What have you been doing since …?
What else do you do?
This is to address that eternal question- What have you been doing since your last position? Well, Duh! – I’ve been looking for work. The jobcentre will confirm that each and every day since my most recent employment is fully accounted for. I have not been detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure, I have not left the country and I have not been kidnapped by aliens. I still get up at 6am and play with computers, but nobody pays me for it: I just haven’t been employed.
I have been adding value for my benefit and the benefit of my tribe: deploying resources and honing skills, optimising finances and cultivating chi. For those of you who like to pore over details, here’s some:
- Traded shares: 200% profit
- Maths tuition for 15 yr old student at expensive private school
- Cook and First mate on boating holiday(s)
- Investigated and won back £900 in bank fees
- Small-time ebay seller : 100% feedback
- Freelancing: statistical work in MS Excel for a school in Nicaragua
- VBA programming to add features to a mailing list.
- Further training in PowerPoint and Access
- Beta-testing Brainbench tests.
- Proof-reading cvs and resumes
- Boarded out the loft and installed light.
- Wired in a programmable immersion timer
- Decorating for family: including everything at the top of the ladder.
- Designing kitchen.
Yesterday I had a call off a recruiter. She asked what I’d been doing since my last job finished in January 2008 – and I replied that I’d been looking for work. But this time I also made a mistake – I mentioned the freelance work.
Straight off, she wanted a revised cv showing the freelance work. Our conversation went downhill rapidly from there, because in no sense does a few days work make a difference to someone out of work for two and half years. Even if the days were paid.
If you don’t place unemployed persons, don’t call me- we have nothing to talk about. If recruiters are to be believed, even 2 weeks is too much for a gap in employment (so best not take that holiday…) But before you go, you should also know why I was offered the contract at D&B – they wanted me for the skills I used ten years earlier. Now that’s a gap.
[...] 3 years, one and a half months. What have I been doing since my last (paid) job? The answer is here – but you could be forgiven for thinking I have been running a one-man QA exercise on Jobcentre [...]