Back From Travel and Applying for Jobs - The Returned Journey (3)

My name is Mark, I live in the UK and returned from travelling a few weeks ago. I’ve been posting about my experience of coming back and all of those things you inevitably have to do…

Reconnecting with friends and family… Getting a job… Finding somewhere to live… The practicalities of reintegrating, and the personal journey that coincides with this.

Today, I’ll share my experiences of applying for jobs with you, and speak to how different sides of me manage and react to that situation.

Avoiding a Jekyll and Hyde Scenario

To do this, I’ll introduce you to two sides of me that are very intertwined, my personal life side and my work life side. I find it really interesting that the version of ourselves we bring into work is often very clipped and measured; appropriate to the scenario. How many times have we seen a different side to Jessica at the Christmas party, where she’s taken up openly swearing and shouting at senior colleagues, before wandering off to neck Dan from accounts? The key is to get the best of both worlds - to reconcile your situation appropriate woody work side with your screaming-to-get-out "this is me, this is my scatty personality" side.

Oftentimes, the colleagues and leaders I’ve most admired are excellent at bringing out all of their best personal qualities at work, and are extremely genuine. They’re not so different from behind their desk or behind a pint, though from here you might be lucky enough to hear a story not told to everyone in the office. I missed work a lot during my travels, in the sense that picking avocados and cherries didn’t really do much in the way of intellectual stimulation. But part of that reflection did conjure up memories of feeling like the grungey punk singer in a band trapped in a suit, only go out after work with friends in bands and in the music industry being…. wait for it…. the guy in the suit… Still, my work focused side is not a bad thing, he’s the guy who pays the bills and enables me to do a lot of the cool stuff in my life that I want to do, and this post is focused on a much needed activity of his doing.

Keeping Afloat in a Sea of Applications

For the most part, even in retail, the days of printing out a CV, walking in and dropping it in the hands of a less than enthusiastic current employee, who’s manager is currently away, are gone! Hurrah! But what this means is that we automatically lose a lot of that personal touch when making an application, and are funnelled into a vast flow of online submissions. It can be very difficult to stand out in this world - I did internships in recruitment and if a quick scan of the headings and 10 second CTRL+F key word search did not generate much, CV number 129 would be closed and forgotten. So really in this world, the key is not only a good resume, it’s volume.

APPLY! APPLY! APPLY!

But how to keep track of all this? And keeping track is important - nobody wants to answer no or lie when they finally receive a call from Claire saying “Hi Mark, do you remember applying to such and such for a role doing such and such?” And so, I created a simple tracker:

Role - The title of the position
Company - The organisation that’s hiring, or the recruitment firm until the client is revealed
Location - Where it’s at (I got two turntables and a microphone)
Job Description - A link to the full job specification, so it can quickly be pulled up in the event of a call
Date Applied - A grim reminder of how long this is taking...
Closing Date - Helps if available to disregard non-responsive applications
Salary - Often not shared, so hard to compare….
Status - Rejected, Open Email Response, Open with interview…. etc
Cover Letter - An inserted document of the specific cover letter I used for the application
CV - An inserted document of the specific tailored CV I used for the application
Comments - Any other useful information
Interview Information - YAY!

As well as a date for when the status of each application was last updated, and a RAG colour coding to indicate whether the application is ongoing (White), active (Green), looking unlikely (Orange), or closed (Red, :( ).

The Horizon is Starting to Appear

Today, I had two first round telephone interviews, so I updated those roles, as well as a few of the classic automated email rejections, so I updated those as well. Any application that I hadn’t heard from in over 10 days on a job board (e.g. Reed or Totaljobs) I turned to Orange, and I checked the online application management portals for others where I applied directly and had yet to receive a response from them.

So there’s been progress, and on a personal level I’m feeling pretty good about this. It is easy to have your confidence knocked when you’re applying for jobs and receiving nothing back or rejections, but it’s important to not let yourself take this personally. It’s business. And the issue of directing the right talent to the right role is a very difficult one to solve. So if someone couldn’t glean your experience or suitability from an application of hundreds they’ve seen, or perhaps you weren’t even right, so be it. Keeping your head up, applying in a high volume for roles that look right, as well as giving them the time and attention they deserve and tracking them well enough to have a meaningful conversation when the time comes is critical. The rewards will come.

Most of us spend the majority of our waking lives at work, so applying for jobs meaningfully and keeping on top of this increases your odds of finding something that you’ll enjoy and can be successful in.

The process is mundane, quite inhuman in its early stages, and leaves a lot of room for disappointment, but it is what it is. It’s taken me a few weeks to get my first telephone interviews under my belt and now that I have I feel fantastic and glad that I persevered. Sure, I may not be be swimming in the ice cold exuberance of a crystal clear pool at the bottom of a waterfall, after having completed a sweaty yet lush hike, but I am on the path to the next step in my career and feeling very grateful and optimistic.

Note: I have tagged this as introduceyourself as I haven’t yet shown “Business Mark” in my posts thus far.