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Need advice

Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Hi everyone,
Im pretty new to this site and need some advice. Im really concerned about my best friend who is unable to find work in general let alone finding something in IT in Birmingham which happen's to be the 2nd largest city in England.
He has been trying for a year and has had no luck getting to the interview stage as he lack's experience.

He has even narrowed his job search and applied for admin, call centre job's which provide training but has not even had someone get back to him.

I have heard the current market is slowly picking up but is it really true??????
He has many qualifications like 6 GCSES , BTEC Diploma in IT and he also attended uni and completed year 1 2 succesfully of his Bsc in Computer Science but was unable to complete his 3rd year disso due to personal reason's.
Now he is fincially low his father isn;t supportive at all so you can imagine how it is and he feels worthless.


Any feedback would be great

Thanks.

Comments

  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    What stage is he getting to? Is he being interviewed, or is he not getting that far? If he's not getting that far, maybe the CV or covering letter can be adjusted. If he's getting to interview, maybe he needs to work on his presentation (IE selling himself.)

    I'm surprised that there is nothing in the whole of Birmingham to be honest. Is he signed up with any job agencies? Most of the big companies will use agencies. And really, if you get signed up the agency should be doing the work of finding the positions.

    Has he looked at trainee positions? I know for example where I work there has been a recruitment freeze for some months now, but, for example, the trainee programmes have continued.

    Realistically to go into IT without experience he'll need to be quite lucky, or do what most people do and start off in the call centres.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Hi Mist,

    Thank's for replying back to my post.

    He has not even got to the part where he has been asked to come in for the job interview.

    I totally agree with you maybe his CV need's to be adjusted as it probably not selling his skills.

    He has also signed up with many agencies and all they say is ''if we find something that matches your cv we will be intouch''. Then you never hear from them again.

    He has applied to trainee, admin and call centre job's but nothing seem's to be going his way.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Ok yes in that case I would suggest he re-designs his CV. He should get some people to look over it. There's many hints all over the internet for writing CVs.

    Personally I go with the basic details at the top, name address and whatnot, then a quick summary, followed by job history and then education / training. Obviously he would want to be highlighting more of the education / training.

    If he signs up with agencies he needs to be on the phone to them trying to chase up jobs. They can be helpful but obviously they have their own criteria too so if he's part of a large group of people he needs to make sure that he bugs them enought to be remembered (but not so much as to be annoying.)

    For IT jobs, get the CV onto www.jobsite.co.uk and similar.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Is there any way he can try to complete his degree or at least turn the work accomplished there into some kind of qualification?

    He might want to look into whether he can transfer the credit to an Open University degree. Surely if he completed everything but the dissertation he should be eligible to graduate without Honours anyway?
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Finding Work

    Hi,

    I know exactly what you and your friend are going through.

    I am not sure how old your friend is or his personal circumstances are but first thing you could get him to do is to get in touch with the Uni he went to, to see if he can do his final year ?

    Job hunting in IT at the moment is the hardest possible, I am 28 I graduated in 2008 and have been unemployed ever since, I am registered with over 25 different recruitment agencies, I spend about 4-5hrs a day going through recruitment boards time and again and at times it can be depressing, annoying and frustrating at times.

    The problems I seem to encour are:

    1) A lot of companies want junior, and usually in adverts its Junior this and Junior that and you wonder where Gordorn Brown's Age Discrimination Law comes in sometimes.

    2) 6 months - 1yr of commercial/personal experience, this is another catch 22 situation because you have no work experience and job advert after job advert its you must have this amount of experience and so fourth. But sometimes you feel like saying well hold on a minute how do you expect me to get experience if you don't give me the chance to do the job in the first place, etc etc.

    3) Skills to generalised, I know from what employers want from interviews compared to what I learned at University some of them are asking for skills that they are never gonna get in some cases.

    4) Recession, remember a lot of banks laid a lot of IT people off and a lot of jobs I apply for you can usually see over 200-300 applicants applying for one job so its very competitive.

    For some advice like your friend has done, widen your job industry sectors, and lower your salary expectations. Try and do some personal experience, for instance I don't know what area of IT your friend wants to go into but for web development what your friend could do is design a website for himself, etc etc just to show employers his skills etc etc.

    Try doing some volunteering, keep moving as I say, exercise, socialising, being unemployed at times can be very isolating and lonely. If your friend starts feeling very low then suggest going to talk to doctor.

    Change his CV as already stated, Personal Details at top, followed by a personal statement or a career objective. Then I put my technical skills, followed by my education(because I have no valuable work experience in IT), Then my work experience(summer jobs etc etc), then hobbies and interests, and references available on request. Keep it to 2 pages though(i know that can be hard at times).

    I don't want to sound negative with all that I have said above, but you have to keep trying, I would say I have had about 7-8 interviews in 2yrs, applied for well over a 1,500 jobs....I'm sure I will find something one day...

    Good luck to you and your friend..
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