Since arriving in Sydney way back in November the search for a job has shown varying degrees of success for everyone i've come across. Guy for example found a job waiting in a hotel within five minutes of dishing CVs out, it took Melanie another two months to get hers and the majority had no success whatsoever. Me fitting into the latter category obviously.
I never actually brought a C.V. with me so that probably wasn't the best of starts i must say, it also took me far, far too long to produce one of any standard but they a bit of a bastard to right from scratch. Once completed i still only lasted a day handing them out to retail shops and the like before getting disheartened by the whole process. It's night on impossible to show any value or personality in 5 seconds to some dweeb while with it being Christmas no manager really wants to spend five minutes jaw jacking with yet another backpacking job seeker. Oh and who can really afford to keep printing this stuff out? These were all justifiable reasons to me to just concentrate on seeking for jobs online or hoping to get work through an agency too.
Ah but the agencies proved to be yet another dead end too. I was expecting to get an actual, you know "agent" of sorts but that proved to be a bit too much to ask for, I couldn't even speak to someone face to face with all the offices strangely being situated outside Sydney. I must have registered online for about nine different agencies in total, each of varying type but I only actually heard back from one and thaqt was a glorified computer system. All it did was give you e-mail updates of new jobs going online based on keywords, I could've bloody done that myself! All the jobs were "career" type too which was totally unsuitable really. The least amount of responsibility please.
Much like every other backpacker i gave it the "i'll do anything for work......except yadda yadda yadda" speech. Those yadda yadda yaddas always right off quite a few jobs i must say, mine including all sales work and bar jobs so that's a prety hefty chunk writen off in one go. The only reason there's plenty of sales jobs is that people don't last two minutes due to the shitty work conditions and commission based pay. Hello Adam Skinner and Jonas Jonasen. So anyway i found myself spending the majority of time sitting in Everywhere Internet Cafes, Subway in tow and looking for a job. Looking for a job means sitting on Facebook, Football websites, hotmail, youtube, music pages, blogging and sometimes....just sometimes trawling through seek.com and gumtree. Literally every single there is doing the same thing so you know you've got much competition in just one place.
Gumtree did manage to provide some humour before that one got written off as a joke too. Obviously i applied for countless jobs on there (and looked for local football teams to play for) but the only replies i got were from business scams saying stuff like "this is a business opportunity, give us x amount of cash and you'll earn millions!". Sure sure sure....I also placed an ad on ther elooking for any retail or warehousing work, the only response i got was well worth it:
re: retail work
Hi there, my Name is David and i'm a 27 year old caucasion man in Newtown looking for intimate company.
If all goes well we can make it a regular cash thing. Thanks, get back x
hahaha hardly shop work or laboring ad god knows why the guy was cruising gumtree job ads of all places. You do get weirdos putting things up like "i need a fit girl to massage me" or "someone do my rubbish for quick cash". I wasn't that desperate yet but of course i had to ask for more details but none were forthcoming unfortunately. I'd have made a quality gigolo too.
After two months applying for every single labouring, merchandising, data entry, retail, packing and office job i finally hit the point where i was just about fucked. I'd been told i needed car wash experiance (really?), night office experience (day time not being suffice) and my favourite past time was spending ages filling out application forms only to be told on the last page my visa wasn't suitable. That should be the first question idiots! Skinner actually had to go through the whole interview process, wait a week only to be told the same thing. Sort it out Australia! They love a scam too, you need cards for everything at about 90 dollars each. There's RSA and RSG for bar work, safety for construction, traffic ones, basically any money earner they can think of. Not that they mean much, Penfold and Jew Piglet Captain Jack had all their cards, experience of bar work, silver service and got nowhere. An average looking female orders a drink and she's working that night. Having reached the point where i was going to have to move on by the Friday to go fruit picking i was in dire straights. Pleasantly i had a missed call on the Monday morning, I assumed it was the German girl in my dorm i'd given my number too but it turned out to be for a job. Only problem was i had zero memory of applying fo it since there's been that many, i managed to bullshit him though and bagged an interview. I went straight online and it appeared i'd applied a month prior with the job being going round various supermarkets doing refits for a company called Relayforce. Pretty ideal and i prefer a heavy job, 200 bucks a shift too.
The interview itself was a very strange affair. I made the usual error of getting there far too early so i was pretty wired when i went in, it w as a simple job but i really needed to get it so put a bit too much pressure on myself and probably took it a bit too seriously. The offices were very corporate so i thought being professional as possible was the way to go, the interviewer begged to differ. He told me to relax then started swearing his head off as if i was his mate down the pub, then he would switch into the usual questions and be professional. Probably tryin to catch me off i think, the questions were the usual patter. Example of a conflict and resoltion, what skills you have, blah blah blah. His manner did really catch me off guard but i should've known, it is the Aussie way. I left the interview having zero clue how it went but he told me he'd let me know on friday by text if unsuccessful or call if I got the job. So a few days later i was pretty gutted to find a text on my phone when i left it on charge.....thankfully on closer inspection it was a voicemail stating "Welcome aboard" Ah good times. I imagine that was a grand night too.
Only problem is, i've barely worked since. I've known nothing like it. I get 200 dollars a day but that's hardly worth it if you're never in, i'm in at 3 am tonight so hopefully this is the starrt of it picking up. My workmates are a bit odd but they always are on night shift, that's why they doo nights, they're not allowed out during the day cause they'd scare people. My first shift i was told to wait outside Hungry Jacks and look for an irish guy in red polo shirt, i noticed an indian wandering about in a red top looking for someone so i asked if he worked for them too. "Yes" the reply then he just kept looking about, know if someone i'd never met knew wher i'd work i'd be a bit more inquizitive. I also freaked everyone out by going round shaking peoples hand and introducing myself, they clearly never seen that one done either haha. An Irish backpacker there seems sound at least and another guy had been to England a few times. Hopefully i'll start racking the cash in then!
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