Readying myself to get back to work

I’ve been on a Job Centre-prescribed training scheme to help me acquire some work experience and hopefully get me back into work. It’s four weeks into the programme and it’s giving me plenty of opportunity to observe myself, to see where I’m really at with regard to my employability. And not least of all, to get real information and genuine feedback from trainers, employers and job agencies.

Some of my findings have been shocking: first of all, I didn’t know so much of my confidence has been eroded over the four year I’ve been unemployed. In my first week at this training scheme, we played a variation of Dragon’s Den in which I was a job applicant and fellow trainees role-played the parts of prospective employers and interviewers at job agencies. At the first mock interview with my fellow trainees – I was shocked to see how nervous I was. I was all over the place, inarticulate like a child and clutching at anything like the proverbial drowning man! I couldn’t believe I was the same person who had been on interview panels to select employees for my organisation in the past. Little did I know that my experience had faded away and that I now need to retrain myself on how to handle job interviews.

The second thing that shocked me was getting how my daily disciplines and routines have been impacted by the long period of unemployment. I know folks who don’t like to get out of bed before midday … but that’s not me. I don’t have my son’s teenage thing of sleeping most of the day and being up most of the night. Actually, I like to get up at dawn and catch the dew on early morning walks or runs.

I realise I’ve now gone beyond the 9 to 5 and similar just show-up routines of certain organisations. I’ll do 12 hours of work straight when I have to get on with a project; I’ ll work weekends when I have to; I work long hours into the night when I have to deliver results by a deadline. But when I have to go and sit in an office for 6 hours and do what can be done in an hour or two in the name of a training scheme, something in me screams against the “system”. My challenge then is finding a work role that will focus on producing results, rather than conforming to old-style workplace routines that I hear are still rife in some places.

Now to my third insight: I’m finding it’s not easy to draw the line between being principled and being practical. From the do-goodie perspective, a training scheme to help me back into work may be just what I need … but it irks me to think there are people … officialdom, really … who want to move me from one set of statistics to another set of statistics without addressing my real needs and concerns. Even though I’m still unemployed, government statistics got improved by one person last month - by moving me from being in receipt of Job Seekers Allowance to being a Job Trainee receiving a training allowance.

I know I’m not one of the “I’ll do anything” brigade: I’m looking for a position where I can make a contribution and, at the same time, feel fulfilled to be using and developing my skills. I have no problem with motivation – it’s no big deal to show up on time and do above average work when I go to various volunteer jobs I do. But when somebody tries to fit me into a cookie-cutter pattern, something is provoked … a part of me just doesn’t want to do it! I question my own motivation though: am I being rebellious for the sake of rebellion or do I just shut up and be grateful for whatever comes my way?

I’ve been getting ready to move on for a long time. But now that I’m on the road, if feels like I’ve got concrete shoes on my feet and there are only muddy paths ahead of me. No one told me of these angles of being unemployed.

(Ready Ready, a guest contributor to this blog, is well educated with years of experience in the workplace. After four years of unemployment he's ready to move on, but how?)