Week 4: Application Complications

A month has now passed since I finished university and I am still no closer to finding a job. Some days have been indescribably challenging. On these days I manage find until about dinner time at which point I feel hollow. It’s so infuriating after four years of uni to leave with nothing. The only thing I gained there was weight.

Hmm, that was a bleak start. But then again it really is a bleak life at the moment, the few moments of joy mostly coming from the fictional worlds of the many books I am zooming through. I have applied for three more jobs this week, all of which are school-based support posts which involve supporting children with special needs. Each is a very different circumstance so any of them would be interesting.

I’ve down applied for a fair few jobs and have constantly been frustrated about the application forms. Jobs in the education sector don’t usually want a CV, you have to fill all your details out on a form with part of that form being some sort of cover letter. Traditionally this would have been a printed copy that you had send in the mail but now you usually upload or e-mail them.

Now I am very keen of digitalising things like this but they should make them more simple. I have had loads of forms which are very similar but filling them out is very frustrating. You can’t copy and paste easily because although they all want the same information the use different sections. For example one form just puts “address” whilst another divides it into “street”, “town” etc. It is like this for every section, meaning it takes ages to fill out exactly the same information each time. Surely the big plus of doing things digitally is it saves everyone time and effort. 

An artist’s impression of me filling out application forms

Then there’s the fact that often the people who set up the forms haven’t thought them through. As soon as you start typing on most of them the format rips apart because they have decided to shove in as many boxes as possible, despite the fact is is completely unnecessary. Often they put in tick boxes but they just put in a little box like this: ☐. How are you supposed to tick that digitally? Some alternatively ask you to circle your selection, which provides a similar problem. I’m sure I could talk about further problems but I fear this is turning a little rant-y.

One application I made was done in the format of an online submission form and I really liked it. It took probably half the time it took to fill in any of the Microsoft Word based forms. The computerisation of processes like job applications is a fantastic idea but there needs to be more thought involved in using them. I’m much keener on the position with the proper submission form because clearly they are properly organised. If there is a direct choice between it and something equivalent, that one will get me every time.

It probably sounds a little petty but I am virtually OCD about organisation and continually battling against badly made forms is infuriating. I keep seeing a decent job and get excited before seeing the application form and wanting to cry.

Well, enough on that for now. I’m fairly sure now that I am not going to hear anything from the two magazine writing positions I applied now for so looks like they are gone. The Attendance Officer position I applied for, the one I most want, closed yesterday so I would expect to hear sometime this week if I will be called for interview. Fingers crossed. I’ve then got the three learning support jobs which I have to wait for, all of which close at the end of next week. That means I have four applications on the go so I expect to hear about at least one of those (especially giving how over-qualified I am for them).

Hopefully then I will at least get to stress about being interviewed, which will be a novelty…

Jobs applied for: 8   Responses: 0