Re: another beautiful bit of prose
Perfectly capturing the joy/nightmare that is third party recruitment and HR services
My eldest is currently in this horrid cycle, trying to secure his first paid employment post education.
Thing is that he stopped at A-levels, so the few jobs he'd be interested in which require (probably for no good reason) degree level education won't even look at him, and most other jobs seem to be aimed at people with a bare minimum of 3 or 5 GCSEs and see his good A-level & BTec results as being "over qualified".
In my 30-ish year employment history so far I have had precisely two jobs where I had no previous history with the employer. The first was a 13-month placement during my degree, so possibly doesn't count, and the second was the first of two teaching jobs, neither of which I was particularly good at. I know loads of other people who will admit to a similar employment history - if you know someone in the business you are in with a much better chance.
Hasn't (yet) helped my son unfortunately - we know three people in the same or similar line of work to the one he wants to get in to (railways basically), but although they all say he's just the sort of person they would be looking for, the jobs simply aren't there at the moment, and apprenticeships have almost completely disappeared in the last year.
I've had the exact opposite of my son's problem too. I once went for a summer job, data entry for a local employer digitising their paper records. At first they wouldn't consider me as "overqualified" (with my degree in electronics) but somehow I managed to persuade them to let me take a typing test, which I passed with - I was told - one of the best scores seen that week for both speed and accuracy. They still wouldn't take me though as I didn't have an actual qualification in typing.
M.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
