What’s changed in job hunting since the 90s

This is a bit of a list of things that have occurred to me over the past month or so as I indulged in job hunting. As a full-time worker who then became a part-time worker elsewhere instead last month (nice job and lovely people, but not long-term sustainable) I’m still job hunting for a full-time job.

No major order to any of this below, but it’s mostly about process logistics. Next week I’ll do one on other aspects.

If you don’t have regular internet access you’re pretty sunk

Just about everything process-wise from advertisement to submission to hearing back is online. Anything involving the sending or receiving of paper is rare, though it happens occasionally. Be prepared to spend an awful lot of quality time with your computer. 

Anyone who has to do everything elsewhere in libraries etc, or hasn’t the right level of computer skills, has my complete sympathy simply because they don’t have the same flexibility.  At least the old tradition of awaiting The Arrival Of The Post twice daily, the use of pen, stamps, and posting things is 90% removed these days. That part is good.

There is Exact Date Tyranny – The System Rules

A lot of the big online portals used by lots of similar organizations are so set as to require DD/MM/YYYY format for just about everything in life.  Without it you cannot move forward or progress to the next part of the application. 

You can be asked for this precision level for anything from the precise dates you started and ended every job you’ve ever had to the exact date you joined every professional body you are a member of. 

At the end you will get to declare that everything you’ve entered is accurate to the best of your knowledge.  Certain things you will know and have to hand, others can be found out by diligently asking the right people, but some things will inevitably end up at a best guess if you’ve had a long career and the records aren’t there and the organizations no longer exist…

You will have Usernames and Passwords running out both ears

Lots of online application systems means the registration process for each of them and a bulging system set up to remember them all and which ones goes with which website. Personally I like KeePass to keep track of usernames and passwords but there’s lots of options. Job Alerts do run rampage in your InBox though, an in-coming tide of which a few things will actually be useful (see below).

Job Alerts Cannot Easily Be Framed for Specificity

Many (not all by any means) recruitment websites and ones carrying job adverts enable you to set up email alerts. I have 8 zillion that ping into my InBox of an early morning.

If you are searching for things like information and library jobs beware, all of reality just about is going to be caught because all it requires is the word to appear anywhere in the advert (‘for more information contact’, ‘may be required to work in heritage, libraries, parks and other council properties’).  If you don’t use very generic words however you simply don’t see lots of jobs that are actually information roles but just don’t have that in the job title so wouldn't appear if you restricted the alert to job title.  Jobs in the information profession are called such completely variable things these days.

So whether you set up 8 zillion job alerts or just search manually is probably a matter of preference. Some things you have to search manually as you can’t set up alerts for the sites anyway.

Job Alerts Can However Give Entertainment

The sheer amount of totally unsuited jobs that can come up can be magnificent. I particularly liked Sous Chef.

Jurisdiction Matters

One of my favourite things about job alerts is the fact that lots of them are continentally challenged.  Lots of them won’t allow you to enter a more specific geographical location than ‘Scotland’ (erm – big country in feasible commuting and expense terms, trust me), some will allow more specific locations (e.g. West of Scotland).  However with many of them what you can get pinging into your InBox is a job in a city or town that is certainly in Scotland, only the continent it is in is America or Australia where there happens to be somewhere called the same thing.  So not all alerts manage to match up country and place.

Guidance Information

Normal is job advert, Job Specification, Person Specification, Application form / process.  Sometimes it’s all very clear, succinct, and lovely. A lot of the time it isn’t.  I recall wading through a 17 page job description (no, that is not a typo and I am not joking) to finally get to the bit near the end which said driving licence was essential.

My plea here would go put the essential and desirable things really near the top under an obvious heading, and don’t expect folk to be able to match a job description that is far longer than the application form. Make the guidance documentation  and form something that encourages applications, not discourages.

Applications that involve ten separate attachments, some of which require you to sign them physically, and some are PDF and some are Word, or are electronic but don’t give you an email address to return it all to, are destined to confuse potential candidates. It happens fairly regularly.

You have to prove your Eligibility to Work in the UK

There will be a bit of the application form that will enquire precisely what you your status is re eligibility to work in the UK. These days there are long delightful lists of documents you can be required to produce at interview, everything from passports onwards.

There is a Mini Industry in Providing Academic Transcripts and Replacement Certificates

Most job applications require complete breakdowns of what you studied, where, at what level, when awarded, what grade. Some are more stringent than others in the amount of information they ask for. But you can be asked to list all the main components you studied. This can cause problems when some of it is a very long time ago and you can’t quite remember all the required information or find the relevant bits of paper.

If you start trying to replace them from the various places you will quickly discover it is now an industry and a way the institution now makes money. It can also take time. So my advice would be keep all your certificates in one place and keep them together. 

The most baffling thing I have been asked so far is to list all the school qualifications I failed, not just the ones I passed, and at what grade. But it’s wise to have all your Certificates because you can be asked to produce them for interview etc.

It Can be Difficult to Tailor Applications

For some of the major portals most common fixed parts of an application (personal details, qualifications, job history, professional memberships, references, equal opportunities monitoring) are held in your account so each time you apply for a job a lot of information is already entered and the major creative part of it is doing the ‘why you should be considered for this specific job’ section.  But each time you change one of the fixed areas for a specific job it can cascade the change into everything else.

So if you decide you want to apply for things in different areas highlighting different parts of your experience, and that some qualifications are relevant for one area, but you’d rather drop them out of the other… you can’t always.  Nice as it really is not to have to endlessly enter the same information into the same system, I suspect that makes it difficult for anyone with portfolio lives where they’ve done different things.

Keeping Everything In One Place

I tend to keep everything related to each application in a Word folder by date due and post then change the title after submission to put it into the  date submitted section so what’s due in next is always at the top, and I add it all in as I see the jobs appear.  It also has all the other things I’m going to need like upteen versions of c.v.’s and lists of components of everything I’ve done re various qualifications. I also keep a masterlist of what I’ve applied for when.

It’s all very basic as systems go, but it suffices. I just prefer to do it this way so it’s all on the laptop and I'm not spending much time on it.

Interpreting Closing Dates

Not all job adverts have a closing date on them.  The majority do.  Within that some of them also specify a time – usually noon, 5pm, or 11.59pm. In that most submissions are electronic to electronic systems I tend to assume that if it just stipulates a date then anytime on that date will suffice. But it is an assumption.

Some Things Don’t Change  - Submission Acknowledgments

Now I last job-hunted in the mid 90s. An awful lot of things were posted away and nothing would ever be heard back. In the online application world you get asked for email, phone, mobile, address etc. Lots of contact mechanisms. But the rule hasn’t changed.  If you’re submitting through a jobs portal it’ll usually be configured to automatically send you a receipt so at least you know it got there.  If you’re submitting to a small and / or traditional organization it’s a lot more likely you email it in and get no acknowledgment of receipt.

How Long It Takes To Hear Back Is Like Soothsaying A Piece Of String

This applies to those organizations that do respond and tell you the result of the consideration of your application. Not all do by any means.  How long it takes with the super speedy ones can be a few days, but this is highly unusual, what is a lot more likely is edging towards two months if at all. This means you can still hear back from places that you’d mentally consigned to the application graveyard ages ago. There is no logical way of thinking ‘well I submitted around x date, therefore…’.  Each organization is different.

A Reject Has Its Up Sides

Compared to having no idea what happened or if it’s dead or alive as an application at least with a reject you get certainty. Reject = at least you know, move on.

Format issues can be a terror

Instinct might seem to say you should spend more time on the content than the formatting of the application.  However it is certainly true that sometimes the application form will be so badly formatted that the insertion of any word in many sections is going to cause absolute chaos to the legibility (and thus possibly reception) of the overall application.

I have been known to spend longer trying to sort the formatting than writing the information.  What this proved to me overall is that I am not a professional secretary (not that I thought I was!!). Sometimes you end up submitting a dog’s breakfast in look simply because you’re out of time deadline-wise and you can’t get it to do it properly.

In Transit (grins)

This blog has been closer to an advert for The Waste Land than content this year.

So I shall suffice to say there’s been plenty happening, but it hasn’t felt appropriate for open web discourse, plus there’s not really been time for blogging anyway.

My firm having gone into administration and ceased trading last month, I’ve been busy hastily changing job, and filling in half a million application forms.

So –  lots of things currently in transit, and I’ll gradually get back to whatever the new normal becomes blog-wise.

Do have a wee bit of a backlog of things to blog about built up though, so I really should make a start before it gets bigger!

Considering our Ps and Qs

The Price of Incivility

There is a thoughtful article entitled ‘The Price of Incivility’ in the Jan / Feb 2013 issue of Harvard Business Review I’ve just been reading. It occurs to me I don’t think I’ve ever read a serious article on it as a subject that looks at it in terms of business cost as well as the more obvious individual possible consequences.

What I also like is the article doesn’t just talk about the problems that arise from this, but it talks about potential  ways of addressing as well, both at personal and organizational level. Plus it considers how different circumstances can impact, such as being abroad for work as opposed to at your usual desk.

Considering our Ps and Qs

As a subject it’s often seen as fairly marginal, just one of those mildly unfortunate things that happens from time to time (whether realised, noticed, observed, or not). Everyone feels frayed sometimes and we all have slightly different ways of looking at the world and interacting with it.

 Added to this working environments in particular have become a lot more open plan in the last ten years. Individuals as often lone inhabitants of offices are much rarer than they once were, and we communicate in far more methods simultaneously than ever before.

All that being so, it’s a good article to muse upon and actively consider, how we perceive others, and how we are perceived in turn, and whether we can improve it.

Endlessly Debating the Future of the Information Profession/al

The Future is a very old topic

Sometimes it seems like there’s a closed loop.  It feels like (and probably is) fifteen years I’ve been surveying meetings, events, and electronic discourses of all kinds framed in terms of (infer my groan) ‘the future of the information professional’.

It’s one of those red flag subjects on a conference that makes me want to take the programme nowhere near anyone capable of authorising attendance in case they start wondering what on earth we’re doing. Because often you can almost see the invisible words ‘and do we have one’ as the subtitle. If we don’t believe in ourselves why should anyone from any other sphere?

Sometimes things have been debated so often, so endlessly, so without any obvious form of one-answer-strikes-all-down answer that the mere phrase can drain positivity out of most people.

'The End is Nigh' is predicted fairly regularly

The end was going to be ‘the paperless office’ (no laughing at the back), then it was going to be the prevalence of end-user searching of sophisticated electronic products themselves without mediation required (debate continues, but it’s created lots of work in other ways to support end-user ability to do so and the products themselves)… All of that before we even get into the economic climate of recent years or more recent debates on what that means for us as a profession.

Change and influence

When it comes down to it what we all do is evolve as we ourselves and our environments change to ensure that our services are still tailored to meet user need (whoever our user communities may be).

Often this happens fairly seamlessly in tiny changes that maybe aren’t all that noticeable, sometimes in more obvious major transitions and changes.  Mostly we choose the changes, sometimes other circumstances externally choose them for us.

The future is what we create from conditions that are often already (not always, I know) existing, it’s, at best, our chosen purposeful response to them.

True - we don’t individually have control over lots of factors that may impact, but we can influence and / or control some.

Hardy perennials

Debating ‘The Future of the Information Professional’ doesn’t help though.  It’s such a non-specific vague subject how would we even know if someone had the one-line answer. And would it be an answer that applied to everyone equally in any type of information job? Probably not.

I don’t garden. But if it was a flower, as a subject, it would be a very hardy perennial. The question has been asked on a semi-permanent basis from way back before I came into the profession.  I know, I've read bits of it in passing. Very often in terms of gloom. I'm not saying it's not important, or that it's not an interesting conversation (or can be), or that I haven't gone to lots of things on the subject in my time myself... 

It's just that sometimes it appears to be one endless looping discussion going nowhere. It's one topic, there are many others to choose from too that are easier to define and thus easier to find paths for.

So perhaps we should just get on with things instead.

Operation Clearout

I’ve been having a major library declutter over the last month or so. Call it a Majestic Work In Progress (it feels like it at times!).

I’ve thrown out lots and lots of duplicate copies of things that were much used when new and don’t require multiple copies any more.  Lots of journal issues of titles whose importance declines radically with age or can be accessed quicker electronically for less storage space. Lots of things that are too dated to remain but without going shelf by space, and without going item by item round the shelves, would probably have escaped attention for a while yet. I have scythed through what I have in off-site storage too while I was at it…

I have manhandled stock around to get things on shelves in the right places that wouldn’t fit before, or so that I can get things out of storage (hurrah!) onto that shelf I always envisaged for them in the correct place in the classification sequence. I have made space for 2013 to sit for all the continuing publications.

In this process - which involves some weeks of determined bravery, valour, many bin bags, and a lot of sitting down afterwards – in the shelves I’ve found baffling amounts of sweet wrappers (not mine, honest!) lurking behind books, all kinds of half-written abandoned notes (also not mine). I’ve removed scores of sticky tabs with scribbles on them from books by people who may, or may not, still be here.

This week in burrowing into the deep recesses of my drawer unit on Operation Clearout I have discovered everything from notepads from deceased organisations, to labels from ten years ago, to miscellaneous business cards from people long gone. I’ve found reference stickers yellowing around the edges, ink pads and stamps for previous incarnations of the firm….I’ve unearthed abandoned umbrellas…

Unless items have a current use reason to stay, need archived because it could need revisiting yet for a 'point in time' need re the law, or is retained because it has some other particular purpose (e.g. a corporate archive) - throw it out.

Preferably often so it feels less like a military exercise requiring a cardboard medal of distinction that has to be done in December with Xmas all around in order to get at it for long enough to do it.

Worth it though (grins).

Where are all the corporate archives?

 Using a company's history

There’s an article reprinted in the December 2012 issue of Harvard Business Review on benefits of using a company’s own history as a leadership tool which is an interesting read.

It argues that a company’s history has a real value in informing the present and future. These include helping to underpin group values and beliefs, in knowing the past in order to better formulate workable plans for the future, as a way of phrasing change has been successfully achieved before, etc etc. Things well beyond key dates and celebrations.

It gives seven tips for getting history on your side which are about maintaining corporate archives as a function to mine for it, and about what can be expected to resonate most within and outwith a company both to be valued from them.

There’s some classic KM and / or risk management, some are things associated with archives or information services if they’re also keeper of said, some are more usual as marketing function.

Corporate Archives

Musing on this all it occurs to me that a lot of corporate archives are very much historical in use– never used for anything current or real-time, more for selecting from at or near anniversary’s or when particularly long-standing members of staff retire when the hunt goes up for the ‘year one’ photo.

Also, the ‘archives’ of lots of companies are more implicit than explicit, you could say in classic KM-speak they’re more within the heads of some of the staff than they are recorded in written or photographic form. Even if they are it tends to be patchy.

Corporate archives is not something that cries out ‘Resource Me Urgently / Spend Time Here’.  Often it’s the dusty boxes or the files in the corner. Often they’re patchy and quite what collection management policy existed to construct the collection that does exist would be anyone’s guess, there is often no ‘formal’ designated keeper or policy re, no central place for. Because their relevance is under-valued for present business because there is often no one in the upper echelons seeking to link past with present and future using them as an aid.

Linking business future to archival knowledge

Which brings me to another couple of sentences from the article.

“For a leader then, the challenge is to find in an organization’s history its usable past.”

Now that’s intriguing for all kinds of reasons. Sifting, selecting with care, sieving through for the bit that speaks to now / the agenda under consideration. What is there in the past that can articulate the vision for this specific future being undertaken. How does it help make the argument.

“The reality is that we are all historians when it comes to making decisions.”

As to that line… well it’s true to an extent, we all base decisions on prior learning, knowledge, experience. Most of us build up some form of overall surrounding context that grounds us and helps us. But perhaps the short-term is appreciated more than the longer-term in timescales of what is deemed relevant, which is often about how current the information is perceived to be.

Lost and inaccessible knowledge

Corporate archives tend to get very short shift, even if they do in fact exist. Try getting ahold of any document in a hurry that is published by an organisation that no longer exists and it soon becomes very apparent how few merged institutions keep anything deemed superseded, old, out-of-date, and how inaccessible it can be and dependent on someone’s memory who was there before. That’s even more so when it comes to internal information. What happens to the archives of all those places that simply go out of existence?  Are they given to some other archive or institution? A few are. Is there anywhere that would be relevant? Not always. Very often for lots of practical factors they reside in the bin instead as people are in a hurry, don’t have room, time, don’t realise that superseded doesn’t mean irrelevant or useless. Even if donated, can that place then afford to keep them, to make them accessible and promote them? If kept in-house will anyone not within the company ever know they exist? There are endless issues with corporate archives.

Finding a present tense value in Corporate Archives

So it’s nice to read something arguing for the use and relevance of corporate history in general beyond the historical context.  Properly maintained corporate archives have a place within that I would argue.  And that would only realistically happen if the corporate archives were seen to have an internal present and future business use beyond internal event celebration season and any wider research and access agenda.

If not now, then when

The Amusements of Seasonal Advice

The last two weeks of any December are full of Seasonal Advice.

Start of December is more about how to sum up and analyse the year thus gone for clues as to where it went right / wrong / a bit wobbly for the odd 8 (days /  months / apply as suits).

Second Christmas Day is over it’ll go into the how to formulate New Year’s Resolutions that are do’able, keep’able, and won’t (probably) half kill you in the attempt or send you into weary despair as they unravel about February while seeming to dance a merry jig of ‘told you so’.

Safe to say December is full of advice on everything from how to survive the season to how to live a better life for ever and ever afterwards. It’s kind of impossible not to read at least a bit of it as it appears just within in the corner of your eye.

Applying Artifical Constructs to Reality

Of course a reasonable person might well point out that the difference between 31 December one year and 1 January the next is completely artificial, modern, made-up, a social norm we all collude in applying to ourselves to keep us all in synch with one another.

Plus new habits formed on the darkest days of the year in the middle of winter are utterly ‘bound’ to be troublefree and easy (ahem – not).

If not now, then when

However, that said, one thing I caught somewhere out oh the corner of my eye (could be a newspaper, or online variant, or a blog, no idea) basically just said -

“if not now, when would you do it”

Which I liked enough to put it on here. Because I’ve always thought that’s true.

The Horrors of 'Sometime becomes Never'

Because ‘sometime, never’ is very easy to fall into otherwise, and it lasts a very long time.

It’s quicker to do things than it is to not do them. Not doing is endless, runs mercilessly into the dim and distant future beshadowing it, becomes hugely wearisome. 

It's kinder to ourselves to just say 'am I seriously intending doing this or not, if I am what am I doing about it'.

Doing at least is defined, has progression, will reach an end-point, can  move on from.