Despite the title I’m not, in fact, talking about
my sporting pursuits of late. I do have a bee in my bonnet about trying
to find a job though.
My current employment contract (last renewed 4
months ago) comes to an end tomorrow and I have been submitting
applications at a rate of over one per day for the last two weeks in an
attempt to have a job lined up for when I return to the UK at the start
of March. Up to that point it’d been a slighter slower, but not
insignificant, rate of 1 or 2 a month since I started working on my MA
dissertation in the late spring of 2012. I managed to pick up a
temporary contract that helped to make ends meet while I finished
studying and that has been renewed and continued since. But tomorrow it
ends.
I know it could be said that I am in a more
fortunate position that many other 22 year old job seekers – my level of
education means I’m looking at jobs that do command a salary
significantly above a living wage when I finally do get employment. I
know that the minimum wage jobs many are desperately seeking just to be
earning don’t actually pay enough to live on when you find one – or if
they do supposedly ‘per hour’, they don’t come with any guarantees of
those hours from one week to the next. I don’t want to bore you with the
countless statistics that tell you how many 16-25 year olds are
unemployed. What I’m concerned about is how this problem is making
people feel.
Every rejection message digs away at your
confidence, every unsuccessful interview makes you questions your own
abilities, and every time I hear someone say ‘there was another
candidate with more professional experience, would you consider doing an
unpaid internship with us?’ I actually just want to cry. I’ve been
working in office environments since I was temping at 16, I’ve
volunteered since I was 12. I’m now 22. I’d like to turn around and ask
how I’m meant to have more professional experience than somebody who’s
been legally allowed to work for 4 times as long as me – but that would
probably do nothing to help me get a job.
I even got turned down for a 3 month paid
internship with that organisation I have volunteered for since I was 12 –
apparently I didn’t have enough workplace experience… Now, sorry one
moment, but I thought that was what an internship was designed for? What
you actually wanted was a 3 month temp.
I know that when I fill out application forms, or
answer questions in interviews, I sometimes sound a little desperate for
a job. And I know that usually costs me the job. But for somebody who
desperately wants to work and has been turned down so many times, it’s
difficult to want to play this like it’s a game.
Lately I’ve found some employers have this little
clause that gives me false expectations. There’s now a little check box
that I see more and more: we guarantee an interview to any person with a
disability who meets the minimum requirements of the role. I
am a person with disabilities – not significant enough to stop me
working, but significant enough that I am affected by them. I have
asthma, I have IBS (currently preventing me from eating dairy, egg,
gluten, and red meat), I have dyspraxia, but it is dyslexia that I think
disadvantages me in this process. Basically, I find filling out forms
really difficult – the words and boxes swim across the page and it takes
me as much effort to remember my first name as the date and awarding
body of my Latin GCSE when it comes to write it in the right place.
So yes I’m grateful of any opportunity to hop to
the front of the queue and try to show how I’m the best candidate during
an interview. But then I wonder if this gives me false expectations. As
I got a bye in the first round am I automatically seeded last before
the interview begins? Would I have even been close to the short-list if
there wasn’t this positive discrimination box to tick? I still have my
doubts.
The disability doesn’t have to be specifically
related to form filling, so there’s a big flaw in the concept. For
example maybe I’ll find a form that lets you score points for every
under-represented characteristic. Maybe something in the STEM
industries: I’m female, check, multiple disabilities, check, LGBTQI+,
check, went to an inner city primary school, check. Just got to keep my
fingers crossed there’s no BME candidate to pip me at the post. Though
then I’d in all likelihood end up in a misogynistic and xenophobic
environment where actually I’d rather be unemployed than work for them.
Let’s change the culture, not the application process. I remain on the
fence about positive discrimination.
Time to get back on my bike. A way to make blogging into my own little business is just around the corner, maybe…
