The Contradictions of Jobhunting: My Year After Graduating.

I wanted to write a little something about the year I spent looking for a job after university. Although on the surface it might seem like an insignificant, purgatorial space filled mainly with back-to-back episodes of Breaking Bad and experimenting with fonts on my CV, I realised that it was actually a pretty enlightening time in which I learnt a lot of hard truths they don’t mention in those university career talks.

I hesitate to write this, because I’m desperately trying to avoid sounding like another one of those patronising, corporate articles plastered on graduate job websites about ‘How to write a cover letter’ or ‘How to research your employer’ or ‘How to appear relaxed and positive in an interview when you’re approaching your overdraft limit and your family think it’s your fault you haven’t got a job yet’. But they are practical at least, whereas my advice, I warn you, will be no more than a concoction of rambling and feigned wisdom. But, as a brilliant article in the Chicago Tribune once said: ‘Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.’ So I will write what I’ve learnt and what I believe, because it’s the kind of stuff I wish someone had told me when I was fresh out of university.

Firstly, being a graduate jobhunter is full of contradictions. The one that struck me the most was the exhausting façade of positivity that pervades every aspect of the job application process. It’s an absolute necessity to be enthusiastic and confident and so very, very passionate in your interviews, when in reality you’ve never felt more anxious and insecure in your entire life. Let’s face it, jobhunting is a tough and lonely time, where your self esteem is crushed, your financial situation is in peril and the palpable pressure from your family who assume you’re not trying hard enough and from your peers already in stable jobs only increases the longer you remain unemployed. On top of this, you’re trying to accept the fact that whilst all your hard work at uni was at least rewarded by good results, all your painstaking interview prep gets rewarded with nothing but a slap in the face and a return ticket to square one. So you’re feeling miserable, insecure and frustrated, and then you’re thrust into some stifling meeting room in front of two or three important-looking people with sympathetic eyes and furiously scribbling pens and told to smile and wow them with your passion and oh so positive attitude. Well, good luck with that.

I won’t pretend I’m an expert on creating a perfect positive mindset, but I think you have to become completely objective and believe that if you throw enough mud at the wall then some of it will stick. And this is really the only thing that will make you keep trying. After my first few rejections, no matter how much I tried to prepare myself for the worst, I couldn’t help but feel bitter, assume that something must be catastrophically wrong with me and resign myself to my inevitable Benefits Street future. But then when I plucked up the courage to ask for feedback, employers often came back with a response like ‘you were great but another candidate was a bit more enthusiastic’, or ‘you had all the qualities we were looking for but this candidate just had a bit more relevant experience’, which actually made me realise that a job wasn’t too far away and gave me a slight confidence boost. I then became so immune to rejections that I began to see every interview as a mere practice for the one after. And it was only when I started seeing things like this that I suddenly landed a job.

As unnatural as this positive attitude might seem for you in a pretty miserable situation, it is also really important to extend it to wherever you’re within earshot of potential employers and contacts. It’s the most tempting thing in the world to tweet a negative comment after you’ve been ignored or ‘unsuccessful’ yet again, but just be aware that industry contacts and future employers will probably be having a little nose on your profile. So even if you’re not feeling too positive, it’s crucial that you at least act like it. Remember: fake it til you make it.

The next contradiction is the fact that you’ve probably spent three years working ridiculously hard, passing assessments with flying colours, becoming a genius in your field, welling up with pride at how much you’ve achieved at your graduation and framing your degree feeling like you’re ready to take over the world, but a month later you find yourself competing with a thousand other applicants for the honour of making tea. My first TV job was as a Runner on The Valleys, and there was a moment, as I was changing bed sheets covered in vomit, when I had to stop and question how my dissertation on the politics of Keats’s poetry could have prepared me for this. The producers might be asking me to go on my third Starbucks run of the morning, but I was smiling like Nick Clegg himself had offered to pay off my student debt and telling them that it’s absolutely fine, I’ll get it sorted right away. You absolutely have to be humble and willing, because you’ll be the one who the bosses will appreciate the most, and you’ll be the one they’ll think of when a job becomes available on the next rung of the ladder.

Which brings me to my next contradiction: you are desperate for work, but sometimes you need to know when to say no. I have a rough idea of where I want to go with my career, and yet I felt a huge pressure to take anything and everything that was within my grasp, just to remove that huge ‘unemployed’ label that felt like was burned into my head. I very nearly took a six month admin job at a recruitment agency for this reason alone, and it wasn’t until the employer started asking me if this was really what I wanted to do before I admitted to myself that it was far from it, and declined the offer. Lo and behold, I did get a small TV job the week after, but it takes a lot of courage to have faith in yourself. Having said this, taking a job such as this might be a good way of getting some relevant experience and building some confidence if you’re really struggling, but it can be very difficult to distinguish the line between being grateful and being desperate. The writer Neil Gaiman gave an amazing speech on this predicament, and his ‘walking towards the mountain’ technique did help me during these times. He says it much better than I can so I’ll just put it here:

‘If you have an idea of what you want to make, what you were put here to do, then just go and do that. And that’s much harder than it sounds, and sometimes in the end so much easier than you might imagine, because normally there are things you have to do before you can get to the place you want to be. [. . .] Sometimes the way to do what you hope to do will be clear cut, and sometimes it will be almost impossible to decide whether or not you’re doing the correct thing because you’ll have to balance your goals and hopes with feeding yourself, paying debts, finding work, settling for what you can get. Something that worked for me was imagining that where I wanted to be, which was an author [. . . ] - imagining that was a mountain – a distant mountain: my goal. And I knew that as long as I kept walking towards the mountain I’d be all right. And when I was truly not sure what to do I could stop and think about whether it was taking me towards or away from the mountain.’

You can see the full speech here – it’s truly brilliant.

So make the most of any opportunities, but always keep your goals at the front of your mind and set yourself a few boundaries so you don’t get too sidetracked. God knows that in this job market it’s extremely tempting to take any job whatsoever, but don’t sacrifice your happiness in the process.

I could go on with all the little details about thank-you emails and networking, but this can be found on a million websites as it is. I’ll just finish up with a couple of last points:

• Play the hand that you were dealt: make the most of every contact and every opportunity. When you feel like you’re on the verge of begging, you’re probably doing it right.
• Don’t give up: a bit cliché, but it’s so important to have faith in yourself because if you don’t, employers won’t either.
• If your feeling really depressed, stop and think about all the things you have managed to achieve that you’re probably overlooking. You did well to get that degree, to win that award, to get that work experience, to go travelling, to run that marathon – it’s so easy to focus on what you don’t have but make sure you make time to enjoy and feel proud of what you have done and achieved.
• Don’t panic, and don’t take things too seriously.
• Remember: 'freelance' is a great way of saying unemployed.

And one last thing - my English teacher gave me this poem on the last day of school and it's been stuck behind my desk ever since. It's helped me through all of uni and beyond, so I thought it might be worth putting it here too. 'If', by Rudyard Kipling:

I hope this post didn’t sound all doom and gloom, but I just thought a bit of honesty would be the most helpful thing. Sure, a job isn’t going to land on a plate for you and there won’t be any flashing sign telling you which path to take, but as long as you think smartly, act persistently, have a thick skin and a big (let’s face it, purely fictional) smile, you will get there, I promise.

This blog was inspired by Erica Buist’s 'How To Be Jobless' blog, which is brilliant. Give it a read if you feel like you could do with a laugh. 

Where the youth pined away with desire.

Ah! sunflower, weary of time,

Who countest the steps of the sun,

Seeking after that sweet golden clime

Where the traveller’s journey is done;

Where the youth pined away with desire,

And the pale virgin shrouded in snow,

Arise from their graves and aspire;

Where my sunflower wishes to go.

                                     - William Blake

This is a story about change. 

The above poem has always been one of my favourites. I first heard it a few years ago in school and liked it instantly, although I wasn’t sure why because I couldn’t understand it. On the surface it seemed to be nothing more than a few lines of pretty imagery, but there seemed to be something missing:  where is the traveller going? What is the youth pining for? Where does the sunflower wish to go? Everything in this poem seems to direct attention away from itself and point to something else… something else that didn’t exist.

A few years later, I suddenly realised that this absence is key theme of the poem. Everything reaches towards an impossible goal; an imaginary place of fulfilled dreams. The sunflower always faces the sun as it grows, seeking an eternal warmth and light that, in reality, it can never reach. The traveller is constantly seeking his destination, but his identity as a ‘traveller’ suggests that he will never rest. The youth desires some unobtainable goal whilst the ‘pale virgin’ offers a distant image of perfection and beauty that cannot last. I thought the poem was beautiful.  It was about ambition and always reaching for your goals without letting anything distract you from them. But the other day, as I was agonising over some minor aspect of my future for the seventeenth time, someone said something which made me stop and think: ‘sometimes you just have to live in the moment’.

Recently I’ve been worrying a lot about my future. All I’ve been focussed on is reaching after my ‘dream’ job rather than appreciating the one I have, thinking about building ‘contacts’ instead of socialising, obsessing about how I want to be perceived rather than accepting my own self.  Every time I take one step forward I’m looking ahead again, always staring into an unforeseeable abyss. I realised that I haven’t taken one moment to look around to enjoy what surrounds me and take notice of the goals I have achieved.

Now I see the poem differently. There is an air of tragedy in the poem as much as there is hope. The sunflower is ‘weary’ and wastes time by continually striving for something it can never grasp.  The traveller is so focussed on his destination that he cannot see and enjoy the surrounding landscape, or ever be satisfied in settling in one place. The youth wastes away in pining, and although the virgin offers an image of eternal beauty, she is cold and dead inside. 

I have realised, by seeing the poem in this way, that constantly striving for your dreams doesn’t always allow you to engage with reality. Ambition is healthy so long as it doesn’t become a delusion, and dreams don’t provide freedom if they don’t allow you to live.

Getting Into Production

Getting Into Production

I thought it might be useful to write a little piece on how and why I decided to go into production, and on my experience of applying for and gaining a place on the BBC Production Talent Pool 2013. I am by no means qualified to give official advice on this, but hopefully sharing my experience will be helpful and interesting to others wanting to get into the industry or those thinking of applying for the pool next year or those bored on a Monday night with nothing better to read.

I first heard about the Production Talent Pool during my second year of uni. At this point, I’ll be honest, I still was unsure about my career. I was considering journalism, or advertising, or…well, I was still pretty clueless. I had always known exactly what I wanted from a job: I wanted to be creative; I wanted to use my writing skills; I wanted to be doing something different every day; I wanted to deal with big ideas; I wanted to be allowed to think outside the box and make a difference in society through art somehow. But it wasn’t until I stumbled into a presentation at my uni about the BBC Production Talent Pool that I realised that working in production would allow me to do all these things.

I came home from that presentation and immediately started to think about what I had to do to get into the industry. I had no experience or connections whatsoever. I sought out some local indie companies and sent out about fifteen emails, asking for any unpaid work experience. I got one response, but this was all I needed, and within three days I found myself working as a visual effects assistant on a green screen set for a Disney production. I’ll never forget walking into a studio for the first time. Everything about it fascinated me, and from then on I was hooked on learning everything I could about production.

As I went into my final year of university, I got a job working for a national student TV network, and also managed to get a day’s work experience working on ‘Doctor Who’. It was a tough year trying to balance my full-time degree with my part-time job with Subtv, my weekend job at Clarks and production work experience, but I think it was important to demonstrate my passion for the industry by being proactive in this way.

Applying for the Production Talent Pool

February rolled around and it was time to apply. The application process was long, tough and highly competitive. But don’t let that put you off! What’s nice about the process is that it gives you a lot of creative freedom, and, at the end of the day, if you don’t enjoy thinking creatively and writing about your ideas, you probably wouldn’t enjoy working in production.

The first stage was a Situational Judgement Test, which tests your initiative, logic and general common sense in typical working situations. I didn’t find this part too challenging. There is no time limit, so all you have to do is to think sensibly and logically about each situation and say how you would deal with it.

The next stage was the written application, which is your time to shine. This included four questions about your relevant skills and experiences, why you want to be on the Talent Pool and a programme pitch. I had never thought of a programme idea before, and wasn’t too sure where to start. But then I realised that it wasn’t too different from the essays I was constantly writing for my English literature degree, since both fundamentally require you to research what’s been said in the past, how it was received, and then say something new. In this way, it was actually quite easy for me to take the ideas and skills I had developed in uni and transfer them to my programme pitch. When thinking of an idea, I found it useful to think about groups of society that are under-represented, or who don’t normally get a voice. I thought specifically about my audience and the most effective way to reflect them. I also think it is important to write fluently and clearly, and aim to capture your reader. After all, they have thousands of applications to read, so they will probably appreciate a little entertainment! Another piece of advice would be to write it up in a word document, and, as my uni lecturers would relentlessly tell me, leave enough time to come back to your work with fresh eyes, and edit, edit, edit. Above all, I think you should demonstrate your passion for programme-making.

Part of the process also involved a verbal reasoning test, which tests your ability to pick out certain pieces of information in an article, and test how you cope under pressure. I definitely found this test challenging, and I don’t think I was the only one! The only advice I can give is to practise as much as you can before you take the real test. Everyone was convinced they’d failed this part before they were pleasantly surprised, so I think most people end up doing better than they think.

Assessment Centre

I was lucky enough to make it through to the assessment centre, which isn’t half as scary as it sounds. This involved a group task, a prioritising exercise and an individual interview. When it came to the group task, I was convinced that it would include a terrifying apprentice board-room style scenario, complete with relentless arguing, bitchiness and eye-rolling. Thank God I had it completely wrong. Everyone in my team had a say, everyone was lovely and respectful and everyone encouraged other people’s ideas, which was to the advantage of all. One small hiccup we encountered was not realising that we were responsible for managing our own planning time, so make sure you keep an eye on the clock and don’t be afraid to point out that you’ve spent too long or too little on one particular aspect of the task. The only other thing I would say is remember that it’s a group task, and thinking about the team’s goal rather than your own will probably place you in a better light, i.e. don’t push your own idea if you know another one is better. In my group, everyone’s ideas were so impressive that I wouldn’t have been able to choose! I was offered a place on the Production Talent Pool in June, coincidentally the same day that I received my degree result, and I don’t think I’ve ever been through so many conflicting emotions of terror and joy in my life.  

And so ends my application process story, and so begins my life in the Production Talent Pool. The process is long and trying, and you will find yourself desperately checking your emails all day just to see if you’ve made it into the top one thousand to be in the running to be shortlisted for the shortlist. But there is tons of help and support along the way, and a massive sense of community amongst the other applicants as you’re all in it together. Make sure you follow the @BBCTrainees twitter page, which was invaluable to me throughout the application process, and @Don_b_kong and @Spimon are incredibly helpful in giving you support and advice. Like I said, my advice isn’t official, but I found that reading and learning about other people’s experiences really helped me last year, so I hope sharing my story will be similarly beneficial to others.

I should advise you to walk the other way.

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

“That depends a great deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

“I don’t much care where – ” said Alice.

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

“ – so long as I get somewhere,” Alice added as an explanation.

“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”

- Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

This isn't a story about destiny. There's no such thing. This is a story about choices.

I first heard about this scene from Alice in Wonderland in an R.E. class in year 11, when I was talking to a girl next to me about what we were going to do after our GCSEs. She told me that she didn't know what she wanted to do, but that it didn't really matter.

“…Really?” I asked, sceptically.

“Yeah. My Mum said that it’s like that part in Alice in Wonderland where she meets the Cheshire Cat, and she doesn't know which way to go so it doesn't matter which way she goes, if you know what I mean?”

“Oh, yeah. Sure.”

I didn't know what she meant. So I went on worrying about which options to take and blindly guessing at where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do and meticulously planning every detail of my future, just like our teachers and parents told us to. Choose where you want to get to first, think about how to get there second. That's the way it's supposed to be, right?

I decided on journalism. Journalism, or something like journalism. No, wait, I had some work experience in marketing and I loved it. Yes, advertising is the job for me. Definitely. I think. Or publishing would be good, or something in the media. One of them. No, no, I am most definitely born to be a journalist. Yep, that’s it. I am so glad I know exactly what I want to do with my life, and precisely how to go about it. My path is definitely set.

But it wasn't, and it took me a terrifying year of uni to realise that it never is and it never will be. It took me another year to realise that this is exactly the way it should be.

Halfway through my second year I saw that there were some career talks going on. Since I had a free afternoon, I stumbled into one about working in TV. I could have so easily missed that talk and tentatively crept down some route into journalism, but after an hour in that room my whole vision had changed. Just like that, I found myself walking in the opposite direction to the one I had planned.

A couple of months later, I was given the best opportunity of working in TV that I could have imagined. I’ll never know if I only sought this opportunity because of my predetermined choice, or whether I was just very lucky. I don’t believe in destiny, but sometimes the random circumstances of life can form the stepping stones that give you a direction, even if it is tenuous and subject to change, and even if it is not the one you had originally planned.

A couple of weeks ago, I read the Alice tales and I remembered the conversation I had in year 11 once again. Only now did I realise what my friend had meant. Perhaps I didn't know for certain where I wanted to go; perhaps it will always be changing, but it doesn't matter. Sometimes we don’t know where we want to go until we get there, so it doesn't matter in which direction we start. But you will always get somewhere, so long as you walk long enough, and so long as you keep walking. Sometimes random circumstances overrule our original choices, and sometimes random circumstances bring us exactly what we were after before we knew what we were looking for. Sometimes, as nonsensical as it seems, walking in the opposite direction to what we want might just bring us the thing we were aiming for all along.

“I should advise you to walk the other way.”

This sounded nonsense to Alice, so she said nothing, but set off at once towards the Red Queen. To her surprise she lost sight of her in a moment, and found herself walking in at the front-door again.

A little provoked, she drew back, and, after looking everywhere for the Queen (whom she spied out at last, a long way off), she thought she would try the plan, this time, of walking in the opposite direction.

It succeeded beautifully. She had not been walking a minute before she found herself face to face with the Red Queen, and full in sight of the hill she had been so long aiming at.

- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

Art is a test we always fail.

O for a Life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts!  

                                                                              - John Keats

This is a sad story. It’s tragic. It’s about stories of love and death that will never be understood.

It’s about art galleries.

I can see you’re bored already. No, wait, I promise it won’t involve any painfully silent whitewashed corridors or musty smells or artistic concepts you don’t understand.

I study English literature, so I spend a lot of my time reading, looking at and thinking about art. Last time I was in London with my family, I fancied popping to see some Pre-Raphaelite paintings (sorry, I lied about the long words). There was just one problem. My Dad. He can’t stand art galleries. I watched as he moped around for a while, laughing at some paintings, staring dumbfounded at others, before stubbornly slumping into a corner, evidently waiting to leave. I am sure he is not the only one who, if they must go into one of those places, has this inevitable response. When I asked him why he didn't like art, his response was simple: I don’t understand it.

I’m sure all of us have experienced being dragged round these places on school trips when we were younger. The problem is, it has made us all think that art is a kind of test. When I see people walking round an art gallery, it’s less with an air of casual indifference, and more with a panicked determination to see, to know, to understand. What does it mean? What are they trying to say? I don’t know. I don’t understand. And art becomes a test we always fail. Many of us walk out of an art gallery feeling more stupid than when we walked in. And if this is true, art has failed.

I could write all day about the purpose of art. But one thing I believe about art is that it isn't a riddle that needs solving; there is no meaning to uncover or secret truth to detect. Anything we see in a work of art is brought by ourselves. When we look at a painting, we shouldn't strain to understand what the artist was trying to do, we should just pay attention to the way we feel. Enlightened, disgusted, sad, confused: this is all fine. Art is an experience, not a test. Don't be afraid of art, because art is only ever as good as its viewer, and if we cannot understand art, we cannot understand ourselves. 

We should write as we dream.

We should write as we dream; we should even try and write, we should all do it for ourselves, it’s very healthy, because it’s the only place where we never lie… we should try and write as our dreams teach us; shamelessly, fearlessly, and by facing what is inside very human being. 

- Hélène Cixous

When I was little, I wrote stories.

I made things up and wrote things down, and all my whims and fancies and thoughts and feelings flowed freely into my little notebook without a second thought for their reason or purpose. They were awful, but it didn't matter. When I was six it was simple: I wrote stories because I wanted to, and because I enjoyed writing them.

When I was seven, my school had ‘Show and Tell’ every Friday afternoon. My friends would bring in their dolls and their holiday photos, and I would bring my notebook and read out a story. If the other children lost interest, (or never had any in the first place,) I didn't care in the slightest. I read my story because I wanted to, and because I enjoyed reading it. It was simple like that.

When I was nine, my teacher asked me to write what I thought about bullying, so I made something up and wrote something down. I read it to my teacher, then to my class, then to my headmaster and then to the entire school. When I looked up and I saw all those faces staring back with something like approval, I realised that I wasn't just writing stories because I enjoyed them, but because I wanted others to enjoy them too. I learnt that stories made people listen, and think and feel. I learnt that stories have power.

Then, something changed.

I forgot how to write stories. Somewhere amongst the chaos of growing up, a consciousness gleaned that writing meant exposing yourself to the whole world. Were they really any good? I thought they were, but now they seem…trivial. Silly. People might not like my stories. People might not like me, and in short, I was afraid.

Teachers and parents told me that writing should follow certain rules. Writing to argue, persuade, advise. Writing to inform, explain, describe. Writing stories is no career. You should start thinking of your future, soon, now!

…After all, centuries of people have written better than me, so perhaps it’s better to read other people’s stories than to write my own.

When I was eighteen I went to university to study English literature. I read other people’s stories and I enjoyed them. They made me listen, and think and feel. But now when I write it is with rules and word counts and deadlines. Now when I write it’s not always because I want to, or because I enjoy it, but because someone else tells me to. Now when I write I write with the voice of my parents and teachers and lecturers. I write with a voice of panic and distraction. Now when I write, I can’t write me.

When I was twenty I found my old notebook and I read my stories. I enjoyed them, and they made me listen, and think and feel. I remembered that to write is to know yourself. So I wrote a story for the first time in nine years, just because I wanted to, and because I enjoyed writing it, and because I wanted to make people listen, and think and feel once more. So welcome to my stories and welcome to my blog. It has no purpose, but that is exactly why I wrote it.