Double dip blip - hold onto your hats folks for the recession rollercoaster

Hhmm so the economy has tanked even more in the past three months - 0.7% fall.  Construction fared even worse, dropping over 5% in the past three months.  It really will be survival of the fittest, the continuing Euro turmoil, Olympic chaos and holiday season will all add to the general sluggishness. Realistically things will not start to pick up until September at least.  Batton down those hatches folks.

The overall depression in the construction market is certainly panning out at work. Our orderbook has some big voids, lots of people holding off from appointing consultants such as ourselves and lots of people choosing to sit on the fence and wait until better times are on the horizon. Any this coupled with new boss who is in overhead means that we are about to enter choppy waters.

Each marketing man or wo(man) for themselves, back stabbing, stupid justification of your own worth and fighting to the death are all things that I am expecting to see at work in the next few weeks.  Watch the space to see if I survive or even want to survive. Hopefully, one of those lifejackets that I am hoping to be thrown by competitors will materialise for real soon. Fingers and toes crossed.

The Job Seeking Highs And Lows

On the whole I have been pretty positive about the redundancy thing. It's an opportunity - it's a great way to figure out what you really want to do - you can go to the gym whenever you want.

That's all well and good but there are certainly times when I just miss working. I was always a bit of a workaholic - you know I would always aim to get all that I needed to do done on time no matter what. Getting up and having somewhere to go and something to do each day and the social interaction with colleagues.

Oh and having a nice pay check drop into your account each month - would also be good. Would certainly help out the old finances and mean that I don't have to delve into my savings.

I think the most significant impact of being redundant is when you start to question your own self worth. Maybe there is something not right with me as I'm not securing that all important job. Will my luck ever change? Maybe I am on the scrapheap at 32.

Luckily days like these are few and far between at the 'mo. Should the job hunt thing go on - I fear they will become a bit more frequent.

Are Job centres the most depressing place on earth?

The answer is yes they are. The fact that entering a new job centre now feels as if you're entering a closely guarded fortress doesn't do much to enhance the user experience.

It's been 2 full weeks since I have been officially looking for a job. One thing for sure is that it is a lot harder than it seems. There are still jobs out there but competition is fierce and it really is a case of having to put the hours in.

The last time I had the pleasure of signing on was 8 years ago when I was a young fresh faced marketing grad looking for her first proper job. It would have been nice to say that in those 8 intermittent years that our job centre service had grown and continuously developed but that would be lying. What we have, in the main, is a creaking system that is quite frankly overwhelmed by the sheer volume of people now looking for work and a series of people who are just there to tick boxes. My first time of signing on was on Weds and I obviously didn't know what to do. Was there anyone to help me - oh no. So I ended up standing around like a lemon for quite some time until the man behind the desk told me that I was supposed to put my signing on book onto his desk.

In the end I waited around for half an hour to be seen. The man behind the desk had been quite rude to most people prior to me but when I got there he began to flirt with me. I was slightly taken aback, "where's your name from?" - he enquired. He even made a joke about the date being 2010 then called me "sharp" when I said "I think you mean it's 2009!". Anyway, I signed and left as soon as I could. Till next time.