There is no doubt that having the thought process of 'It's only a temporary assignment, it's only for 3 weeks' helped a lot with first day nerves. I hadn't been the new girl since 1986 and it was amazing how nervous I felt driving into the carpark on that Monday morning.
Everything was new to me, the people, the environment,the industry, the software I would be working with even that they did weekly accounts when I had always done monthly, the time to turn work around was so critical and on day 1 my head was spinning. But even amidst all this confusion I was able to make progress.
I also picked up on a lot of negative vibes towards the person I was working with, dealing with a lot of issues from his colleagues. That was an uncomfortable position to be in, as I didn't want to fall into the same scenario where I too had a lot of negativity directed towards me. I needed to interact between the 2 halves. As it happened, over the weeks I bridged the gap very well and actually found I could work with either set of people, but those early days were concerning while I worked out what the issues were and how best to deal with them.
By the end of the first week I felt the deadline of 3 weeks was realistic to complete the task and had started to make some real headway. Getting information from the chap I was working with wasn't easy as he wasn't the best at explaining things but fortunately my skills learned over 26 years enabled me to work out the majority of what needed doing.
By the end of the first week I was starting to understand a lot of the frustrations within the staff towards my new colleague but I had taken the view that it wasn't my place to comment and soon they realised I wasn't one to 'dish the dirt'.
By the end of week 2 we were well on with completing the task and the strange computer system didn't seem so strange, I knew where all the files were kept and had even been shown the 'stationery supplies' and was allowed to fetch my own copy paper and envelopes - apparently it normally takes about 6 months before this usually happens, I felt honoured.
I spoke to the agency at the start of week 3 and asked them to be on the look out for a new assignment as I would be finished here at the end of the week. I shortly got a call back to say would I be interested in continuing on placement for a further 4 weeks and if so, would I go and have a chat with the FD.
Intrigued, I walked through to the 'other side' (quite literally - the offices were in 2 definitive halves) and found the FD.
'Ah' he said, 'come in. We have a situation where your colleague is due to go on annual leave in 2 weeks time and, as you have picked things up so well, we'd like you to cover his holidays so we can continue to get the divisional weekly figures - do you think you'd be able to so this if you spent the next 2 weeks training?'
Although my work had all been annual reconcilliations towards the annual audit I was quite confident I would be capable, with 2 weeks training, so I was happy to accept the 4 weeks extension.
Little was I to know what the next Monday morning was to bring.
Friday 18 November 2011
Wednesday 16 November 2011
Interview Day.
The day dawned and I donned my interview suit. I couldn't believe how nervous I was, after all I used to interview for staff in my last job, but I was going to be on the other side of the desk this time.
I had done my research on the company, had a copy of my cv and job spec and off I went. I had taken a drive out the night before to find where I was going so I knew I wouldn't have any last minute panics about finding the place to add to the nerves, and of course, I arrived well before time.
40 minutes later I was back in the car. The interview seemed to have gone well. The asignment was well within my capabilities and I seemed to have got on ok with the chap I would be working with. He was seeing others that same day so I would probably get a call from the agency late afternoon with the outcome.
Although the assignment was only for 3 weeks I was surprised how much I wanted to get it. I think I needed to prove to myself that I was still capable of gaining work, and that the massive decision to return to the UK hadn't been a mistake.
I spent the rest of the day continuing my job searching, phoning around agencies, trawling through the internet and firing off my many-times altered CV, now specifically written to suit each application. I was very methodical in my approach and how I kept records of what I had applied for, which agencies I had spoken to and soon my file was building to show an impressive amount of applications - gradually the emails started to drop into my inbox - no thanks, not this time, sorry but keep checking our website for more vacancies - it was quite dis-spiriting.
I decided I needed a break from all this negativity and called the dogs. It was a warm, dry and sunny summers day outside, a walk along the canal with the dogs would lift my spirits for another session of job hunting. The sight of the dogs wandering along the canal path, rooting in the hedgerows and watching the ducks glide along the far bank never failed to make me feel good inside. Everyone we met stopped to chat to me and stroke the dogs - it was just the boost I needed to shift the gloom that had decended. Rejection is never easy but the faceless anonymity of the internet and the speed at which it comes back at you was, somehow, even more difficult to get used to. The speed at which some of the responses came back made me feel they were automated replies, it didn't feel as if anyone could have read my application and made a judgement on my suitability. I rang several agencies for feedback as to why I wasn't suitable, and everytime I got the same answer 'oh, they want someone qualified, they're not bothering with anyone who isn't'. That was something I couldn't change overnight - but it wasn't going to stop me applying.
There were several fishermen dotted along the canal, most looking ready to pack their rods away and rejoin the mayhem of everyday life. A narrow boat pulled into the lock and I stood to watch the water filling up, raising the boat into view. The dogs always found this fascinating too and I was always concerned they would fall into the lock as they peered down to see what was happening, their interest even more so if there was a dog on the boat. I would often chat to the boat owners while they too waited for the water level to reach its goal.
In the middle of this my phone rang, a quick look at the number told me it was the agency. I somehow didn't want more negative news to spoil such an idyllic part of the afternoon but I answered it anyway, prepared to hear another 'no thank you,' knowing that my continued walk along the canal would cancel out any bad news call.
'Hi, it's Emma. I've just had a call from Richard' who I had seen that morning, 'he'd liked you a lot and wants you to do the assignment, can you start on Monday?'
'Er, really? Yes, of course I can, what time?' I replied.
As she spoke, I missed most of what she said as I could feel my brain take in the initial sentence .....can you start on Monday? I had done it, I had managed to convince someone at interview that I was still capable of doing a job. It was a good feeling.
It was only for 3 weeks, but it was a start. I vaguely heard Emma say she would confirm everything in an email and that I was to call if I had any questions. Then suddenly the phone call was over and I was employed again.
All I had to do now was turn up and prove that I could actually do the job. I had a few more days to worry about that, for now I was happy to continue my walk along the canal, in what now seemed warmer sunshine.
I continued my walk along the canal with a little extra spring in my step.
Today was a good day.
I had done my research on the company, had a copy of my cv and job spec and off I went. I had taken a drive out the night before to find where I was going so I knew I wouldn't have any last minute panics about finding the place to add to the nerves, and of course, I arrived well before time.
40 minutes later I was back in the car. The interview seemed to have gone well. The asignment was well within my capabilities and I seemed to have got on ok with the chap I would be working with. He was seeing others that same day so I would probably get a call from the agency late afternoon with the outcome.
Although the assignment was only for 3 weeks I was surprised how much I wanted to get it. I think I needed to prove to myself that I was still capable of gaining work, and that the massive decision to return to the UK hadn't been a mistake.
I spent the rest of the day continuing my job searching, phoning around agencies, trawling through the internet and firing off my many-times altered CV, now specifically written to suit each application. I was very methodical in my approach and how I kept records of what I had applied for, which agencies I had spoken to and soon my file was building to show an impressive amount of applications - gradually the emails started to drop into my inbox - no thanks, not this time, sorry but keep checking our website for more vacancies - it was quite dis-spiriting.
I decided I needed a break from all this negativity and called the dogs. It was a warm, dry and sunny summers day outside, a walk along the canal with the dogs would lift my spirits for another session of job hunting. The sight of the dogs wandering along the canal path, rooting in the hedgerows and watching the ducks glide along the far bank never failed to make me feel good inside. Everyone we met stopped to chat to me and stroke the dogs - it was just the boost I needed to shift the gloom that had decended. Rejection is never easy but the faceless anonymity of the internet and the speed at which it comes back at you was, somehow, even more difficult to get used to. The speed at which some of the responses came back made me feel they were automated replies, it didn't feel as if anyone could have read my application and made a judgement on my suitability. I rang several agencies for feedback as to why I wasn't suitable, and everytime I got the same answer 'oh, they want someone qualified, they're not bothering with anyone who isn't'. That was something I couldn't change overnight - but it wasn't going to stop me applying.
There were several fishermen dotted along the canal, most looking ready to pack their rods away and rejoin the mayhem of everyday life. A narrow boat pulled into the lock and I stood to watch the water filling up, raising the boat into view. The dogs always found this fascinating too and I was always concerned they would fall into the lock as they peered down to see what was happening, their interest even more so if there was a dog on the boat. I would often chat to the boat owners while they too waited for the water level to reach its goal.
In the middle of this my phone rang, a quick look at the number told me it was the agency. I somehow didn't want more negative news to spoil such an idyllic part of the afternoon but I answered it anyway, prepared to hear another 'no thank you,' knowing that my continued walk along the canal would cancel out any bad news call.
'Hi, it's Emma. I've just had a call from Richard' who I had seen that morning, 'he'd liked you a lot and wants you to do the assignment, can you start on Monday?'
'Er, really? Yes, of course I can, what time?' I replied.
As she spoke, I missed most of what she said as I could feel my brain take in the initial sentence .....can you start on Monday? I had done it, I had managed to convince someone at interview that I was still capable of doing a job. It was a good feeling.
It was only for 3 weeks, but it was a start. I vaguely heard Emma say she would confirm everything in an email and that I was to call if I had any questions. Then suddenly the phone call was over and I was employed again.
All I had to do now was turn up and prove that I could actually do the job. I had a few more days to worry about that, for now I was happy to continue my walk along the canal, in what now seemed warmer sunshine.
I continued my walk along the canal with a little extra spring in my step.
Today was a good day.
Monday 14 November 2011
Job searching on the internet
Another coffee at my side, I switched on the laptop and waited for Google to load. I typed in 'job vacancies' and was rewarded with 52.9 million results in 0.14 seconds.
There at the top of page 1 were Totaljobs, Monster and Fish4jobs. They seemed a reasonable place to start so I set about filling in the search criteria. It soon became apparent that most vacancies are replicated on all the sites and that it was easy to get bogged down trying to filter through them so I decided to register my CV with them all but focus on using one site as my main search. The key thing it did give me was the names and contacts of all the agencies for me to approach.
I struggled to find where companies advertised their vacancies direct, surely not everyone uses agencies these days, the fees can be quite limiting for some firms. By the end of the day my CV had been submitted for a variety of vacancies and in general I had received an email reply saying 'thankyou but no thankyou'.
This soon became a worry as I was more than capable of doing any of the jobs I was applying for. I needed to know what was causing the constant flow of 'no thank yous'.
I started to ring a number of the agencies and discovered it was my lack of qualifications and specific job experience. With the number of people looking for work, the agencies were telling me, the companies were getting very picky about the experience they were looking for and with so many qualified people job hunting they were tending to be more focused on the qualification than the fact that someone has worked in the industry for over 25 years.
OK. I had a new barrier to getting back into work - in my view the agency staff were so blinkered in their recruitment method they were now a barrier to me getting back into work. That was a big worry now that it had become apparent that agencies were controlling the way the vacancies are filled.
My best way to find a job was for a firm to see how good I was, I needed to get through the door. I decided I needed to get some temporary work sorted out as soon as possible.
I rang a number of agencies and by the end of the day I had appointments to see several scattered within a 10 mile radius of home. Over the next 3 days I drove in all directions but felt I had made some good contacts who understood me better than they did from reading my CV. Once more my hopes were raised.
While I waited for the phone to ring I set about making use of one very strong piece of advice I had received. I needed to alter my CV big time. The content was too strong and was putting me out of consideration for most of the jobs I was applying for. People couldn't seem to grasp that although I had previously worked at a senior level, I didn't want to go back into the job market at that level. I needed to delete huge chunks from my CV and have a number of different CV's to suit different roles.
In the middle of doing all this editing and re-writing the phone rang. One of the agencies had an interview lined up for me for a 3 week temporary assignment - was I interested?
Too right I was interested. If nothing else, it would give me some interview practice. I hadn't been for a job interview in over 20 years. Having found out how much looking for a job had changed I was now quite sure that everything else about the process would have changed too.
Tomorrow I would find out!
There at the top of page 1 were Totaljobs, Monster and Fish4jobs. They seemed a reasonable place to start so I set about filling in the search criteria. It soon became apparent that most vacancies are replicated on all the sites and that it was easy to get bogged down trying to filter through them so I decided to register my CV with them all but focus on using one site as my main search. The key thing it did give me was the names and contacts of all the agencies for me to approach.
I struggled to find where companies advertised their vacancies direct, surely not everyone uses agencies these days, the fees can be quite limiting for some firms. By the end of the day my CV had been submitted for a variety of vacancies and in general I had received an email reply saying 'thankyou but no thankyou'.
This soon became a worry as I was more than capable of doing any of the jobs I was applying for. I needed to know what was causing the constant flow of 'no thank yous'.
I started to ring a number of the agencies and discovered it was my lack of qualifications and specific job experience. With the number of people looking for work, the agencies were telling me, the companies were getting very picky about the experience they were looking for and with so many qualified people job hunting they were tending to be more focused on the qualification than the fact that someone has worked in the industry for over 25 years.
OK. I had a new barrier to getting back into work - in my view the agency staff were so blinkered in their recruitment method they were now a barrier to me getting back into work. That was a big worry now that it had become apparent that agencies were controlling the way the vacancies are filled.
My best way to find a job was for a firm to see how good I was, I needed to get through the door. I decided I needed to get some temporary work sorted out as soon as possible.
I rang a number of agencies and by the end of the day I had appointments to see several scattered within a 10 mile radius of home. Over the next 3 days I drove in all directions but felt I had made some good contacts who understood me better than they did from reading my CV. Once more my hopes were raised.
While I waited for the phone to ring I set about making use of one very strong piece of advice I had received. I needed to alter my CV big time. The content was too strong and was putting me out of consideration for most of the jobs I was applying for. People couldn't seem to grasp that although I had previously worked at a senior level, I didn't want to go back into the job market at that level. I needed to delete huge chunks from my CV and have a number of different CV's to suit different roles.
In the middle of doing all this editing and re-writing the phone rang. One of the agencies had an interview lined up for me for a 3 week temporary assignment - was I interested?
Too right I was interested. If nothing else, it would give me some interview practice. I hadn't been for a job interview in over 20 years. Having found out how much looking for a job had changed I was now quite sure that everything else about the process would have changed too.
Tomorrow I would find out!
Sunday 13 November 2011
Over 50 and looking for work.
I remember the morning I decided to start looking for work again and it was scary. There was a number of issues constantly running around my head that just wouldn't go away.
1. I hadn't worked for 3 years and I'd always felt it was easier to get a new job if you were already in a job - with so many more people in the job market and the recession having reduced the number of vacancies significantly, would this still hold true?
2. I had stopped working 3 years previously due to ill health, so there was a serious concern as to whether going back to work would trigger any of the old health problems. Basically, could I still hack it?
3. Having previously been the 'boss' would I now be able to work for someone else? How good was I going to be at taking orders from someone else? Now that was a real challenge to take on board.
4. And finally, if I found work, how far was I going to be travelling everyday to get there? Hubby had insisted on getting me a reasonable car when we got back from Spain so that I had something reliable for getting to and from work. And I do enjoy driving but it didn't mean I necessarily wanted to spend hours a day in rush hour commute.
But, with all this going around in my head I still sat down on day 1 of job hunting with a huge amount of confidence. I had updated my CV and was ready to hit the job hunting circuit.
It had been 1986 when I last looked for a new job and back then the local newspaper was the place to start. The internet had not become the force it has today and every Thursday was jobs day in the paper. There was also a specific 'jobs' paper that came out once a fortnight which collated the jobs from a number of areas and put them all in one place. This was my first task - to go and get the most recent edition of 'Jobs Today' and check what was in there.
It was coming towards the end of July 2010 and summer holidays were just about to start, a known quiet time for companies recruiting for permanent jobs but I was unprepared for just how little was available when I paid my money and took home a very flimsy newspaper as opposed the the heavier tomes I remembered from bygone days. I settled myself at my desk with a cup of coffee, a large black pen and started to work my way through the pages.
There was 1 suitable job vacancy on the paper and that was 40 miles away. I felt my spirits drop significantly as worry crept into the back of my brain.
But, this was only the first step - next was to get the laptop out and see what the internet had to offer.
1. I hadn't worked for 3 years and I'd always felt it was easier to get a new job if you were already in a job - with so many more people in the job market and the recession having reduced the number of vacancies significantly, would this still hold true?
2. I had stopped working 3 years previously due to ill health, so there was a serious concern as to whether going back to work would trigger any of the old health problems. Basically, could I still hack it?
3. Having previously been the 'boss' would I now be able to work for someone else? How good was I going to be at taking orders from someone else? Now that was a real challenge to take on board.
4. And finally, if I found work, how far was I going to be travelling everyday to get there? Hubby had insisted on getting me a reasonable car when we got back from Spain so that I had something reliable for getting to and from work. And I do enjoy driving but it didn't mean I necessarily wanted to spend hours a day in rush hour commute.
But, with all this going around in my head I still sat down on day 1 of job hunting with a huge amount of confidence. I had updated my CV and was ready to hit the job hunting circuit.
It had been 1986 when I last looked for a new job and back then the local newspaper was the place to start. The internet had not become the force it has today and every Thursday was jobs day in the paper. There was also a specific 'jobs' paper that came out once a fortnight which collated the jobs from a number of areas and put them all in one place. This was my first task - to go and get the most recent edition of 'Jobs Today' and check what was in there.
It was coming towards the end of July 2010 and summer holidays were just about to start, a known quiet time for companies recruiting for permanent jobs but I was unprepared for just how little was available when I paid my money and took home a very flimsy newspaper as opposed the the heavier tomes I remembered from bygone days. I settled myself at my desk with a cup of coffee, a large black pen and started to work my way through the pages.
There was 1 suitable job vacancy on the paper and that was 40 miles away. I felt my spirits drop significantly as worry crept into the back of my brain.
But, this was only the first step - next was to get the laptop out and see what the internet had to offer.
Saturday 12 November 2011
1 Year On
We've had a week of grey skies and drizzle, a common occurence following Bonfire Night here in the UK, and the temperatures have definitely dropped a few degrees. And so, as we head into another winter with a variety of predictions as to how severe the snow will be, how long it will be until the sun appears again, I thought I'd reflect a little .
We've now been back in the UK for almost 18 months. In many ways our lives in Spain seems even longer ago. That's probably because I really do not miss it. Yes, I have the odd moment where I find myself thinking back to sitting in a cafe in Terreros watching the world go by, chatting with my friends over coffee. It is still a pretty place to live but when we went back for a visit in January there was no longing to be back or a feeling of missing home.
Equally, I see photos of the house in the mountains and have no sense of wanting to be back there.
I am very settled back here, love seeing my family & friends again and really enjoy work.
I often find myself in conversation with people who have the dream of retiring somewhere sunny, somewhere by the sea, somewhere to escape to - away from all the things they don't like about the UK, and I realised that actually that never was my dream. Spain was an accident for us, not a lifelong plan. So maybe that was why I never settled there.
I have no regrets about our Spanish adventure, and at least we will not look back in 10 years time and wonder 'what if'.
There is no doubt I needed a break from work to allow my health to recover and to enable me to get a better understanding of what my body will allow me to do now that the arthritis is in so many joints, and it was definitely a bonus to have that break in Spain. To be able to experience a different lifestyle, culture, location etc was a good experience. To actually organise it, make it happen and manage to find our way around the complex issues involved in relocating to another country was interesting, challenging and frustrating all at the same time - but we did it, and without too many mishaps.
It was probably more scary thinking about moving back, predominantly because one of the main reasons for coming back was that I wanted to work again. I missed going to work, I was not ready to retire, but I'd been out of the job market for 3 years. I'd left a good job that I'd been in for over 20 years due to ill health. Now, here I was, over 50, not worked for 3 years and hoping to find a job in the worse job market in 20 years - my timing couldn't have been worse.
The other issues surrounding a move back were all hinged on whether or not I would be able to find a job. We could afford to live in Spain without working (although that may not still be the case with the way prices over there have risen and the continuing rate of the euro) but the cost of living here meant that we needed an regular income. Where we lived depended on where I could find a job so I think looking back, there was a bigger risk involved in moving back than there was in going to Spain.
It was a huge gamble but as they say, if you want something bad enough, you can make it happen.
More soon.
We've now been back in the UK for almost 18 months. In many ways our lives in Spain seems even longer ago. That's probably because I really do not miss it. Yes, I have the odd moment where I find myself thinking back to sitting in a cafe in Terreros watching the world go by, chatting with my friends over coffee. It is still a pretty place to live but when we went back for a visit in January there was no longing to be back or a feeling of missing home.
Equally, I see photos of the house in the mountains and have no sense of wanting to be back there.
I am very settled back here, love seeing my family & friends again and really enjoy work.
I often find myself in conversation with people who have the dream of retiring somewhere sunny, somewhere by the sea, somewhere to escape to - away from all the things they don't like about the UK, and I realised that actually that never was my dream. Spain was an accident for us, not a lifelong plan. So maybe that was why I never settled there.
I have no regrets about our Spanish adventure, and at least we will not look back in 10 years time and wonder 'what if'.
There is no doubt I needed a break from work to allow my health to recover and to enable me to get a better understanding of what my body will allow me to do now that the arthritis is in so many joints, and it was definitely a bonus to have that break in Spain. To be able to experience a different lifestyle, culture, location etc was a good experience. To actually organise it, make it happen and manage to find our way around the complex issues involved in relocating to another country was interesting, challenging and frustrating all at the same time - but we did it, and without too many mishaps.
It was probably more scary thinking about moving back, predominantly because one of the main reasons for coming back was that I wanted to work again. I missed going to work, I was not ready to retire, but I'd been out of the job market for 3 years. I'd left a good job that I'd been in for over 20 years due to ill health. Now, here I was, over 50, not worked for 3 years and hoping to find a job in the worse job market in 20 years - my timing couldn't have been worse.
The other issues surrounding a move back were all hinged on whether or not I would be able to find a job. We could afford to live in Spain without working (although that may not still be the case with the way prices over there have risen and the continuing rate of the euro) but the cost of living here meant that we needed an regular income. Where we lived depended on where I could find a job so I think looking back, there was a bigger risk involved in moving back than there was in going to Spain.
It was a huge gamble but as they say, if you want something bad enough, you can make it happen.
More soon.
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