Once more I return from a blogging hiatus of quite some time.
I thought I'd start with an approximate transcript of what I said the other day when I was asked to share at a church group about how I ended up in my current job and the decisions I made to get there. This was as part of a series (called 'Big Decisions') about major decisions that people have to make in their 20s. Sharing this story is something that I'm glad to do as I think this time was probably the biggest struggle of my life to date and that I learnt rather a lot from it.
Be warned that what follows is fairly lengthy, so be sure you have a drink or snack to hand if you plan on reading through to the end (reading time 15 mins approx?)!
All through education I didn't have a dream job or an intended career path. My main intention when picking my GCSEs, A-levels and my degree was to keep my options open.
I knew that I didn't want to go into medicine or law where years of study are required and that I'd be pretty rubbish at doing anything with my hands or anything creative. So I discounted these along the way, but apart from this I didn't have much direction.
By the time I got to my last year of school, I knew that something 'business-y' was a distinct possibility though, and that I was intrigued by aspects of what both my parents did at the time (IT and market research respectively), without being gripped by them.
I knew that going to university would help me to get into this field and, just as importantly in my eyes, buy me more time to decide which aspect of this area, if any, I wanted to get into.
So I did a joint degree knowing that it would keep my options broad - I decided to study Computer and Management Sciences at uni - a mix between computer science and business management. I chose to go to the University of Warwick as both it and the course had really good reputations and it had a great campus.
My studies there were something of a rollercoaster ride. I spent the first two years predominantly in the School of Computer Science and the third in the Business School. The second year was the most stressful overall, as many people on my course had more computer science experience than me so I was playing catch-up all the time. But overall I loved my time at uni and the other sides of life pulled me through the difficulties: I made some excellent friends including those in my hall and some really good Christian friends as I got more and more involved in the Christian Union - and I got to play a simply ridiculous amount of football, to an extent that I'll probably never get to do in my life again.
It was in my 2nd year of university that I started to more seriously consider my post-uni plans. I'd hoped to have a sandwich year as part of my course, but that transpired to no longer be an option as I hadn't yet studied a significant amount of the business side of things, which was now what I wanted experience in. I had started to discount the computer science prospect, but I was no clearer on direction than that.
It was only in the third year when I particularly enjoyed one of my modules - human resources (especially the training and learning aspect) - more than the rest that I thought I had a starting point for what I wanted to do.
I started to ask myself whether I could see myself doing this for life. I wasn't sure but concluded that there were almost no jobs for life these days anyway, so I started to ask myself whether I could see myself pursuing this for the next 10 years. I decided that I probably could.
But I didn't start looking at jobs whilst I was at uni because I found life there, even with only a few compulsory lecture hours a week, too busy and wanted to make the most of my time there.
I considered taking a second gap year to give myself more time to apply for jobs and had some very realistic options for this, but after seeking guidance on this, I decided against it.
I took the summer off, enjoying one last university summer, and then in autumn 2006 I started my job hunt. I made the most of online recruitment sites, went to recruitment fairs, used my university careers service, the job centre (which I didn't find at all helpful for me) and agencies. With the agencies it took me a long time to work out how many to use, how to use their services, which were suitable for what I was looking for and which were useful in terms of actually delivering results. All this took time and was not very exciting! So from late in the autumn I decided to find a temporary job to tide me over until the right permanent job came up.
And that started a period of about 16 months in which I mixed and matched between temporary work and just being at home applying for jobs. I found it hard to have the energy to both work a temp job and put in quality job applications in the evenings – that was the main reason for the variation.
My degree grade prevented me from applying for a number of the graduate schemes, so this took away some of my options. I very quickly found out that I was in a bit of a Catch-22 situation, which seemed to be not uncommon amongst my friends, of needing experience to get that first role, but nobody being willing to give you that experience.
This lead me to apply for and get a 3 month voluntary internship in early 2007, where I worked for free to get some directly relevant experience under my belt.
Gradually I started to get interviews and to refine my interview technique. Overall I put in a little over 100 job applications in the 16 months and had 12 interviews for permanent roles – and the interview for my current job at Kew was my lucky 13th.
I think I had 7 temporary jobs, including my internship. All but one of them were at least ok. Some provided me with directly relevant experience, others expressed an interest in keeping me on, but none of them ultimately led to anything permanent.
So at times my graduate job hunt was quite depressing. I think a number of times during that period my Facebook status said that I was: “treading water”.
I used to go along to my church group on a Tuesday evening and often we’d have a time of prayer and I’d get bored of having the same request again and again and again: "I wouldn't mind a permanent job".
I don’t want to discourage anyone but I probably think that my graduate job hunt was probably the biggest struggle of my life so far. I don’t think I was ever depressed as such, but I think it was the closest I’ve ever been to this. Maybe I should count myself fortunate that this is the biggest struggle that I've experienced, but I was seldom of this viewpoint whilst I was in the middle of the job hunt.
Biggest Things I've Learnt
1) Calling: I learnt that finding a fulfilling job seems to be as much if not more about knowing yourself as about knowing what's out there to apply for. Because for most people work will take up at least a third of the adult waking hours that you have, I think it's necessary to try and think about it as more than just a job or a career - to work out what you are called to. What has God given you a strong passion for? I know I discovered a lot about my passions and my strengths and weaknesses - probably only part of the jigsaw that I've put together - but it's a start. An amazing resource that I unfortunately only came across right at the end of my job hunt is a book called 'What Colour is Your Parachute?' by Richard Nelson Bolles. If you have not read this book then you really must.
2) Stay connected: I found it really important to stay connected to family, friends and God - especially for support, advice and guidance. Also for the first time I experienced the reality of 'it's not what you know but who you know' and how true this really is. Networking can be viewed as a bit of a dirty word, but you needn't take advantage of those that you know, just ask your contacts for advice and to let you know of any opportunities. Speak to your friends and family about what you’re doing, pray about it and speak to people who work in similar fields in your church or other communities that you are a part of. I also found that you should make an application as personal as possible: the more you can be someone that the company or agency has met, spoken to and has an impression of, rather than just a name on a piece of paper, the better.
3) Persevere: I had a huge struggle in job hunting, but in getting the resulting job there was a huge reward at the end of it. Don’t get too frustrated if you don’t understand what’s happening to you – some of the jobs that I was interviewed for and disappointed not to get at the time, with hindsight I'm now glad that I didn't get. Don’t give up on the passion that you have. At times I felt a bit like the Israelites in the desert thinking that the promised land was unreachable, but then I'd tell myself that I had to keep on believing and so I'd follow-up an unproductive job hunting day with a productive one. I now feel very lucky and blessed to have a job that I love. I generally find my daily tasks quite interesting and motivating, I have good people around me and I believe in the overall mission of the organisation that I work for. Sure, there are boring days and worse, but on the whole I enjoy things there and feel very blessed to have found this post. It seems my perseverance was worth it.
4) Non-obsessive perspective
Don't find your identity solely in your work. As people in our culture can be fairly obsessed with job titles and asking each other 'what do you do?' as one of the first questions when you meet someone, this can be hard. But I found I had to remember the other areas of life when I was job hunting - to keep me sane. I realised I needed to set out on the right foot in terms of work-life balance.
