One year ago today, according to this very blog, I was still not in possession of gainful employment, and I was frustrated with the whole jobseeking and application process.
The reason for this was, of course, the fact that job sites are shite, and I would recommend that anyone currently seeking gainful employment should avoid them completely.
They’re good in theory, of course. A site featuring a searchable database of jobs by area and category? That should be awesome. That should make it ludicrously easy to find a job. That should make the entire application process streamlined, elegant and very straightforward. People will be able to get matched with awesome jobs and employers will find their model employees. Everyone’s a winner.
Except they’re not. Through unscrupulous recruitment agencies, listings for being a boiler engineer get mixed in with journalism listings. Recruitment agencies refuse to say what the company they’re recruiting for is or where the fucking job is in the first place. And on the off chance that you do actually manage to get in touch with a recruiter, you run the risk of dealing with the HR equivalent of a cock-tease, making you think you’re in with a chance of getting a job, when actually you’re not.
So basically, fuck the job-hunting sites. Here’s what you need to do: get on Twitter, and go directly to the people in question. Do some networking online. Talk to people. Shamelessly whore out your work — there’s no shame in sharing things that 1) you’re proud of and 2) potential employers might be interested in.
By following this approach rather than wasting my time with job hunting sites, I’m finally in a position where I can say I’m gainfully employed. I’m pleased to say that I’ll be sticking around with GamePro, and that doing so is enough to call a “proper job”. I shan’t share specifics, because that would probably be inappropriate, but I shall say this: compared to this time last year, when things were shit and rubbish, things are certainly well and truly on the way up.
Which is, you know, nice.
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