You forgot the smiley face, Murdoch. :smiley2:
According to my records, I started 'cold/speculative telephone calling' on 3 August 2012, using details for 'Electricians & Electrical Contractors' [taken from the 'Yell.com' website] and for 'Electricians' [taken from the 'Trusted Trader' section of Derbyshire County Council's website]. Then moved on to further contacts, provided by the initial contacts. Then to the 'Yell.com' lists for 'Electrical Supplies' and 'Electrical Factors'. Something over 200 'companies' contacted, in total. Closest I got to a job was a company that said that they were willing to provide me with some unpaid work experience, but there were issues, so far as Jobcentreplus was concerned, regarding insurance. [I learned later, even if this hurdle had been overcome, my Work Programme provider would not have let me undertake the work experience, unless the company concerned had first been vetted by them, for Health & Safety'.] This for work experience in respect of a job that was to commence the day after the company contacted me (although it was accepted by the company concerned that my commencing a further day later was probably more realistic).
Bit of an aside, but, since around the New Year 2012, the proportion of my time spent looking for electrical work has decreased and that looking for administrative work has increased [this against a background of (i) pressure from my Work Programme provider, who stated, at the outset, that I should 'forget' the electrical qualifications that it had taken me three years to obtain and concentrate on administrative type work and (ii) Jobseeker's Allowance that is {despite our fairly modest fixed monthly outgoings} around seventy-fifty quid shy of said outgoings]. I'm pretty much at the stage of drinking in 'the last chance saloon', so far as job-seeking in the electrical industry is concerned - my post in the 'Jobs in Your Area' section of the Forum is something of a 'death throe'. I'm very much at the stage where I feel that I've probably given it a fair shot and, when all's said and done, you can only bang your head against a brick wall for so long, before you decide that you want it (your head) to stop hurting.
Not looking for sympathy (as I am a big boy now) just posting my experiences, hopefully for the benefit of others. My research beforehand did not show it up (maybe my research was cr**p, but my father-in-law passed away at around the same time that I was made redundant and my then employer needed a timely decision, as regards the provision of funds for any retraining) but, had I known then, what I know now, I'm pretty sure that I would just have 'salted away' my redundancy money and gone straight for another administrative type job.
Sorry to thorpy [the O/P] for going even further off topic, but it does make me wonder if a college should ever even have considered taking on somebody like me? That is to say, 49 years old, when first enrolled, having spent twenty-four years, in two employments (first one, eight years, second one sixteen years), before being made redundant from a public sector 'job for life' [a joke, since our office went from being 'safe' to 'closed', in only ten months]. The reality is that the colleges are probably mostly bothered about filling their courses, to get their fee income and Government funding. In any event, what am I (and all the others - up to 740,000, if I've remembered George Osborne's latest estimate correctly) supposed to do? David Cameron's idea is that the 'private sector' expands, to take up the slack.
Think that I'm correct in my recollection that DC is also on record as stating that people have to get used to the idea of retraining two/three times, during their working life? What, however, is the point of retraining, if you (i) are unable to get a job in your newly chosen career, as you do not have any relevant experience and (ii) you are unable to get any relevant experience in your newly chosen career, as the 'private sector' has not expanded enough to be able to employ all the people that already have relevant experience, let alone employ those that don't. And, all the while, the Government of the day is quite successfully convincing the 'person on the Clapham Omnibus', that everybody not in work/or in receipt of state benefits, is a lazy scumbag.
I feel much better for that. :smiley2:
Cheers,
Jez Wilkins
