Why am I job hunting?
I was made redundant at the end of June. I was unsure of where best to look for a job i.e. which websites. I had already set up some accounts years ago with some sites, I dusted them down and started using them. Knowing there were more out there but not knowing which were the best, I contacted JobCentre Plus and they gave me a list of recommendations. I haven't signed up to all of them and am not going to, as I'm overwhelmed with the ones I currently use but too scared to delete some in case I miss a suitable job ad. This post is about my experience with the ones I use. I figured that they couldn't be too difficult to use, which is true but I find some aspects of them annoying.
Alerts
When setting up alerts, I asked for:
- part time or remote work
- within 5 - 10 miles of where I live (in Hartlepool)
The e-mails I get from one site (I'm not naming names as I have no intention of shaming and others may find that their set up works well) are telling me about on site jobs in places like Dubai - so is their definition of remote to do with location rather than working from home?
Another site insists on telling me about jobs nowhere near where I specified, it's offering Newcastle, Scarborough, Lancashire. Why? If they were remote jobs and that is their base fair enough but they're on site jobs. At first I thought I must've done the alert incorrectly. I went on the site and checked and no I hadn't done it wrong, the alert says 5 miles of where I live, so why am I sent on site jobs that are 50+ miles away?
After a few weeks, I decided that I didn't want to work remotely after all. I went to edit the alerts and there is one site where I would need to delete the alert before I can take off the remote working. I don't know why, as there is an option to edit, it seems though this is more about adding more terms rather than taking some away.
Another site (and this maybe the hiring company's fault) sometimes don't give you the name of the town/city where it is based e.g. it will name a school but not where it is located. Are the hiring companies so full of themselves that they expect the whole of the country to know where they are? Additionally, there are likely to be other towns/cities with schools with the same name.
And there is one site that e-mails 1 job at a time instead of a round up of jobs meeting your criteria. As there are multiple e-mails a day, I feel like i'm being spammed. The same website also sends the same job alert to you multiple times, I didn't apply for it yesterday, I am not going to apply for it today!
CVs
Some sites you can upload your CV and others you need to fill in their form, doing this doesn't though mean you will not need to fill in an application form from the company you are applying to. Even when the CV information can be transferred to another online form this doesn't mean everything is straightforward, sometimes the information gets put in the wrong field, so you need to double check this and correct where necessary.
I have had trouble with the dates on the forms too, they want day, month and year for previous jobs. I don't know! I'm 51, I've worked at the same place for 19 years, prior to that I can tell you where I worked, my job title and roughly the years I worked there. Everything I have read about doing CVs and job applications has always said that companies are not interested in your full work history if you've been around a long time, they are more interested in your skills, so why so exact?. I feel sorry for the younger generation having to fill in these forms with every job they have ever had, when they are changing them so regularly.
Automatic application
This one annoyed me the most even though it only happened once. Having set up my account and uploaded my CV, I started looking around the site. When I clicked on a job to see more information, the website automatically sent an application to the company from me. I contacted the website saying I never applied for a job but my dashboard says I did. The response was that the automatic application must be on and they told me how to take that off (which I did). What a stupid set up, it must be the default setting, as I had just set up my account. Who wants to apply for a job when they know nothing about it because they haven't yet read the description?
End note
I have a Casual Community Hub Assistant post now, which I hope to start soon. I've just had a pre-employment health check for it. Once I have started that, I might feel comfortable deleting some of the job alerts. I have 2 favourite job sites, so I will likely keep the alerts from them only.
