| Right, this is a long one. i have
a big yellow box full to
overflowing with job applications
since i left college as a mature
student at the age of 41. i loathe
being unemployed, hate sitting on
my own in the cottage, would much
prefer to be out earning money and
meeting people and making use of my
talents instead of writing writing
writing advice on y!a.
after i left college, i was in the
thick of court proceedings trying
to win contact to see my children,
where i was claiming legal aid. if
i worked, then i would have had to
pay it all back, with barristers at
£500 per hour, expert witnesses
and hours and hours of
solicitor's time. so i could
not work until the final hearing.
by then, there was a gap in my cv
and nobody wanted me. endless
applications, interviews, building
up hopes and persuading myself and
them that there was nobody in the
world better than me for their job.
then three weeks on, a letter
saying they were very impressed
with me and wishing me luck for the
future. over and over and over
again. i did voluntary work with
riding for the disabled. anything
to get out of the house for 3
years.
then at last a temporary job
inspecting toilets. someone else
had pulled out, and did i want it?
i was there like a flash, and
actually loved it. the attendants
were such characters. but the boss
was a woman who really preferred to
work with women, so when the
permanent job came up, they gave it
to someone else.
6 months. then a new deal admin.
assistant job. filing clerk. one
day they asked me - do i know
anything about databases? they had
a whole load of data on village
halls and were fed up ploughing
through it all every time someone
had a query on the phone. could i
do an on-screen query screen. so i
grabbed a book on access from the
library and taught myself. it was
done by the time my 13 weeks were
up. but a permanent job? no, a
woman had applied for it, so they
had to give it to her.
only 2 months before i landed this
job for a bathroom company fobbing
off angry fitters who had not been
paid, so that their payment could
be delayed a few more weeks and
help the company cash flow. they
had a policy where they expected
their staff not to take their
annual leave and lose it at the end
of the year. "going the extra
mile" it was called. it was
the autumn of 2001, and air fares
to the usa had never been cheaper,
so i asked to take my holiday in
november, during a lull in the
work. in the end, they said i
could go to america, but not come
back. most people were amazed i
survived 6 months working for that
company!
this did lead on quite quickly to a
low-paid temping payroll job at a
local hospital. loved it. there
were so many different sets of
terms and conditions and working
patterns to come to grips with, and
within these were exceptions and
complications, not to mention
regradings, promotions, rule
changes. it was like being in a
football match where the ball
stayed still and the pitch, the
goalposts and the stand were moving
around in all directions. and
everything had to be spot on
accurate. came home with major
headaches often, but at least
everyone got paid! because i was
temping and they had already
appointed women for the permanent
position, it came to an end, but
fortunately another temporary
position materialised immediately
sorting out inconsistencies in
government records for a government
department, which lasted until
christmas when they sacked all the
casuals.
i did not want to go on the dole,
preferably never again, so a good
friend found me a job in his canal
boat timeshare company, which i did
off and on for two years. at the
end of the second year, it was
getting ridiculous sending me 100
miles at company expense to paint a
boat when they could get someone
locally to do it cheaper, so in the
end i was laid off. so then, at
the start of 2005, having to do
these applications over and over
again.
by then, my cv was in trouble. the
boat job did nothing for my
credibility in offices, and it was
back to where i was when i left
college, except that this time i
was approaching 50. each job in
2005 was a disaster. taking on any
temporary job, however dead-end,
however useless, however badly-paid
just to get my hand back in. the
first temping job travelling over
20 miles to find nothing for me to
do, and the boss saying by
lunchtime i could go home without
offering to pay for my petrol. they
needed the help, but they were just
not organised enough to get their
papers in a state that i could be
useful as an agency temp. the
second was for a government
department where i had three weeks
training in diversity and
anti-discrimination and
anti-bullying. but the manager was
a 30-something woman who had a
dislike for middle-aged men and put
me in the far corner by the
photocopier and spent most of her
time with two other temporary staff
half my age. one day i was told
that my contract was terminated
with immediate effect. when i
queried why, it was suggested i was
not picking things up fast enough
compared to the others. the third
was a school as a payroll officer.
they had a payroll of 350, a
turnover of 12 per month, two
payroll systems (sage and an awful
thing on word where you had to use
the mouse continuously), and were
demanding that working part-time 21
hours a week, i produced a fully
accurate live monthly pay run in my
first week. i told them i needed 5
days the first week to learn the
ropes, understand their systems and
the payroll, and that i would want
them to correct any mistakes i made
on wednesday, so that i could be
sure the payroll was corrected and
right by friday. i actually
completed the payrun, but they said
on the wednesday there were too
many mistakes, and head office
would not allow me the extra two
days to finish the job, so they got
rid of me.
back to the job applications, this
time completely demoralised, but
still having to sell myself somehow
as a brilliant prospect. 50th
birthday came. all through 2006,
just application after application
and the usual story - brilliant
application, brilliant presentation
at interview, very impressed, and
we gave the job to a younger woman
who was more appropriate and
wishing me every luck for the
future. by that time, i was sick
of the whole rigmarole and
operating on a fortnightly cycle of
fed-upness. one week i hated
employers, hated my country, hated
the society that made such horrible
people and just wanted to be shot
of the whole employment circus.
not the best frame of mind to sell
myself on an application form. so
i used that week to highlight
possible jobs and no more. second
week, absolutely sick of my own
company, sitting at home, getting
no further with life or career or
making myself in the slightest bit
marriageable, and there was nothing
for it but to fill in these
wretched forms. that worked ok
until the jobcentre put me on a
weekly sign-on and sent me into a
spiral of serious clinical
depression when i just had to sign
off jsa and onto incapacity benefit
for a while.
onto 2007 and at last one of my
applications gets somewhere. i was
far and away the best application
for a job as a filing clerk in a
legal section in a local authority,
and they could not offer it to an
equally-qualified woman because
none applied. they got round this
by telling me at interview that it
was not the permanent job they
advised, but temporary covering
someone who was on long-term sick
and was unlikely to return. unless
she came back to work, the job was
mine for as long as i wanted it.
good enough - i would use the time
to work myself into another
position within the local
authority. three weeks into the
job, i was getting worried because
they were not training me in things
i needed to do my job, such as
inputting data onto their
accounting system. i was also made
aware by female colleagues that i
was not welcome, and really they
were expecting their filing clerk
to be a young woman college leaver,
rather than a middle-aged man. then
a brown paper packet landed on my
desk. it was my terms of
employment that had been changed to
temporary with monthly termination
reviews which was not what we had
agreed when i was taken on. i
asked for an informal chat to
discuss my worries with a friend
within the organisation. instead
the admin manager took me and my
line manager into a room and told
me she was going to ask hr to
terminate my employment. i
complained to senior management.
the result was that i was hounded
out and on the day before my
termination interview with three
line managers, all solicitors, i
had a mini nervous breakdown and
just stopped functioning. i was
advised to accept their offer of
one month's pay in lieu of
notice and leave immediately.
rather than go on the dole and face
more of those wretched
applications, during my notice
period, i accepted a part-time
casual job on minimum wage
delivering and collecting cars,
which i did until the start of
august 2008. it was
semi-retirement. the driving was
too tiring to manage it five days a
week, and safety was paramount, but
at least it was a way out of the
house and meant no job applications
or signing on. i earned very
little. in the end they sacked me
because someone had complained that
i was seen eating my sandwiches
during the working day that
stretched from 7am until late
afternoon. the truth i found out
later. the woman general manager
of the car delivery company did not
like men with beards, and nor did
the woman general manager of the
agency allocating my work, so they
decided that while there was a
surplus of agency drivers and not
enough work, they could get rid of
me.
now i am back at 52 with facing
more applications, not having done
a proper job now since i left the
government department in 2002. my
cv is a wreck and there is a
downturn in the economy. if i sign
on jsa i have to prove i am
actively seeking work, and yet now
the whole process is making me very
very ill. the doctor wants me to
go on stronger antidepressants, but
i know the problem is not with my
mental health, it's with being
totally sick of job applications
and the whole cruel process of
excluding me from work time and
time and time again. what next?
my last slender hope is with the
good friend who got me the boat
job, who might have some other
part-time work for me when he gets
back off holiday. yes, of course i
am suicidal. i cannot afford to
retire without a pension, and nor
do i particularly want to.
so many middle-aged men must be in
precisely the same situation as me,
and all they are getting from
women, who have no trouble securing
well-paid or even modestly-paid
careers is "get off your bums,
you lazy losers".
i am probably a lost cause, and i
have to come to terms with that. i
know i am not wanted here, people
have told me that enough times in
their "we wish you every luck
in the future". britain and
certainly new labour only loves
women. but what hope and advice is
there for others in the same boat
reading this?
cari - a splendid example of the
very women i have to confront when
submitting job applications. i am
unemployable. straight in the bin.
someone tell that to the jobcentre
and the daily express readers when
"actively seeking work"
and it would save a lot of futile
activity. now her fact - can we
have a reference to support this?
or is it that men only earn more
because on average when in work
they put in more hours, like tennis
players?
thinking very hard about this one
for best answer, and will put it to
the vote i think.
oohbetty is probably closest to
what i am doing - procrastinating
over suicide and taking bum jobs
just to get out of the house.
almcneilcan suggesting
self-employment, which is fine with
a good business plan, domestic
support and sufficient
self-confidence to put in the hours
necessary.
colint, who has been through the
same mill, puts his faith in
miracles. they happened with him.
they might still happen with me.
i'm still waiting.
and cari, who represents those i
send my forms to, unnervingly
precisely. i am unemployable,
should accept my destiny and crawl
into the gutter and leave her
alone.
"I work in recruitment and i
probably recruit 75% men versus 25%
women..."
Clearly you have a problem with women. If you're applying to jobs where women are the Hiring Manager or are involved in the interview process somehow, this probably comes across.
I work in recruitment and I probably recruit 75% men versus 25% women. According to your twisted way of thinking then, this means that I'm biased against women. But actually I'm not - I make sure to hire the best candidate each time, and it just so happens that three quarters of the time they're men.
Also, I can tell you that every time I reject a candidate, I never, ever reveal to them what gender the successful candidate was. Why would I? Who's business is it? What does it have to do with why they didn't get the job? What difference does it make to anyone? Therefore I don't quite believe your story, that you're constantly being passed up in favour of women ... I believe that majority of the time you wouldn't even know what gender the successful candidate was, and on the odd occasion that you did find out, it wouldn't have had any bearing on your application anyway.
Don't even get me started on this sentence: "all they are getting from women, who have no trouble securing well-paid or even modestly-paid careers ..." - in the UK, it is still a FACT that men are paid more for doing exactly the same job as women.
Wake up and face facts. Yes, you are unemployable, and this is because you chose not to work for a period of time, and then you chose to take temp jobs which make it appear that you are incapable of holding down a job. Anyone in this situation, whether male or female, would find themselves unable to find employment. The fact that you are male has no bearing on anything. |
Advertisement 
0 
In 
