Moving on from the "changing careers" thread what's the best way to actually find a job in London these days?*
*Answer with specific reference to people who aren't really sure what kind of job they are looking for. Possibly people with a degree and MA in useless media subjects and 3 years of admin/secretarial experience who will consider absolutely anything that has a similar level of pay (roughly 20 grand a year) and isn't an admin/secretarial job.
work for 3-4 years doing whatever
you can get your hands on, before thinking about a career, either within the organisation you have weaseled into, or in another where the experience gained can be of benefit
Thats all too vague
tell me.....what can you do, what are you good at? what would you be good at? (that not everyone is)
I'm very creative.
I mean obviously the main thing I want to do in the long-term in my music, writing and script-writng stuff. And my strength in that is probably that I come up with ideas that most people wouldn't come up with.
I've quite practical and good at solving problems. I can be very good with people within the right environment (i.e. one where I don't hate my job and thus feel miserable as is the case at the moment).
I tend to have a lot of energy and enthusiasm and seem to be pretty good getting other people to feel enthusiastic about an idea too.
My weaknesses, on the other hand, are that I tend to generate idea after idea and can never get all of them done (although I do get a fair few done) and have probably got a good eye for the big picture but less so for the finer details...
Oh yeah, and my other weakness
is that I absolutely can't suffer fools.
You have no chance
to find a job then :!
well focus on this
rather than what your qualification might be. Obviously it is still too vague, but focusing on what you are good at might let you crystalise more what direction is best (it might not too) but dont expect it to be clear at first, continue to focus and over a while it might clarify.
What are your interests? literally that should be all career guidance is about what your good at, and see if you could apply it in an area of specific personal interest, you're always going to be quite enthusiastic about your own interests which will make you naturally better at it.
Dont be frightened of going for jobs that are really niche interests of yours if what they ask is for more qualifications or experiance, because genuine interest should count for a lot as well
I'm not having too much success finding owt
I hate job hunting
Me too.
I've tried to avoid it for months but now I'm at the point where I just dont' want to be here and have to do something else for the sake of my sanity...
I had a interview at the Graduate Recruitment Company yesterday
that seemed to go really well and they are going to consider me for stuff they have available. Hopefully they will have something that I actually want to do.
How long after you fnish your degree can you use the Graduate Recruitment Company?
Are they precisely what the name implies?
They are indeed
and from the evidence I saw yesterday, it doesn't matter how long it has been, just so long as you actually graduated at some point!
I'm going to keep looking for stuff myself too though
Have you already started looking?
Yup
My degree is worthless
Yikes. I need to start
Public sector professionals FTW!
Would you consider going back to university for a couple of years to train as a social worker? In spite of what you may hear it is possible to do this part time whilst working (and an admin position in a social services department in inner London would pay around 21K pro rata).
Social workers earn great money these days, particularly in London.
How about the probation service?
You'd get around 21/22K whilst you trained (2 years) then your pay would rocket to the best part of 30K after the two years once London weighting had been
factored in.
I'm getting out of the private sector, I work for Barclays and it's all women in tears and redundancies right now.
Probabtion service does't sound the worst idea in the world...
work for local or national government I say
and as a freelancer - you get buckets of money - its the only thing that helps me get over the fact all my musical projects (thus far, there's one pending) have failed miserably
A freelancer doing what though?
I 'do' communications and branding blah de blah
I did 2 years of admin gimp work but decided enough was enough - I started as a Comms assistant at dept of Education and barring a few blips I've gone on to better jobs but I've had to be a bit ruithless (i.e lying about some of the gimp work I did) to get what I wanted.
become a teacher!
Yes, those ads were indeed annoying but it can be a great (and very secure) career if you want to get away from the counting paperclips desk job.
what age group do you teach?
in your picture
you look extremely like my old english language teacher who was actualy very cool. this one time he caught me and a friend trading velvet underground/sonic youth cds before one of his lessons, and he sung quite alot of venus in furs to us. Which was the single greatest moment of college so far.
i hope youre this cool to your students.
also, you arent him are you?
Read the papers' job sections
The Media Guardian on a Monday is good, that's where I got this job from.
become a town planner!
And enver ever think youre owned a living because you have a degree in Sociology and an MA in music
that's what I thought for about 4 years aftyer graduating.
'owed' a living
Jesus
My advice is to take lots of different temping jobs
in different companies/organisations.
I watched several friends do this and find themselves in areas that they'd never have considered working in before.
Inspired, I did it myself for a while, and had lots of interesting short-term experiences before finding an environment I was attracted to where I got myself a full-time position. Then from within the same organisation I applied for and landed a job that I would never (in a millyun years) have thought a possibility for me.