Wednesday 8 August 2012

Wednesday 8th August - what happens to your CV

I'm one of the lucky ones - I want to work, and I am working. I have two separate hourly paid teaching jobs (the sort where you get payslips!), and then I am self-employed for the rest of the hours. During term time my work is intense, demanding, all-consuming, and I can only maintain this level of "output" because of half terms and holidays.

In a previous existence, I worked in the computer departments of various companies, and occasionally had to recruit staff. This was years and years ago now, but my husband has also, in a previous years, been in the position of recruiting staff, and he followed the same procedure.

You place the advertisement. Or the HR dept, or the employment agency places the advertisement.

The applications come flooding in, thick and fast, and accumulate in a file, or a folder, or even just a pile. The pile gets randomly shuffled as more forms are added to the back or the front, or the whole lot falls on the floor.

After the closing date, you sit down for half an hour with a cup of coffee, and skim through the applications; (by now there will be perhaps a hundred or so). no, no, yes, no, no, no, no, yes, er...no.

Once you have found fifteen possibles, you stop, and return the rest of the application forms to the pile. Unread.

From the fifteen you have chosen, a careful reading should result in a shortlist of maybe five to call for interview. If not, the trawl through the next dozen of the pile will make up the list.

Sorry folks. It's really not fair, but that's how it is.

I, and my husband, have been on the receiving end of this lottery - and it is a lottery - as well as dealing it out.     

Your application may have been the first, or the last. It probably makes no difference. The only thing that can be said with any certainty is the that the slightest error on your CV will mean it WILL be discarded.

Don't be discouraged by this - it just means that it isn't necessarily your fault that you didn't get the interview. It's a numbers game - a lottery. One day, you WILL hit the jackpot. I did. My husband did. You will. Just keep the applications going, and keep your balance.

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