Job (and head) hunting

5 weeks ensued of creating embellished CVs, writing elaborate cover letters, applying for jobs, speaking to retarded recruitment consultants who promise to call and never do, having telephone interviews, going for 2nd interviews, failing interviews, starting the whole process again... You get the idea. Thoroughly depressing stuff but we always had each other to moan to and one of us would usually then suggest a therapeutic work-evasive activity (like eating or compiling photo montages.)

Alas, that time has come to an end. Rhod is now the proud owner of...a job! However, there is one hitch. The job sees him working in Germany Monday to Friday and only returning home at weekends. I am losing the friend with whom I spent the last 10 months 24/7 (apart from toilet breaks) and never ran out of things to talk about! It is a fantastic opportunity though. Rhod has secured a Project Managament Consultant job so has successfully moved away from the clutches of Ford. The company are highly efficient; within 45 minutes of him accepting the job he had emails from future work colleagues expressing how pleased they were, his flights to and from Cologne for next week had been booked and his luxury hotel (complete with Holmes Place fitness club and 20m pool) was all sorted. Rhod signs his contract in London tomorrow (Monday) and jets off for his first week of fully expensed work on Tuesday. I however am left alone jobless and living with my mum and dad . That is partly my own fault though.

I was offered a job as a headhunter with a small executive search company in Charing Cross which I began this week. It was to be a trial basis and therefore unpaid. I was thrown in at the deep end without training and I hated every minute of it. I was having to phone up vice presidents of huge firms in the US and ask them if they wanted to change jobs for the one I knew hardly anything about. Needless to say I was unsuccessful and I lasted for 2 days before I quit. Brave, yes. Stupid, most probably.

Because I wish to change careers from teaching, I am finding that I am being rejected from jobs that I think I would succeed in with a bit of training. Most companies ask for experience so I am having to apply for jobs that graduates straight out of university apply for and almost all of them are on a lower salary to what I was earning when I left teaching. But I will persist and find my dream job!