I hate job hunting!!

It's taking over my life, hence my disappearance from the blogging world over the last couple of weeks or so, yet I still don't seem to be getting anywhere. It really does suck!! Part of my problem is that I really don't know what kind of job I'm looking for. All I know is that I need money and fast, as I've been out of work for two and a half months now. There hasn't really been any supply work at all since the schools went back in September, and even if I really enjoyed being a supply teacher (which I don't), I can't really afford to sit back and just wait for supply bookings to come in any more. So I've been applying for whatever I can find: temporary Christmas sales assistant posts and administration and customer service roles with quick start dates to name just two categories. But so far, no joy.

And as for the long term, well I really don't know. I'm not sure if teaching really is for me...my confidence and faith in my abilities have been shot by a combination of my inability to secure a long term post and some less than pleasurable supply experiences. As a result, I'm reluctant to apply for any teaching posts and am stuck not knowing where my heart really lies. My doubts about teaching are compounded by the fact that I disliked supply teaching a lot of the time; but then again, there were other days when I loved it and felt truly in control of things.

And then as for other posts...well, I have a degree, a postgraduate certificate and quite a substantial work history, and have been told that my CV is strong, but I'm not actually qualified to do much. I suppose I have as much chance of any graduate of getting a generic graduate job which doesn't need a specific degree, but most of those appear to either be recruitment consulting or sales. Both heavily money motivated and requiring lots of sales calls (including cold calling), these really aren't for me. I'd prefer to work in a slightly less pressured environment, where my success isn't measured in material terms, but rather in terms of the positive effect I've been able to have on others. Then I've also looked at graduate training schemes, and the majority of these seem to suffer from 1 or more of these 3 main problems: one, they have a September 2011 start date (so would only be OK if I could secure another job which could support me up until then), two, they're in sectors that don't appeal to me such as accountancy or consultancy and as graduate schemes last for an average of 2 years, it'd be a big commitment to something if I wasn't sure and finally, most of them aren't based in areas local to me, and whilst I appreciate the need to be flexible, the vast majority of my family and friends are based in the Manchester area, so I'd feel uneasy leaving the North West unless it was for my dream job. And that's assuming I'd even be accepted onto them; they're notoriously competitive and only account for a small proportion of the total number of graduate jobs available every year.

Ideally, I'd like to be in a post where I could put my background in education to good use: I'd love to have the opportunity to be a librarian or museum education officer, for example, and then I could combine my qualifications with my interest in books or history, but jobs in those sectors are even scarcer than teaching vacancies, and they often require additional qualifications.

So to sum up, at the moment, I'm well and truly confused and it's hard to shake the feeling that my career is going nowhere. But I'm trying to stay hopeful that something will crop up eventually...adopting that resilient attitude which I claim to possess on my CV!! And I'm going to try and be more organised; dedicating different times to different aspects of my job search and keeping detailed records of what I've applied for and the outcome, as well as researching alternative career options that I haven't really considered yet. It all sounds so good written down here, hopefully I'll feel the benefits in real life too!!

Now I don't know when I'll be posting again, hopefully it will be sooner rather than later but I won't be making any rash promises...I know myself better than that by now!! Suppose it all depends how organised I really can be!! And tell me, do you have any job hunting tips?? Did you know what you wanted to do with your life as a young graduate? And how did you find your dream (or current) job?

Till next time...