Oh No Not Another Rant About Jobs.

After having gone to a few graduate/career things (two, I’ve been to two) and filling in countless job applications (literally I have lost count of how many there have been. I tried to keep track by saving the rejection emails but I have stopped getting them so there goes that system) I thought with my lengthy ‘experience’ in the area it was only fair to share some hints of what to put on applications or not.

But first a quick interlude onto the subject of finding a job application form to even fill out. Scrawling through website after website looking at the current vacancies and when you finally find something that sounds vaguely doable you take a look at the person specification and it’s like nope, nope, nope, can’t do that, can’t do that, can’t do that. And you’re back at square one.

Did you ever experience the terrifying feeling when you are  sitting down for an exam at school and the first question asked you to write your name? A feeling of pure terror courses through your veins as you panic ‘what even is my name?’  Well its good news kids because that never goes away. The first question on any application or form that you are going to have to fill out is most likely to ask for your name. 

The second thing that terrifies me about job applications is when it asks what the date is: Ok so it’s six months into the year and I still find myself typing that it’s 2012. 2012 is just an easy number to remember not even starting to mention all the things that happened in 2012 to make it memorable; it was the year of the London Olympics, Felix Baumgartner’s world record breaking free fall jump from the edge of space, it was the year of the misconstrued Mayan Apocalypse and who can forget the phenomenon that was Gangnam Style. 

Whereas 2013, what is remarkable about this year? How am I supposed to remember this year? Besides the fact that this is the first year since 1987 to be composed of 4 different numbers, this year has been full of violence; Shootings and gun attack , the Woolwich murder, Syrian crisis and to add to all the doom and gloom Prince Philip had to have abdominal surgery. So excuse me for wanting to blank this year out of my mind and we’re not even half way through yet! However on a much lighter note, today is my half birthday so Happy Half Birthday to me.

So back to the topic of job applications and forms, I have noticed that the first section often needs to be filled out in block capitals. It's like I'm shouting my personal details at people!  
So have we all now completed the ‘personal details section’? Well done, although apparently you have  completed the ‘easy’ part. Wait what? 

As a woman I find it as hard as the next person to sell myself, although I guess hookers may be quite be good at this. I’ve heard it said that men will often excel in the parts of the job application where they have to talk about how amazing they are whereas the females who have spent most of their lives scrutinising and have other people point out their flaws (yeah thanks for that) find this task slightly harder. Am I the only person who absolutely dreads the question ‘why I should I hire you rather than someone else?’ Anything that you could possibly reply to that suggests that you think you are better than the other person and therefore makes you sound big headed and arrogant.

So feeling suitably sick and terrified of the application that you still haven’t completed four hours later we will move onto the equal opportunities sections. These bits actually quite amuse me because I spend a good five to ten minutes trying out different ethnicities. Although having still not mastered an Irish or Afro-Caribbean accent I think that I wouldn’t able to get away with it at an interview nevertheless if I even got the job. Also the slight problem of having pasty white skin restricts my choices somewhat. I would highly advise you not to pick a ethnicity to be at random because, like me, you may be white-British and for a laugh decide to say that you are Irish and then get invited for an interview and start talking in a broad Yorkshire accent. (I haven’t actually done this but how hilarious would it be if this happened.)

At the beginning of this post we talked about feelings of blind panic at being asked your name if you can cast your mind back.(I know it’s hard, it was a long time ago) You can therefore  imagine what I was thinking when I was asked on page seven what role I was applying for. Is this a trick question?

The most annoying thing about job applications is that you can’t just send in your CV and hope for the best, no you have to write out a specific cover letter for each position you want….ain’t nobody got time for dat. What is the point of even having a CV when nobody wants to see it? Even when you send in a stellar application that took you the majority of a day a lot of people never reply back to you. Well cheers then.