Job Hunting & Inertia

[Fletch456]

Morning All,

I am a single bloke in my forties, who lives on his own and the last few years I've been contracting. Not the highly paid variety but it's paid the bills and a holiday and I've found a contract straight away each time. However am having too many days where I don't do much and by much I mean little at all, especially job hunting wise. I am trying to resolve it by having a constructive morning which makes a real difference and focussing on outcome eg send x number of CVs or job applications rather than spend x hours job hunting which is less appealing.

Have you experienced such inertia in the same or similar situation? If so how did you resolve it?

Look forward to any useful contribution,

Cheers,

Craig

 

[Tin Pot]

In my line of work this is a common theme, I try to make sure I've built up reserves to cover the quite periods and have a hobby to distract me from the fear of never finding another contract.

What line of business are you in?

 

[Nibor]

I treat job hunting as a job. Get up in the morning bright and early have breakfast and go on the job centre website and appl for any job that I feel I have a punt at doesn't take long as most accept an email with attached cv ( make sure your email address isn't too stupid.)
Call all the local agencies and register with them make sure they know enough about you to be able to place you try to develop a relationship with the person you register with so you can call and lightly pester them. If you develop a good relationship woith one and do weel in the placements you won't be short of work.

Just a few sugge
Keep your chin up and you will soon be working.

 

[Spinney]

Morning All,

I am a single bloke in my forties, who lives on his own and the last few years I've been contracting. Not the highly paid variety but it's paid the bills and a holiday and I've found a contract straight away each time. However am having too many days where I don't do much and by much I mean little at all, especially job hunting wise. I am trying to resolve it by having a constructive morning which makes a real difference and focussing on outcome eg send x number of CVs or job applications rather than spend x hours job hunting which is less appealing.

Have you experienced such inertia in the same or similar situation? If so how did you resolve it?

Look forward to any useful contribution,

Cheers,

Craig

Self-employed freelancer - my inertia is more along the lines of doing the gardening (or any number of other things) until deadlines become a bit more urgent! Not quite the same thing as yours.
Perhaps a combination of both? Minimum X applications, or X hours, whichever is shorter (there must be some days when there aren't X jobs to apply for?)

Or set your sights on an expensive holiday/expensive bike/expensive XXX and remind yourself that getting a good job for your next contract will help to pay for it?

 

[Globalti]

Yes, I've been battling inertia all my life and my son aged 17 has the same problem. As advised above the best thing is to treat finding a job as a full time job, which it actually is. Be serious and professional about it and try to exercise as much lateral thought as possible because they say that at executive level 70% of jobs are created to fit the individual who walks through the door. I have certainly written to companies and been offered an interview because, in the words of one MD: "We don't currently have anything but come along anyway, as who knows what can come up in discussion?"

The biggest hurdle for me when I was younger was in overcoming my fear of rejection and shyness. Happily, as they age, most people grow in self-confidence until they reach their 50s and 60s when they are usually on top of their game.

From a financial and especially pension perspective, nothing beats a few good years of regular salaried employment for building up that pension pot.

 

[Hill Wimp]

I treat job hunting as a job. Get up in the morning bright and early have breakfast and go on the job centre website and appl for any job that I feel I have a punt at doesn't take long as most accept an email with attached cv ( make sure your email address isn't too stupid.)
Call all the local agencies and register with them make sure they know enough about you to be able to place you try to develop a relationship with the person you register with so you can call and lightly pester them. If you develop a good relationship woith one and do weel in the placements you won't be short of work.

Just a few sugge
Keep your chin up and you will soon be working.

A friend of mine is an IT contractor and does just that. Treats the next job hunt as a job a few weeks/months prior to his current contract ending. Until he actually said job hunting is a job i had never thought of it like that.

 

[Fletch456]

Thank you all for the replies; considering I only posted that 90mins ago there's a lot more than I expected.

I decided to take a break when last contract recently finished but been hard to get myself going from that standing start somehow. My last two contracts came my way just when I wanted and one was offered the same day as another so I had a choice! I am an Excel spreadsheet expert, Tin Pot. My last perm job ended in 2010 and started temping after an illness to find work quickly and it paid well enough. So I've now sort of fallen into contracting. I've done a variety of jobs in my career to date without enough of a theme to tell recruitment agencies I am a <job title>; the 2 biggest consistencies are my IT skills (Excel, spreadsheets, data analysis) and analytical work. So a couple of years ago I rang a few finance agencies knowing clients may not need an accountant but someone with a bit of finance knowledge and lots of Excel skills. That's how I found the recent work that's been a bit more brain demanding.

You're right about making job hunting a job and getting up bright and early. I've had too many late nights and you wouldn't do that if you if you were walking would you. I don't recover from those like I did ten or twenty years ago. More you put in you get out and all that so need to look at it with a more positive approach. Lengthen my list of agencies, tidy the spare room so it feels more like an office, easier to work in and less distracting.

 

[jarlrmai]

Whilst this is a valuable and interesting discussions, does it fit in "General Cycling Discussion?"

 

[shouldbeinbed]

Whilst this is a valuable and interesting discussions, does it fit in "General Cycling Discussion?"

some people have bikes in their avatar pictures

 

[boydj]

Make sure you have a good quality cv that you can adapt as appropriate for each application.

One of the best pieces of advice I had was to draw up a list of what they called 'Problems, Actions and Results'. These are different issues you have dealt with successfully. Having a list of these 'PAR's memorised gives you some confidence in answering these 'How would you deal with.......' questions at interview which often come along after the technical stuff.