Is a 25% response rate to applications acceptable?

Imagine walking into a crowded room, introducing yourself and only a quarter of the people there bother to look up and say hello. It would instantly put you on edge; is there something on your face? Is your dress tucked into your tights? Have you in fact turned invisible?

Sending job applications in the digital world is, to use a lovely and vulgar phrase, much like pissing in the wind. You research the company and think “these look like the sort of humans I would enjoy working with”. You write a detailed letter full of shining examples of your brilliance, you apply, and you wait. And wait. And then – nothing. Radio silence. Have they even received it? Sometimes companies will grace you with the automated reply email, which is greatly appreciated. But more often than not, you will receive nothing back whatsoever, and I don’t think that’s okay.

Out of the 16 most recent jobs I have applied for, a mere four people bothered to respond with what I call the “Thanks, but get stuffed” email.
They often go a bit like this: ‘Unfortunately, your application has not been successful because we’d actually already decided who was being internally promoted, but we had to advertise the role externally anyway. Sorry about that.’

Or this: ‘Unfortunately, your application has not been successful because Geoff has retired, and no-one has ever been entirely sure what his job role was, but he did at least 54 different tasks and we basically just need him back. If you are Geoff, please apply below.’

Sometimes: ‘Unfortunately, your application has not been successful because you do not have the precise degree we require for this extremely general role.’

But most regularly: ‘Unfortunately, your application has not been successful because you don’t have the necessary experience, and we won’t help to provide that by offering you employment, you totally useless oxygen thief.’ You get the picture.

The flicker of hope soon fades each morning – somewhere between the fifth cup of tea and the second dramatic sigh. You’ll sit and refresh your inbox like a dog waiting for the postman. To only receive a response, not even feedback, from a mere 25% of recruitment teams and HR departments is not enough. I need to at least know they are listening. To paraphrase wildly, despondency is the thing without feathers, that sits on your head and eats your motivation. If you don’t know the status of an application, it breeds false hope.

Communication isn’t just one of my “skill set” or something in which I have “extensive experience” – the buzzwords don’t apply. I talk. I listen. I learn. Communication requires more than one person, so recruiters and potential employers: just send a response. Interact with your fellow humans, and you never know what might happen next.

Five years’ time? I don’t even know what I want for dinner.

Where do you see yourself in five years’ time?

Ah, old friend. We meet again.

For anyone who has recently attended an interview, this question should be all too familiar. I think the idea behind it is to evaluate your career goals; to see whether you are gutsy enough to say “doing your job” or if you just shrug violently with a panicked expression.

Fortunately, the question seems to crop up less frequently as you get older; I imagine because in five years’ time you are supposed to be an Adult, or at least a bit more adulty than you currently are.

(By the way, “in space”, “older but cooler”, “in a tree”, “eating more cake” and “I don’t have a clue” are apparently not deemed valid answers.)

How can anyone know what they want in the near future? I struggle to choose which socks to wear in the morning: I can’t be trusted with life goals.

No, there has been some sort of mistake. A paperwork error. I am not an adult, and I am opting out of ever having to be one. I don’t want to make boring decisions about mortgages, careers or other people. I want to live in a world where half curly fries and half chips is still a pressing issue.

Other things I find frightening in interview situations, ranked for your reading pleasure:

1.       Desk etiquette.

I am a leaner. I lean on things. You know the expression “if there’s time to lean, there’s time to clean”? Yeah, well that’s me. Not content with sitting upright like normal homo sapiens, I tend to lean forward on the table, resting a combination of my elbows, bust and forearms – or sometimes all of the above – in what can be deemed either an aggressive, lazy, or possibly bad-backed manner. Should you lean first, or wait for the interviewer to lean? Why won’t I stop wildly gesturing? Why are my palms sweating? Is that boob sweat? Oh, god.

2.       The drinks question.

Yes, I would love a drink. I’d really like a cup of tea, so I can clutch it to my chest and partially hide behind the steam. They only have coffee, and I am an over-oiled machine after drinking coffee. A hyperactive chihuahua; a gremlin fed after midnight. For everyone’s sake, don’t give me coffee. There’s water? Excellent. We can all watch my sweaty hands steam up the glass and pretend not to see it happening.

3.       Where do you put your stuff?

I have a lot of stuff. Normally my stuff is contained in one sensible bag (but not a sensible bag, like sensible shoes, just a spacious bag) but occasionally interviews call for me to take my laptop along. Does it go on the desk in front of me? Too presumptuous. Does it go under my chair, ready to be trodden on? Absolutely not. Should I just switch it on and offer everyone a go on Tetris? And don’t get me started on coats; coats are a special nightmare accessory. The hider of sweat patches, the hugger of shoulders, left stranded on the back of my chair, where it will invariably slither off and land in a soft crumple on the piebald carpet to join lonely crumbs and old map pins.

4.       Talking.

Don’t misunderstand me here: under normal circumstances, I am brilliant at talking. I remember to not drop my H’s in polite company, I say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and ‘yes I am fine’. I even do quite a good Alan Bennett impression. But at soon as it comes to the talky bit of interviews – the whys, hows and whens, I lose a lot of my words. They evaporate. I vote to conduct all future interviews through interpretive dance – the kind I do in supermarkets to the muzak – via a decent game of charades and finally, crucially, through the tea test. Can this employer make good tea? Never mind me telling you about a time I planned ahead through both proactive and reactive methods, has anyone got a dog? I love dogs; all dogs, dogs in neckerchiefs, dogs that look like bears, dogs with overbites. Let’s talk about them instead.

Rest assured I am a reasonably ordinary human. I have flashes of bastardry, such as pressing the pedestrian crossing button a bit too early and walking across without the green man, causing angry traffic to wait – what a wag I am – but usually I live a simple and amusing life. It’s worth noting, among all the interview angst, that I am actually looking for a job. If you are reading this and wondering if you should call me, go on. It’ll be fun, I promise.

10 Crazy Tips for Tackling Writer’s Block

When Clive has stolen all your words and is holding them to ransom for biscuit crumbs, writing anything at all can be a labour of love. Confused? Don’t be.
Not knowing what to write but feeling a desperate need to creative can be a real struggle. Here are 10 of the best tried and tested ways to defeat the beast of burden.

1.       Try to write something each day.

Don’t worry if it’s rubbish; in fact, you should expect the first few sentences to be complete nonsense. Write about your view out of the window, or your cup of tea, or the guy who does that thing at the bus stop all the time. Sitting around simply talking about writing without doing anything will never shift the block, however satisfying it may feel to wallow in your creative self-pity. See Tip 7.

2.       Give it a name.

My writer’s block is called Clive – and he is a real idiot. Clive steals all the words from my head and hides them behind the settee. Like a small, yappy dog, Clive won’t let you have any of the words until you follow Tip 1 and just try to write something. He then releases the words in small batches, and sometimes I’m even allowed adjectives. Brilliant.

3.       Don’t let it win.

Writer’s block comes from many different places, and from my own experience it comes from a point of insecurity: if I don’t write anything, then it won’t be shit. But by not writing anything at all, you let Clive win his tug o’ war with your words. Just try a little bit, even a to-do list is enough some days.

4.       Drink a lot.

By this I mean drink a lot of liquids – this can be tea, coffee, water, juice, soup, wine, beer, rum, the list goes on. If you keep your brain hydrated, you stand more of a chance of getting the creative (not orange) juices flowing. If you choose to drink alcohol, you may find you come over a bit Hunter S. Thompson and your writing will get weird, very rapidly. But you do you.

5.       Get outside.

Remember the outside world? Nah, me neither. So get your boots on and go for a walk in the fresh air. Take your canine companion (if you have one) or borrow a dog, or relative, or friend and get those lactic-acid filled limbs swinging. An oxygenated brain is a creative brain.

6.       Or get in the pool/on your bike.

It turns out physical exercise is actually quite useful. Sorry, anyone who ever tried to teach me PE at school. That six-week long menstrual cycle with a twisted ankle has cleared up now, thanks.

7.       Talk about it.

Find a writing group to talk about your concerns. I’ve been assured everyone gets an attack of the Clives every now and then. Also by talking about your current work, you might even inspire yourself to revisit that frustrating chapter or unruly character.

8.       Do something else.

Yep, you read it correctly: do something else. It doesn’t have to be writing, or a creative endeavour at all. Pair up your socks, or learn a new skill. Sometimes I find clearing out a clothes drawer, knitting, practising shorthand, reading or playing video games helps to take my mind off not-writing.

9.       Research, research, research.

Where do your characters live? What do they eat? Are they even alive? Whether you are crafting a dystopian zombie love story or an historical compilation of lampshades, you can never do enough research on your topic. So bust out your library card and notebook and go forth!* Learn all there is to know about the language preferences of the undead. With snacks.

*Or you can use the internet, but you will get distracted by cats and less interesting listicles. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

10.   JUST WRITE.

The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed the similarity of this tip to number 1. That’s because it’s the best remedy to not knowing what to write. The longer you allow yourself to do nothing, your brain will curl up and hibernate, taking all your inspiration and ideas with it. Clive will make a castle out of your unused verbs, and you’ll be stuck. If you were stuck down a hole, and the only way to get out was to call for help, you would, wouldn’t you? So the only way to get out of a writing rut is to write.

What's on my clipboard #1

Because I am thinking at a million miles a minute, I've got quite a lot of jobs on right now so I wanted to let you know them all!

I outlined my fiction in progress on a previous post, and my other irons in the fire are:

1. A post on 'fandom' - why people love what they love and if there are common uniting themes; is there a universal application for obsessive people? For example - are obsessive people also creative people? People who work in media or arts? Or express themselves in another way?

This fascination stemmed from an obsessive teenage me - music and specific bands I will detail in future were more important than 'real' people or situations. I want to investigate how these obsessions mould us into who we are, and whether the obsessions have influence over the rest of our lives. Do they make us more or less orderly? More or less ordinary?

Some orderly and organised oranges from Leicester market. Just because.

2. A post on 'possession' movies from a feminist perspective - why must the possession theme be an almost exclusively female issue? Is this only a rape/birth allegory? Or something darker?

I'm a major horror film fan - I love huge areas of the genre and I find myself coming back to the feminist perspective - here's a great blog on the trope of the Final Girl - but it's not final girls I want to particularly focus on. As a woman, I find it increasingly frustrating to see characters portrayed only as "strong women" once they have defeated the demon/entity/whatever is infesting their bodies. It could just be a simple pregnancy allegory, or the Hollywood patriarchy controlling women through fiction, but I want to find out more.

Gorgeous dahlias from the Eden Project - because we need colour to distract demons.

"What's on my clipboard" is going to be an ongoing theme - please bear in mind the clipboard is purely imaginary. I can't use physical clipboards or I'll lose the plot entirely.
Stayed tuned for these future posts - the horror/women one may end up being more of an essay but it's one I've been keen to write for ages.

New Year, new submissions

Hello to 2016 - you've snuck up from nowhere, haven't you?

The New Year has brought but one resolution for me - write more. I have neglected my fiction for a long time due to various time constraints and work commitments, but this is now the time to strike and tap away at the keyboard like a caffeinated, tap-dancing mouse.


NB: Blog post edited 21/1/16.

I'm working on a few pieces currently, a series of shorts for the lovely Mslexia - for all women who write. Choices at the moment include poetry, fiction, non-fiction and confessions. My other current work is a new piece on Dreams for the wonderful and much-lauded Are You Sitting Comfortably? by White Rabbit and a few other bits and bobs. I may even dig out my novel this year - not my first work in progress, which is now more of a harddrive entity than a novel - but my second and main WIP.

With my CV landing in the inboxes of various agencies as we speak, I have to find something engaging to do in the long, unemployed winter afternoons. So I dance. Like Mickey.

"The time has come", the walrus said, "to speak of many things"

It’s no great mystery that I’ve been living and working in Truro, (Cornwall, UK) for the last two and a bit years. My full-time job is the one that brought me down here, and having left it is my reason to leave.
It’s finally time to pursue my passion for writing, so this rite is about how writing got me here, and how writing has scooped me back out.
I intend to do freelance copywriting and chase creativity whenever I have the chance.

I have always loved Cornwall. My family and I visited south Cornwall for years on holidays, year in and year out, nothing would change except sometimes the village we visited, or the four-seasons-in-one-day weather. The beauty drew us back year on year, so when a job came up I jumped at the chance to live in such a beautiful and timeless place.

My job was in retail – after five years using the past tense sounds mad – and I was lucky enough to manage an excellent shop filled with wonderful people. I have grown. Not up – I will never grow up – but lots of useful things have been learnt, both the easy way and the hard way.

Writing has remained a pillar of calm and relative normality. Having spent the bulk of time here alone, it has acted as a constant reminder that I can escape loneliness, albeit through the page. I’ve had short fiction read and recorded, written an ad script and made some decent headway into my novel.

Now I am able to fight writer's block with no distractions. This piece doesn’t really have an ending. It’s a new start and a new chapter. Stick with me, it'll be fun.

Published work, podcasts and white rabbits...

I have exciting news!
You can find a piece of my fiction read aloud and featured among other writers on a podcast here.

My piece features at around the 30 minute mark, and is read by the talented Gareth Brierley and Bernadette Russell who combined are White Rabbit, a cabaret-style performance group who read original work by authors who have submitted short fiction pieces on a theme - the theme this time was Heroes and Villains.

Please be aware my piece does contain explicit language.

For more information of submitting your own work, follow the rabbit down...