My job was only temporary – six months filling in for someone who was on leave – so it wasn’t exactly a surprise when I was told that my services would no longer be required (only they were much, much nicer than that – they even bought me a going away present!) and I had actually been expecting it to happen two months earlier.
I worked the full six months, which is fantastic in terms of pay, but was more than enough in terms of time in the role. I was soooooooo not right for that job. It wasn’t especially difficult, it wasn’t especially challenging (apart from sometimes, but then any job is challenging when you have to deal with ‘special’ people who seem to have been put there for the sole purpose of making you want to bang your head against the desk and gouge your eyes out with a rusty tea-spoon).
But really, that was part the problem (the challenging bit, not the head-banging/eye-gouging bit). The role was not challenging in any way after the first couple of weeks. After learning all the processes and who everyone was and which gloves to use to handle them… that was it! And very often my set tasks were completed before lunch and I had to wait for something else to come up. No challenge.
I was bored and frustrated, but it taught me about the kind of jobs that I absolutely will not be applying for now that I am looking again. Anything with “assistant” in the title is out (unless the job title is “Jonny Depp’s Bathing Assistant”, in which case I might make an exception – depends on whether or not dental is included in the health insurance).
And so begins the dance of looking at job advertisements online, filling in their make-you-want-to-tear-your-hair-out application forms, attaching my CV and cover letter and never hearing a thing from them.
Job hunting everywhere is tough right now – I know that. I have enough friends (I do too have friends!) in enough parts of the world to have a decent idea of what the job market is like across a fair proportion of the globe.
Really, it is no harder to find work here than it is anywhere else. In fact, if you are in the right industry then you’re golden! Sadly, I am not in the right industry and so I am more like slightly tarnished tin.
Here’s the thing. If you’re in gas, construction or engineering you will be snapped up – in some cases they’ll even train you! Though they do prefer that you be Emirati for that. Anything else and you can find work, however you had better have been doing the exact role that is advertised for, oooo, let’s say 5-15 years.
‘Transferable skills’ is not a commonly known commodity, I’m sad to say. And since I abound with transferrable skills and not very much else… I’m not hearing a lot of response back from the applications I send out.
I’m really not going about this the right way, I know that. I know that I should be shlepping my bum around to all the places that I want to apply to and speaking directly to the HR department. But, to be honest, the thought of all that makes me very nervous. I’ve not had to do stuff like this before. Of course I’ve had interviews, but that was always in the academic world, which I know! I don’t know this world at all. And I feel completely pathetic confessing that, at the age of *cough*28*cough*.
For now, I’m enjoying being the master of my own time again. And I’m filling in those application forms and emailing my CV. It’s been a week and I’m not bored yet, I still have a number of little projects that I had neither the time nor the inclination for while I was still working. I’m also determined to get into the kitchen more and have already begun that process with a delicious lasagne last week and I have plans for all manner of soup related experiments.
I worked the full six months, which is fantastic in terms of pay, but was more than enough in terms of time in the role. I was soooooooo not right for that job. It wasn’t especially difficult, it wasn’t especially challenging (apart from sometimes, but then any job is challenging when you have to deal with ‘special’ people who seem to have been put there for the sole purpose of making you want to bang your head against the desk and gouge your eyes out with a rusty tea-spoon).
But really, that was part the problem (the challenging bit, not the head-banging/eye-gouging bit). The role was not challenging in any way after the first couple of weeks. After learning all the processes and who everyone was and which gloves to use to handle them… that was it! And very often my set tasks were completed before lunch and I had to wait for something else to come up. No challenge.
I was bored and frustrated, but it taught me about the kind of jobs that I absolutely will not be applying for now that I am looking again. Anything with “assistant” in the title is out (unless the job title is “Jonny Depp’s Bathing Assistant”, in which case I might make an exception – depends on whether or not dental is included in the health insurance).
And so begins the dance of looking at job advertisements online, filling in their make-you-want-to-tear-your-hair-out application forms, attaching my CV and cover letter and never hearing a thing from them.
Job hunting everywhere is tough right now – I know that. I have enough friends (I do too have friends!) in enough parts of the world to have a decent idea of what the job market is like across a fair proportion of the globe.
Really, it is no harder to find work here than it is anywhere else. In fact, if you are in the right industry then you’re golden! Sadly, I am not in the right industry and so I am more like slightly tarnished tin.
Here’s the thing. If you’re in gas, construction or engineering you will be snapped up – in some cases they’ll even train you! Though they do prefer that you be Emirati for that. Anything else and you can find work, however you had better have been doing the exact role that is advertised for, oooo, let’s say 5-15 years.
‘Transferable skills’ is not a commonly known commodity, I’m sad to say. And since I abound with transferrable skills and not very much else… I’m not hearing a lot of response back from the applications I send out.
I’m really not going about this the right way, I know that. I know that I should be shlepping my bum around to all the places that I want to apply to and speaking directly to the HR department. But, to be honest, the thought of all that makes me very nervous. I’ve not had to do stuff like this before. Of course I’ve had interviews, but that was always in the academic world, which I know! I don’t know this world at all. And I feel completely pathetic confessing that, at the age of *cough*28*cough*.
For now, I’m enjoying being the master of my own time again. And I’m filling in those application forms and emailing my CV. It’s been a week and I’m not bored yet, I still have a number of little projects that I had neither the time nor the inclination for while I was still working. I’m also determined to get into the kitchen more and have already begun that process with a delicious lasagne last week and I have plans for all manner of soup related experiments.
