The hunt is on

Job hunting is, in my opinion, one of the most dispiriting and demoralising pusuits that we ever undertake in the course of our lives.

We spend hour upon hour, day after day, and often week after week searching for vacancies and writing down all of our qualifications in a desperate bid to convince a total stranger to employ us. We get told 'no' so many times that we end up believing that our experience and knowledge are substandard compared to everyone else out hunting. We find ourselves caught in that vicious cycle of experience - no-one wants to hire someone without any experience, but if you can't get hired then you can't get experience.

As someone currently tackling job hunting on a double front - part-time to support my studies and full-time after I graduate - this phenonmenon is by no means unfamiliar to me. In fact, it is far too familiar and sits right next to that feeling of intense frustration that as a (reasonably) intelligent law student on track for a decent degree classification I am finding it extremely difficult to convince anyone to interview me, let alone hire me, for basic minimum wage positions.

Yet all is not lost, I actually succeeded in getting an interview yesterday! Which I will know the result of sometime in the next two weeks...I realise that it takes a while to interview all of the likely candidates, but I can't help but wish I could find out tomorrow and just get to work. In the mean time I have to remind myself (by way of motivating post-it notes all over my desk) that I just need to keep trying and that I am actually a good candidate.

So far I've realised this: if you give up hope and stop trying, no-one will ever hire you. Also, hot chocolate and a big bowl of chilli sin carne are pretty good companions to the endless typing.