In October 2015, I was made redundant from my fund management job of nineteen years. This was my fourth experience of redundancy, the previous one having been in 1992, but I had supposed that this time the existence of internet-based agencies and sites like LinkedIn would make finding work a lot easier than before, when I had spent a lot of time – and shoe leather – in pursuit of my next employer. Although I was fifty years old, I did not, and still do not, believe that age is a disadvantage in my business.

Job hunting, like every other aspect of life, is very different in 2016 compared to 1992. However, unlike, say, shopping, there is no longer an option to do it in the old-fashioned way. Recruitment companies that used to have accessible shop window premises now exist in managed office buildings and cannot be accessed without an appointment, which is in turn difficult to get, despite the fact that many of them warmly invite applicants to contact them to arrange a meeting. Similarly, other ploys, such as leaving CVs under the windscreen wipers of expensive cars are much less attractive in the age of identity theft and digital fraud. It may be a coincidence, but since my personal details have been ‘out there’ in cyberspace, I have received a lot more notifications about fraudulent attempts to log into my accounts. I have also been added to the mailing lists of many companies that I have never heard of. It seems that once a CV is sent out, it is impossible to have any control over where it ends up, and this is worrying.

The internet does make it easier and quicker to apply for jobs though, right? Well yes, but that is not necessarily a good thing. Previously, I applied for jobs advertised in the Financial Times or another national newspaper. This involved writing a letter, enclosing my CV and going to the post box. I assume that others did the same thing and the recruiters may have had to read through a couple of dozen applications. Now, it is easy for anyone to apply for jobs in bulk, very quickly, and so applicants are much less discriminating, with the result that jobs on LinkedIn often show hundreds of applications from all over the world. In reality, many of the applicants may be totally unsuitable, or may be unable to work in this country, but the sheer bulk of applications means that recruiters have to resort to technology to solve the problem that other technology has created. This means, for instance, that a candidate who boasts skills in Excel may be passed over, because the machine that is scanning the application is looking for ‘Microsoft Excel’.
Despite more than 250 applications, I am no further forward in my search

I decided that the first step should be to build on my considerable experience in institutional fund management by attaining an RDR level 4 qualification in wealth management, which I completed successfully in July. But despite more than 250 applications – direct applications, indirect applications, speculative applications and a lot of networking, I am no further forward in my search.

A typical day for me starts at 6am. Fortunately, having a school-aged son, I do not have the option of falling into lazy habits! Once he has left the house at 7.15am, I am free to go for a run, shower and grab a coffee, before sitting down at the computer by 9am. I have a dedicated email address just for job-hunting, and my first task is to go through the thirty or so emails that have arrived during the previous 24 hours from various websites. There is rarely anything of value in these, as their job recommendations are driven by keywords that may have many different meanings. For instance, ‘investment’ is a word used in business development (sales) job descriptions, and by utility companies needing to appraise new facilities projects. ‘Analyst’ is often used in IT or engineering job descriptions. Then there are the direct approaches by recruiters who have seen my CV and want to put me forward for a role as a qualified actuary. I have no actuarial qualifications or experience, but as I have worked on Solvency II matching portfolios, my CV does mention working with actuaries, and this keyword appears to trigger responses, even from those agents that claim not to use automated screening. Endlessly pointing this out fails to reduce the number of unsuitable vacancies that keep coming from the same sources.

My first recourse after checking emails is LinkedIn, as it is a major source of relevant vacancies. A vacancy listed on LinkedIn is sometimes placed by the company that is hiring, but in many, if not most cases it comes from an aggregation site, which is fed by an underlying recruitment agency, which in turn handles the hiring company. In most cases, where the internet has been introduced into an industry, it has served to eliminate intermediaries, but recruitment seems to be one area in which it has had the opposite effect, introducing extra layers to the hiring process. Once you have sent your CV into the ether, it is unlikely that you will ever receive anything more than an automated acknowledgement, if that, with little chance of being able to follow up your application, or even find out what company you were actually applying to.
Job-hunting in 2016 is an impersonal experience, fraught with frustrations

I have a number of different CV templates to use according to the type of job that I am applying for, and similarly, after a year of looking, I have a range of covering letters to draw upon. In theory, this should save time, but in many cases an application will involve uploading my CV and then having to enter almost every detail from that CV by hand, which is both time-consuming and soul-destroying. I would expect to spend at least an hour on each application, though some sites do allow me to apply for a large number of jobs very quickly, through a one-click CV forwarding process. Taking the time to prepare applications properly means that the day goes very quickly, and often I will be working on applications in the evenings and at weekends.

Job-hunting in 2016 is an impersonal experience, fraught with frustrations. When applying online, there is often insufficient information to allow any kind of follow-up. Jobs are often posted without a name, a reference or a telephone number, leading me to question whether the jobs actually exist, or whether CVs are simply being harvested. Even when I have had an interview, in many cases I have heard nothing further from the company. I am currently awaiting the second interview that I was promised with a market-leading insurance company in February of this year. When I chase them, they simply insist that they are having ‘internal conversations’ and have not made a decision. Similarly, I have, on a couple of occasions, met with recruiters who have enthused at length about the rare and valuable skills described on my CV, and have been astounded that I have not yet been snapped up. These recruiters are never heard from again, and follow-up contact from me meets with a much more subdued response than I would expect.

Of course, the referendum in June did nothing to improve my prospects. Many jobs that I was pursuing at that time were withdrawn and it is only since September that I have started to see a noticeable pick-up in the market. Ultimately, I am fairly agnostic about the exact form that my next role will take. I feel that, having worked in a small team for so long, I have developed a diverse set of skills that could lend themselves to many different opportunities. However, in the absence of an employer who agrees with this, perhaps my next ploy should be to add the words ‘own Santa costume’ to my personal information.