For x = 1 to y do.....exit loop

Its 4am, I haven't really slept well due to my cold, man flu or whatever you so choose to call it. The strategy of the curry and whiskey only partially worked where I should have gone for the vindaloo. However I concede that it will go in its own time.

I was thinking of what to write for my next blog article and I have a few ideas but this week is coming up to a special occasion. As of 29 March I will officially be unemployed for 6 months. Its amazing how quickly the time has flown and to think I have been looking for work for this amount of time. People I have spoken to who also left my last company have found work and some even had two jobs.
It is difficult to gauge why I haven't. I have revised my CV which in itself is an ongoing project to try and reflect who am I and what I can do. I even paid someone to make it look professional but with no luck. I have applied for many jobs and had a few interviews where the last one concluded I was technical this time but too senior (not age) for the position. It scares people when they see someone who was paid well taking a huge pay cut in order to get into a company. They start asking questions like why are you taking such a cut? Will you cope financially? Whilst they do have a right to ask these questions it makes you feel a numpty. When I apply for a job I do so because I want to, I can do it and am aware of the financials and risk that go with taking a lower paid job.

In my last interview the role would have subsquently led to taking over the position of the person who was interviewing me. So you are interviewing someone you like, know they can do the job, will eventually have my job to allow me to move on within the company and I am getting more experience for my dollar. However I think you are too experienced. So whilst I am getting more value for my money I am not going too select you due to this.

So now I have had experience of both scenarios where I was not technical and now I am too experienced. I do hope the next interview will be successful and I can join the ranks of employment again.

So you may be asking why for x = 1 to y do......

You may have seen the film groundhog day where the same day keeps repeating and Bill Murray uses this time to learn new things such as play the piano. If I was to categorise the film I would use a repeat until loop as he as to keep doing things until he gets the girl. A while do version of this film would be, he has the girl but he needs to keep her and not lose her. A for loop version would be, he has to repeat something several times such as, he has the girl but he will only for a finite time, hence the count.

Since being out of work each day could have been categorised as a for loop as I was expecting to only be out of work for a finite moment in time, However, coming up to 6 months this project is over running and is slowly becoming a repeat until. That is, repeat whatever I am doing until I find work.

During this repeat until loop I am slowly extending the code to include new strategies to the various sub routines I call for example:

Repeat

Goto procedure find work

Until

Where the procedure find work is now including things such as revising the cv to make it more specific to the role and looking at retraining. At some point I would like to make it a bit more OO based to ensure flexibility in the future to cater for more events.

Whilst been off I have found it necessary to be busy to ensure my mind is active and I am not slumming it. Because the situation may be a longer than anticipated I am gearing myself up for this so have decided to sell my house and car with a view to reducing any risk in the future. Whilst this might be painful it necessary to cut my losses now and get over it so I can move on. They are only things and these can be bought again.

It reminds me of my time when I moved to Holland as I was working out in the german business. In the august I had got rid of my house, car and belongings so I could move overseas. I had already met someone over there and was looking to settle down (finally). However what I was not anticipating was the company was going to be closed and I had a choice to either stay put or move back. To aid with my repatriation back to the UK a role was found for me where for three months until the final move I travelled between germany, holland and the uk to sort out my affairs. The moral of this story is I have been here before where everything material has gone but it can be bought again. To put it another way it also gives me a chance to upgrade all of my gadgets again!

So, in a few hours I am back signing on where the the same questions are being asked - how is your job search? The advisors whilst courteous cannot really help but are there should I need it. I have already looked into retraining where I am interested in either lecturing or gardening (some will laugh at the latter) and have spoken to a teacher friend of where to find information.

For some, this time is painful especially when you do not know when the loop will end. To others they cannot be bothered and some remain optimistic. I am in both camps. As Bill Murray, whilst the general format could be the same I am using this opportunity to use the time constructively and complete all of the things I should have done.

Fortran 77 was funny language a bit like BASIC and modula 2. It could not handles loops well and rather than exit a loop naturally it would just force an exit. Currently, I am hoping that this situation will end soon, if it doesn't I am preparing for the long haul; if it does I will be exiting using this construct of the exit loop as soons as the right opportunity shows itself.

How to Sell Me?

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.