Michelle's job log: 11

The story so far... Michelle left university in 2007 and found a job assisting lecturers at Manchester University. But she really wants to go into fashion, maybe through merchandising.

Counted out

First things first, the Next trainee merchandiser scheme which I had applied for and got through the initial stages is not going to happen. The next stage was a timed online numeracy and verbal reasoning test, which I had practised several times before taking the real thing. To cut a long story short, I couldn’t do the numeracy test, not in the allocated time anyway. It was a series of questions with graphs and you had to do percentages and all that kind of stuff based on the information shown in the graphs, similar to what I had done to get into the College of Fashion.

The thing is, I knew exactly what to do, but having a timer ticking away in the corner of the screen was the most off putting thing to ever have to face. It’s like being in an exam and you keep looking up at the time, but at least you can kind of avoid doing that. I really resent the tests actually, because I know that the format did not enable me to perform to the best of my ability, I don’t know if they do them like that to create a sense of pressure, but it certainly worked if that was the intention. I knew straight away that I had failed as on the numeracy I only got through 6 of the 20 questions - it was so bad!

I received the email about a week later to say that I hadn’t attained the level they required, no surprise there then. It hasn’t deterred me, though, and I will try again. It’s strange though because usually in those rejection emails they say something like try again in 3-6 months, but this one didn’t say anything about that, almost as if you’ve failed once so that’s it, but I know that won’t be the case.

What more can I do?

I can’t seem to find any other merchandising schemes at the moment to apply for, so I’m trying for retail management which is something I wouldn’t mind doing. So far I’ve applied to a retail management trainee programme and also a supervisor position within a store, so hopefully I can at least get to interview stage with one of those two. Trust me to want to get into one of the most detrimentally affected sectors in this economic climate but everyone needs clothes I suppose!

I have to give myself a pat on the back for effort, because I am absolutely giving my all in terms of trying to evolve my career. It’s a shame passion and ambition alone cannot get you the job you want because if it did I know I’d be sorted by now. I almost feel like I’ve exhausted all the options in terms of my job search but there are always some hidden gems. One thing I haven’t done for a while is cold-calling - I used to do that all the time when I was at uni trying to get work experience and it seemed to work, but in a way it was easier then because I wanted to get into property and property companies were very willing to have work experience people come in to help them, but with retail it’s a bit different.

Extra cash needed

This weekend I’m going to a flea market to look at some more vintage stuff and hopefully I’ll find some bargains to sell, so that should be good. The extra cash would come in handy as I seem to have direct debits coming out of my ears at the moment - car payments, credit card repayments, rent, water bills, electricity bills, internet bills, phone bills, council tax you name it, I’ve got it coming out of my account! So much responsibility with this growing up malarkey, I’ve always had a lot of responsibility from moving out of home at a young age but it doesn’t seem so bad when you’re paying for stuff out of your student loan and your still getting help from your parents, but now it’s a completely different story. This is real hard-earned cash, from a job I don’t even like, which makes it even worse to see it being distributed to everyone except myself. Anyway, I see this as a temporary situation, it’s a rocky patch that all graduates will go through, until you finally clear your debts - I’m hoping this is true anyway. It doesn’t bother me too much, as long as I can still go out and have some fun, it’s fine for now I suppose.

Read my earlier job logs 

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