going to be a long couple of weeks…

End of contract, so I might have time to update this blog a bit more often: let’s face it, I couldn’t do it much less often! Except I’m off for two weeks in the sun  first. Then job hunting starts in anger – see you then!

Two hoorays in fact. Or three, if you count it being Friday

First one: last time for a long time hanging around this miserable excuse of an airport.. Right now I have three loudspeakers shouting at me about a flight to Dusseldorf – and I’m in  the quiet area… Took 20 minutes to get through security – about 100 people, but only one gate. And the beep went off when I went through the detector for some reason. And I can her the air conditioning running so why is it over 75 degrees in here.

Never mind, I’m using the car next two weekends then the contract is done and dusted anyway. Have a week off first, then go for the next gig. I’ve enjoyed this one and despite earlier comments they are a great place to be – but time to move on. And no more early morning flights on rattly planes surrounded by disinterested (and ultimately pointless) security.

Second one: a solid commitment to address IR35 in the Government’s recent combined manifesto. Even it they merely clean up the rules about when it applies it would be a huge step forward. Or bin it altogether, ideally. I own and operate a perfectly normal UK limited company, all I want is to be allowed to continue to do so without worrying about my status in the eyes of some HMRC hero.

Otherwise job hunting continues its usual rock-strewn path. Nobody on the other end of the phone – including my own agent, would you believe. Go for a job with the perfect match of skills and nothing. If you do get a positive response, one week later and still no feedback from the end client. Called two of my networking contacts: one’s only got permanent work (shudder) and the other is out of work. Still, early days: certainly the number of jobs is a lot higher than it has been.

So anyway, weekend coming up. OK, I have to spend all day Saturday in London at a PCG CC Meeting, and Sunday I have a bedroom to decorate. So probably not going to see much sunshine then. Or even dig out the barbie for some cremated steaks.

Dusselldorf shouter is back again.  Will you go away, I’ve been to Dusseldorf I don’t want to go again. Roll on the summer, that’s what I say.

Job hunting that is. Been running for a week now, but a bit limited by having to work, and work in an open plan office, so the time to customise the CV and call the agency is a bit limited. MAde worse by fairly awful coverage for the mobile.

Still if it was easy it wouldn’t be fun, would it.

Already I’ve been bounced for the usual reasons, mainly not enough sector knowledge even when I have it, after all BP is in the O&G industry as far as I can recall from my time there.  But I’ve also been bounced for a programme manager role because they aren’t looking for Service Delivery Managers. Erm, no, you’re not, but that’s merely what I’m doing now, why don’t you read the whole CV you moron?

And of course the usual issue of the standard agent who is a mythical being only to be found away from his desk. I had one tell me he was working at another desk so hadn’t checked his email yet. OK, I think, so why did you answer your direct line then?

Still early days, let’s see how thnings develop.

Hang on – just had a call about a role closer to home. Fingers crossed…

Also I have been castigated (ooh err, missus) about my comment that Broadbean lets agents see your history, so I did a bit more digging.  The source, which I picked up second hand (hey, this is a blog, I do proper research for the one I get paid for!) is a comment from an agent on another board – “Industry standard tool is a product called Broadbean. When you apply through a job board, you go into the pile, and we get a summary of each candidate when we look at the list of applicants. On that summary is the last 3 roles you’ve applied for, and how they were flagged (red, amber, green).”  Think I’ll let the professionals worry about that one

Now where did I put my worry beads…

I’ve spent some time over the weekend getting geared up for the Great Contract Hunt. CV has been updated into a base model for whatever comes up. LinkedIn profile has had a bit of a tidy. Got some extra material to load on to the main website when I get the chance. Initial emails been sent round some useful contacts on the chance they want someone to bail them out of a hole.

Also been looking through the various Job Boards. There’s work out there, rather more than there has been of late, although a huge amount of it is in Finance and so effectively out of bounds.  Public Sector seems to have gone quiet, probably because they’re all waiting to see where the axe will fall after the election, as fall it surely will.  Otherwise, it’s business as usual, with agents looking for people with stupidly specific skills or silly rates (in both drections) or, more usually these days, not posting a rate at all.

One thing that never ceases to surprise me is the number of times you see a key role being advertised – Programme Manager, say – to run a major piece of work that’s clearly been in the pipeline for a while, but with a start date of next week. I mean, is that really a good idea? Surely you want to find the best candidate and the chances are that the good ones in this market are the ones in work, not the ones on the bench.

I’ve also had an insight into how Broadbean works, which was interesting and depressing in equal measure. For example, did you know the agent can see every job you’ve applied for; how worrying is that? If only we could bring back agents that know their clients and their contractors instead of the chicken farm processes we are stuck with these days.

So hunting starts in anger from tomorrow. I’d like to say I’m looking forward to it. But I’d be lying…

By the way, thanks for keeping visiting somewhere that has been really boring for a week or two. Hopefully we’ll be back to weekly rant… posts again from now on.

Seriously chaps, there’s nothing sinister, I ran an archive and delete exercise, meaning to have a good tidy up, but somehow managed to delete the .xml file so couldn’t put anything back. I have another copy back at home, so hopefully will be able to recover what I meant to recover originally and get it into some kind of structure. So watch for a few more useful and interesting articles on matters of interest. Or not, perhaps…

However the contract is in sight of a finish, so very soon I’ll be plunging back into the uncontrolled anarchy of the recruitment trade, assuming someone in the network hasn’t got a burning need for a good senior interim with Service Management skills. Need to duff up the CV (didn’t I write an article on that a while back?) and perhaps go totally mad an update the website.

The other reason for a change is that I do another, slightly more grown up blog, and doing two reviews of the week gets a bit of a strain after a long week, especially when there’s really only one real story to work with.

So keep in touch, abnormal service will be resumed at some point…

So much for being clever.  Notice the shortage of posts?

A slight case of housekeeping gone badly wrong…

Time for a fresh start anyway. I’ll be looking for the next job soon; watch this space….