I have seen it all. I have been hit on, lied to, underestimated, overestimated, tested, introduced, recommended, turned down and offered. My name is Helena and I am a chronic job seeker.
I am twenty seven, I have had over thirty full time jobs and I have a university degree. The reason I mentioned my degree is to make it clear that I am not the kind of employee who has been working since I was sixteen, no, my work experience is my age minus my education years and they started when I was six. So, nine years elementary school, three years of high school and four years at university. That adds up to sixteen years. Plus my early childhood of six years. Sixteen plus six is twenty two and again, I am twenty seven. This means I have been active in my working life for five years. Five years divided by thirty jobs is an average of two jobs per month! As you all know, having that many jobs on your CV isn’t all that attractive to employers so I also lie. Together with many many more job seekers who are just like me. It’s not that we like job hopping, believe me starting a new job is very stressful and trying to be good at what ever you get yourself into is not easy! Especially if you are like me, that is, someone who can’t seem to find her niche and tries many different kinds of work. I have been a receptionist, a teacher, a waitress I have sold things like perfumes, ads, photo shoots and editorials. I have also done the PA stuff, worked in a lab, worked in media. I have done conferencing, catering, translations, and recruitment in a few different forms from account management and new business to head hunter and researcher. In all of my thirty jobs, I have only been fired once. The other twenty nine jobs have seen my notice letter much sooner than they expected.
I don’t lie on my CV to be mean, I always honestly and truly believe that I am totally capable of doing what ever is on the job description and I tend to be very excited and serious about the jobs that I get. But no matter how amazing and fun they seem they all disappoint me! And that’s not because I am lying. Everybody lies! The recruitment agencies lie. The employers lie. The employees they send in to talk to you lie. The whole situation turns into a big seemingly unavoidable lie. And it upsets me. I can’t keep having short term jobs on my conscience, it’s not good for my CV and it is certainly not good for my skills or my self esteem. The stress involved in job hunting is a lot bigger than people seem to understand. Having an interview with three men in their thirties asking why a young pretty (doesn’t matter if you’re pretty or not here, it’s a figure of speech) girl wants to work in IT, financials or recruitment instead of media is a question that belittles the interviewee to the point of vaporisation. It knocks your fragile self esteem down right to the bottom and you are back to square one on your self motivation program that you worked so hard persuading yourself helps you.
Recruiters seem to be interested in nothing more than their commission. I know that’s a lie too because the recruiters I worked with at a few of the agencies I have worked at they wanted their candidates to be happy in their jobs. Well, at least the good and experienced recruiters seemed to work that way since in many places commission paid for a candidate who leaves the job within 3 months gets withdrawn.
In all fairness, the fault is of course not entirely with the agents, the problem is difficult to solve because there are so many people like me out there who don’t know with what means and in what way to pursue their career. Every time we try a different path and every time it lets us down we believe we come closer and closer to learning who we are and how to take the next step in the direction of our future but in fact we go further and further away from our goal. For how are we supposed to know where our future lies if we feel that we have tried everything but, if not failed in a concrete manner i.e. got fired or messed things up, we have failed in finding something to do for a living that is satisfying intellectually, financially and creatively? And when we finally manage to fine a job and a work place we like, we are so scared of failure and not living up to expectations that we constantly ask for help in our insecurity and never really become independent enough to be the brilliant employee we would like to and by all means could well be. So we quit again rather than waiting for the disappointed employer to fire us. Even if they never intended to do so.
This is of course a worst case scenario and quite extreme. Not even I myself have these kinds of problems – yet. For some reason though, I feel that it might not be that far away. Hopefully there will be something I can do and feel confident about doing before I have to retire without ever have worked long enough in one place to be entitled to a pension scheme. Who cares though, I will probably die younger than most people since I never get to have a relaxing holiday as every single holiday has to be spent in a stressful manner looking for a new job.
