On the scrap heap at 55 – my nightmare of hunting for a job

I AM a graduate linguist who held senior administrative roles before setting up my own business as a translator 15 years ago. A year ago, before the Brexit debacle and Covid-19, I was still able to maintain a successful income. Then came Brexit/Transition, as we are now supposed to call it.

Since last October, even before Covid-19 and the lockdown ravaged our economy, I have sent off over 300 applications for jobs, all of which paying less than I was earning 15 years ago, while all the time, we were being told repeatedly in the media, prior to Covid-19, that employment was at a record high.

Well, call me bitter, but I ask you, if an administration role paying less than £18,000 a year and not even offering a permanent contract attracts over 300 applicants is that really a sign of economic strength and a buoyant job market?

I send off five or six applications each day, but this has yielded just one job almost 40 miles away from where I live. I spent some time in a call centre, for which I was very grateful, before lockdown.

Attempts to claim furlough despite meeting the criteria have fallen on deaf ears, as the agency I was working for had to claim the furlough on my behalf and refused to do so.

The company also trained me and four others on their systems, but three-and-a-half months on, they will probably just re-advertise the role, should it rear its head in the future and start the process all over again rather than come back to me. I am apparently entitled to nothing despite the 32 years I have contributed to this country – my country!

Prior to lockdown I applied for an array of administrative roles, for which I am amply qualified. One particular instance I remember quite vividly. It was for a marketing administrator vacancy advertised with Adecco in Worcester.

I have set up my own social media, website for my own business, completed marketing research. Even spent two years working as a marketing communications assistant for the second-largest employer in Europe and hold a marketing qualification, and yet nothing – no email, no phone call. My CV just left in the proverbial black hole. When I contacted Adecco, I was told that the client wanted someone with marketing experience! I have quoted the email response I received below:

“We will keep your CV on file should we have any suitable rolls”.

I will leave you to judge whether such an organisation is capable to evaluating what might be a suitable role – be that a position within an organisation or a product sold by Greggs.

I have so many skills and yet no one can even be bothered to read my CV and call me back.

At a further agency, also Worcester based, I was told they might find an employer more “forgiving of my CV".

What is there to forgive: having the temerity to set up on my own 15 years ago and maintain an income even during the financial crash of 2008?

Having the drive and determination to leave a comfortable job, paying more than any of the jobs for which I am currently applying, to work 70-plus hours a week and pay off two mortgages?

READ MORE: Universal Credit claims double in Worcester

What is more, the jobs for which I am now applying are the types of jobs I was doing 20 years ago – and guess what – many are still offering the same rates of pay or even less!

So, I sit here day after day firing off applications, completing tests, to receive no phone call back, no emails, two interviews to date, while I live on my savings.

I have applied to agencies in Worcester, Evesham, Redditch, Cheltenham and Gloucester. Most cannot even be bothered to register me on their books.

Please someone tell me what I have to do to get a job in my own country?

I remember the days when you sent in a CV to a recruitment agency, where if you were not successful for the job for which we specifically applied, they could actually be bothered to match your CV with other suitable vacancies.

One agency in Redditch to which I applied back in February, completely ignored my CV, even though they had several vacancies on their website for which I was more than amply qualified.

A week later I received a call from another of their branches in Wolverhampton to say that they had no suitable vacancies for me but would I like to be registered for alerts, so that I could be notified about any suitable vacancies in the future. This I happily did.

The following day I received a notification giving me the opportunity to apply for a part-time cleaning vacancy in Redditch paying minimum wage. I live in Worcester. Apparently, that was the result provided by the expensive system they had set up to match a candidate’s skills with available vacancies!

During my 32 years in the job market, I have never experienced a climate like this – and I am talking about the climate pre-Covid 19 here, when we were led to believe we were living under record levels of employment.

I graduated in the 80s when we had record levels of unemployment, and yet I was able to find a job. Something to do with my age, perhaps?

Recruitment consultants actually bothered to register me on their books and phone me back when I sent them my CV. Over that 32-year period I have worked not only in my own business, but in senior PA and secretarial roles, spent time in a marketing department where I was responsible for PR, brochures and design-and-build exhibitions, have excellent spelling, grammar, typing (or data entry as I suppose it is now called) and even shorthand; I know the difference between a ‘role’ and ‘roll’. I can add up, use the latest Microsoft products, know what a pivot table and V-look ups are, social media, SEOs, and speak two other languages. And yet, I am apparently unemployable.

When an agency in Gloucester said that they only registered people they could help into work quickly, I thought to myself If they can’t help me – who do they help?

Yet another agency, wanting a fluent German speaker, also took my details but continues to advertise the vacancy, even offering a relocation package, presumably to candidates living outside this country rather than offer the opportunity to someone with the skills who lives just 25 miles away!

Whatever ever happened to “British jobs for British workers”?

I thought it was precisely that thinking that ignited the whole debate surrounding Brexit in the first place and, ironically, the very thing that has put me in this position where I need to find a job.

So, I spend another week sitting fruitlessly in front of my laptop and the abyss that is the job markets for the over 50s. Not really sure what I am supposed to do or how I am expected to live for the next 12 years.

I applied for yet another position on another agency’s website requiring ‘great customer service and admin skills’ only to be told that despite having 32 years’ work experience, as I had not spent the last two years scheduling, my CV would not be forwarded onto the client.

Needless to say, their advertisement does not actually say anything at all about 2 years’ scheduling experience just ‘good IT skills, email, Word and Excel as well as being ‘extremely well organised, with the ability to prioritise workload’.

The job also required immediate availability, but it can’t have been that immediate, as it continues to be advertised on their website one month after my call.

It seems that you can’t even get a cleaning job these days without going through one of these expensive gatekeepers!

You register on all these wonderful jobs sites and web-based portals, and I get emails and calls from recruitment agents in Ireland, Berlin and Cambridgeshire but not from the agencies based in my own area.

The whole system is just barking mad and the entire experience has shattered my self-worth and is excluding me from any form of gainful employment.