Pages

Monday 20 August 2012

Making Time

...
It's quite a mixed bag of opinions over whether being in a job or not is helpful when seeking alternative employment.

Large periods of unemployment certainly don't look good.  But the flip side of being unemployed or working only a few hours is that you are available, for the most part, at the drop of a hat to attend interviews at your potential new employers convenience.

If you're in work it may not be that easy.

Sure, it looks good; no or very few gaps in employment, a current reference available, and should the job be something you took on purely for the sake of earning something (or anything at all to pay the bills) it looks like you're determined and not above putting in some hard graft.

HOWEVER ... your 'this'll do' employment may well get in the way of attending interviews.  Particularly if you can not get time off at short notice to attend said interviews, scuppering your changes of gaining better employment!

In my case, if I want time off, I have to book it around six weeks in advance.  Yes - six weeks!  The rotas are varied and I typically get one weekday off per week.  And sometimes I get a weekend day off.

I was lucky that I received my invitation to interview just before I had a Thursday off work.  Now that I'm waiting on a phone call I'm really hoping to hear back on Wednesday at the latest, because I happen to have this Thursday off as well.  With a little luck, I could potentially get my second interview to tie in nicely with my day off.

The main problem I have hit is that if I don't hear back in time, next week is awkward.  I have the bank holiday off work, but I imagine that the practice is closed that day anyway.  The only other day I have off that week is Saturday.  The practice isn't open on weekends.

I can't ask for the day off because the rota is already set.

The only way around that issue is to swap shifts with someone.  So I consider myself very lucky that one of my colleagues is quite willing to swap with me - I'll work his Saturday shift and he'll take one of my weekday shifts to free up a day.

That said, I may not even need a full day - if it's not inconvenient for the practice, I could offer to attend a morning one day and an afternoon on another day.  Granted there's every chance that that won't be very convenient but it's another option available.

Thus, my initial panic of 'oh my god, I only have this Thursday free' has now been calmed.  I have options.

I just have to wait on that phone call and just hope that it's good news.  I doubt I'll hear anything today now since they're only open for another hour or so.

Maybe tomorrow ...

0 comments:

Post a Comment