Apologies for a certain quietness post-relaunch. Its been a busy and a sickly (bastard freshers) fortnight or so. I’ve got plenty of post ideas and comments to update over the next few days. In the mean time I’m going to start a less serious series of posts.
As any casual reader would be aware, I’ve spent the last few months doing some increasingly dejected job-seeking. Being a cynical straight-talker I naturally find the high levels of bullshit in job adverts quite distasteful. Naturally I also find the amount of BS one has to send back by way of application equally odious. Certainly nobody leaves this interaction with their integrity intact. For all that politicians are labeled “liars” by other members of the human race (also journalists), they are after all the only ones to face public job applications.
So this post series is generally about the daft hoops I have to jump through in chasing a place on the wage-slavery treadmill. It won’t all be BS, most likely just the silly or cliched stuff that frustrates me into mashing the keyboard until the words “I just want a flipping job” appear in blood on the screen. Or something like that.
First up; a terrible old cliche of a question I’ve seen half a dozen times and even had in a phone interview:
Give an example of a situation where you used your technical skills to solve a problem
I hate this one. It basically calls for either a slathering of BS or a steaming mount of immodesty. Those are your choices, it’s (a) I built a mini from scratch using spare parts during the summer holidays (when you didn’t), or (b) I, like, ran a jar under the warm tap to make the lid easier to unscrew. Yah, like, it was such a challenge and totally changed me…”. That’s it, lie or big up something utterly trivial. No points for honesty.
Now here’s one in an ongoing app for a Met Office graduate programme
Demonstrate your interest in the weather and how it impacts on you
Heaven only knows how to answer this – though I suppose I should have to manage it by the end of the evening. I’m very much tempted to simply answer “I’m British – see any cliched stand-up routine on this trait”. I actually like the look of this job and I approve of the employer – factors which always make me resist smearing BS in the application. Rather unfortunate that.
Finally, for a job I really want (when the online test stops freezing me out) -HMRC’s graduate programme. At the time the first job app to require my National Insurance number from the start. You wouldn’t expect them to have to ask really?
