I have already mentioned I am still looking for work but am having no luck. All we hear in the news at the moment is not good and that it is getting harder each day to find work. Personally I am trying to maintain a positive attitude that eventually I will find something that I both enjoy doing and somewhere I want to work. Over the past few months I have mainly done my applications online gradually tweaking my cover letters and CV but no luck. I even paid a cv consultancy to make my cv represent me but still I have had no luck.
When I used to work abroad as "IT Support" neither the title or the job description fitted each other. In essence my remit would be to catch a plane turn up at the premises and do whatever was required. This could mean desktop support, pc moves, server administration and upgrades to managing a networking cable infrastructure installation. As most of the overseas operations were small and finances restricted there was an ethos that if you could do a job you got on with it, if you knew nothing about it then there was an opportunity to learn. After having 12 years of this ethos, I have gained a lot of skills from my experiences to the point I enjoy and can do a variety of IT work. I can always recall one of the overseas commercial directors once said to me that if his work required him to sweep the warehouse because there is no one available then he would. Again, I have always looked on work that I am not familiar with as an opportunity even if it means picking that brush up!
Returning to the title "How to Sell Me?" , when I returned to the UK and had to look for a job again, people interviewed me and said okay you can do x,y or z however our positions are only for x or y or z not all three together. Because I find all of my skills complement one another I see this as my main strength so whatever I am doing I can see how it fits together at a high level, but can also drill down to the detail. However, today when I am looking for work I find that either a targeted cv for my specific skill set/job it is not working or if I send a cv with everything I can do that is related to the role then this to does not work. The perception I believe people are seeing is "Your are too broad so you have no depth" or "You do not have enough experience of this type of work" irrespective that you can have done the work before or "You cannot have done all of that so I don't believe you".
To describe me and my skills words like hybrid, multi skilled or jack of all trades come to mind where I feel the last one can suggest you are bodger so I try to avoid this in conversation.
In times like these when people are cutting back and they are losing specialist staff they need people who are hybrid/multi-skilled and can keep the boat afloat. As previously mentioned when I was abroad and money was restricted we used multi-skilled/hybrid people to keep costs down. Then when the business had sufficiently grown this is when the specialist would come on board. If we look today you notice a similarity where money is restricted however, the jobs that are being advertised are not hybrid roles but still specialist. It seems that the hybrid concept either no longer exists or has been forgotten.
So going back to the question one last time "How to Sell Me?" A colleague of mine once said you should put on your CV you can do anything that it is IT related, this way they will either think you are a "big head" and talking rubbish or they will just invite you in for an interview to actually see who you are. Sadly this strategy did not work! So the issue is how do you advertise yourself as someone who can do x and y and z to someone who only wants x or y or z.
My answer is I don't know but will keep trying each day until there is success, possibly then I will post the solution.
When I used to work abroad as "IT Support" neither the title or the job description fitted each other. In essence my remit would be to catch a plane turn up at the premises and do whatever was required. This could mean desktop support, pc moves, server administration and upgrades to managing a networking cable infrastructure installation. As most of the overseas operations were small and finances restricted there was an ethos that if you could do a job you got on with it, if you knew nothing about it then there was an opportunity to learn. After having 12 years of this ethos, I have gained a lot of skills from my experiences to the point I enjoy and can do a variety of IT work. I can always recall one of the overseas commercial directors once said to me that if his work required him to sweep the warehouse because there is no one available then he would. Again, I have always looked on work that I am not familiar with as an opportunity even if it means picking that brush up!
Returning to the title "How to Sell Me?" , when I returned to the UK and had to look for a job again, people interviewed me and said okay you can do x,y or z however our positions are only for x or y or z not all three together. Because I find all of my skills complement one another I see this as my main strength so whatever I am doing I can see how it fits together at a high level, but can also drill down to the detail. However, today when I am looking for work I find that either a targeted cv for my specific skill set/job it is not working or if I send a cv with everything I can do that is related to the role then this to does not work. The perception I believe people are seeing is "Your are too broad so you have no depth" or "You do not have enough experience of this type of work" irrespective that you can have done the work before or "You cannot have done all of that so I don't believe you".
To describe me and my skills words like hybrid, multi skilled or jack of all trades come to mind where I feel the last one can suggest you are bodger so I try to avoid this in conversation.
In times like these when people are cutting back and they are losing specialist staff they need people who are hybrid/multi-skilled and can keep the boat afloat. As previously mentioned when I was abroad and money was restricted we used multi-skilled/hybrid people to keep costs down. Then when the business had sufficiently grown this is when the specialist would come on board. If we look today you notice a similarity where money is restricted however, the jobs that are being advertised are not hybrid roles but still specialist. It seems that the hybrid concept either no longer exists or has been forgotten.
So going back to the question one last time "How to Sell Me?" A colleague of mine once said you should put on your CV you can do anything that it is IT related, this way they will either think you are a "big head" and talking rubbish or they will just invite you in for an interview to actually see who you are. Sadly this strategy did not work! So the issue is how do you advertise yourself as someone who can do x and y and z to someone who only wants x or y or z.
My answer is I don't know but will keep trying each day until there is success, possibly then I will post the solution.
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