Tag: job hunting

Is it a bad idea to grab at a job, whatever the salary?

In 1970s weepie Kramer vs Kramer,  unemployed ad-space  salesman, Dustin Hoffman, has to find a job on Christmas Eve so that he can keep his son.  His pitch at interview is that he will take a job at a rate far below his normal salary  because he needs the work, thus helping his future employer to bag the employee bargain of a lifetime.  This being Hollywood, Dustin gets the gig and the floppy-haired son gets to stay with Dad who can thus perfect his French toast-making skills.

I was reminded of this  for the first time in years as I read the increasingly unmissable Redundant Public Servant’s blog. Colleagues of our hero, who’ve been pushed out of work ahead of him, report that at interview, they’ve got the sense that anyone chasing a much lower paid job is an object of some suspicion.  That certainly rings  true to me.

My sense, bolstered from conversations with the odd recruitment consultant, is that applying for jobs that involve a significant drop in salary level or job title makes the applicant look desperate (which, admittedly they might be; but it’s never a good look). Even if they get the job, it devalues their CV in the long term.

More importantly, no matter how much employers know that it’s a buyer’s market out there with Dustin Hoffman-esque bargains to be had, they will  also fear that they are just a holding pen for the applicant – a finger in the financial dyke which will do until something better comes along.

One of the standard job hunters’ bibles, Richard Bolles’ What Color is Your Parachute, lists the fears  interviewers have at the back of their minds during an interview,  which might stop a candidate getting the job.  Number four on the list is the fear that you’ll only stay around for a few weeks, or at most a few months and then quit without advance warning.  It’s a hard one to counter if the job you’re applying for pays significantly less than the one you’ve had to leave.

Bolles’ suggested answer to the question Doesn’t this job represent a step down for you? by the way, is a chirpy and unarguable  No, it represents  a step up – from Welfare.  This does suggest another issue,  raised by Jenni Russell last week, about how to cushion the financial catastrophe which strikes the middle-class unemployed (for want of a better expression) when they lose their jobs and find a safety net of welfare benefits underneath them which doesn’t come close to meeting their needs.  Another blog post, perhaps…

5 things to remember in between jobs

As I secretly knew it would, the job drought has ended and I’m back fretting about  having to work through the weekends again.  This seems like a good time to jot down some hard won advice about dealing with slumps – not least so that I can read it back when the next one crops up.

1. Jobs travel in packs and use unreliable forms of transport.  It’s perfectly normal for there to be gaps between jobs and then for people to be  falling over themselves to snaffle you up.  I’ve never met a freelancer yet who was busy all the time (and wasn’t lying about it).  Keep a spreadsheet of your work patterns and you’ll see that troughs are inevitably followed by peaks (and vice versa) – nothing lasts forever.  This can be quite comforting when the cupboard is bare, and fooling around with the spreadsheet on quiet days can almost feel like work.  Although…

2.  No-one can job-hunt for 24 hours a day, even though it is tempting to try.  With LinkedIn and other resources on tap you can fool yourself that you’re doing valuable things  just because you’re at the computer.  If you have really exhausted all the leads you can think of (and aren’t just avoiding  another awkward call) give yourself permission to go away and get a life.  Play the piano, contemplate painting the bannisters, torment the cats, leave the house and do something exciting you can use as raw material for your blog.  Remember that one of the reasons you probably had for going freelance in the first place was to kick the “life” part of your work-life balance back into action.

3.  However tempting, don’t take the first job that comes along just because it’s a job.  If it doesn’t fit your core skills or add something to your business it will just end in unnecessary unpleasantness.  Having just done this (again) and with the bruises to show for it,  I am aware that this is a hard one to learn.  Avoiding doing crap jobs was another reason I went freelance and is the reason that I…

4.  Put away a slug of money out of each pay cheque  to act as a cushion when the slumps come along.  This also allows you the smug glow that comes with saying “no” when someone asks if you’d like to do a crap  job,  and it helps deal with point 5…

5.  It ALWAYS takes longer to get work sorted out than you think it possibly can.  Potential clients are always just jetting off on holiday and promising to “pin things down when I get back”,  or need budget approval from a finance committee that meets once a quarter in alternate leap years, or just get tied up in meetings about other things.  The thing to remember is that, eventually, you will work again – and if you doubt that go back to point 1 and start again…