Wednesday, June 10, 2009

I hate job hunting...

...for a number of reasons. E-mail alerts is just the latest one. 

By profession, I am a trainer. I design, write and deliver training courses. When I look for a job, it is as a trainer - or learning and development consultant, or whatever terminology you would like to use for someone who trains other people. So when I set up a alert e-mail on a job site, I do expect to get something that might relate to training. Yeah, I know I will have to put up with getting adverts about being a Personal Trainer; after all, it does have Trainer in the job title. But seriously, why would any system throw up a list as *diverse* as the one I received on Tuesday morning? Take a look. Bear in mind I am looking for Trainer roles:

- English Teacher
- Field Sales B2B - Telecoms
- Customer Service Manager
- Senior Acoustic Consultant
- MULTI UNIT MANAGER, NOTTINGHAM - GREAT OPPORTUNITY!!!
- Construction Recruitment Consultant (Trades and Labour) - Nottingham
- BUYER - NOTTINGHAMSHIRE
- Production - manager/team leader/line leader

Perhaps somewhere in the adverts training is mentioned - I certainly can't be fucked to find out. But these have bugger all to do with what I can do and what I want to do. The search criteria are fine, but for some reason these jobs by e-mail alerts send me nothing but time-wasting dross. 

Maybe the website had some sort of rule that if there aren't any jobs that met the criteria on any given day, then they send out the first few jobs they can find. But I can't help but come back to the thought that this is just a big fat waste of time. I mean, I could apply for the Senior Acoustic Consultant role, but something tells me I wouldn't get it. I'm guessing I don't have the right experience. On the grounds I haven't got the first fucking clue what such a consultant actually does.

These sort of e-mails are meant to make job-hunting easier. Unfortunately all they end up doing is creating a new e-mail to delete each day before I go back to trawling t'interweb for jobs...

Incidentally, if anyone does know of Trainer Jobs based in Nottingham, please do let me know. The address is thenamelesst [at] yahoo [dot] co [dot] uk. 

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4 Comments:

At 1:12 pm , Blogger selinawragg.co.uk said...

I had to comment on this because I work in Recruitment Media and deal with this sort of thing all the time.

I'm playing devils advocate with this a little bit, but are you sure you've set-up your search criteria correctly?

The jobs by email function is incredibly useful, and if you're getting unwanted results I would say it's because you've used the wrong keywords, or the selection you have chosen is too ambiguous.

Also, it looks like you've set this up on a general job board, rather than picking one a little more niche.

Try using a job site which is related to the industry you train in, as opposed to using the "fish4jobs" of this world.

The JBE's do work on keyword searches and will look at the title and description. Also, have you further refined your search by looking for particular phrases or combining words using AND, OR, AND NOT, " " or * ?

 
At 5:50 pm , Blogger The Nameless Libertarian said...

Hi selinawragg,

The criteria are set up correctly - I worked in recruitment myself for several years and trained in that particular industry and so I do know the job boards well. I suspect part of the problem I am having maybe some recruiters are tagging jobs with unsuitable key words. In terms of narrowing down the criteria I use, it does come down to the problem of not wanting to miss out versus not getting meaningless dross.

In terms of more niche boards, it is a possibility - although I am looking to move away from the recruitment industry at the moment so looking in the industry I train in would be counter-productive. I'm also not sure what recruiters are using the niche boards at the moment. Certainly my last company (FTSE 250 white collar recruiters) were moving away from the niche to the jobsrus.co.uk style of job boards.

It is funny, but I tend to find direct applications work better, so it may end up being the old slog of identifying potential companies in the area, and then trawling around their websites and local sites until I can find what I am looking for.

TNL

 
At 8:05 pm , Blogger selinawragg.co.uk said...

Well I will agree with you that direct application works best, and that recruiters do not seem to understand how best to target their ads.

Apparently, the more views the better! It is a shame that it is not understood that by pimping out your ad with irrelevant keywords does not mean more applications. If they adhered to the SEO tips provided then they would get more applications from people who can actually do the job!

Anyway, good luck with your search. If whilst I am at work I spot something in training, I will buzz you over a link :-)

 
At 11:43 am , Blogger The Nameless Libertarian said...

Cheers Selina - as an aside, the sole job that was sent to me today was Asbestos Consultant. I'm assuming that job is consulting about asbestos, rather than with it...

 

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