Michelle's job log: 6

The story so far... Michelle left university last year and found a job a few months later as an assistant to lecturers at Manchester University. But her goal is a fashion career.

Reality check

Since the last blog, I seem to have had an unwelcome reality check. Maybe it’s all this credit-crunch talk in the headlines and the uncertainty of the retail sector, but now I’m thinking I should change my career choice AGAIN! Since I got accepted on to the fashion buying and merchandising course, I’ve been applying to some related graduate schemes and have been rejected, so now my hopes have been dashed and I don’t even want to start the course if I’m going to have such difficulty getting a job. It’ll just be more money down the drain. I know you can’t get everything that you apply for and I did only apply to two, but it has still put me off.

The main place I would have wanted to work would have been Arcadia and I got the through the initial stage for their graduate merchandising scheme and then failed the telephone interview, which I actually thought went quite well, even though I think I was a bit too excited, which can work for certain interviews, particularly retail shop floor positions as they think you’re really happy and bubbly, but for something where you need good analytical and numerical skills, it didn’t really work. They told me I could try again in three to six months as they recruit all year round. So now I’m trying to decide whether I should do the course and equip myself with more knowledge for when I apply again or whether doing the course could end up being a waste of time, effort and money as I could still end up getting rejected again, which would just be 10 times worse than the current situation. 

Double holidays

In the meantime, to cheer myself up I’ve booked a holiday to Barcelona in May and one to Miami in July. Hopefully that’ll give me some sort of optimism again. Getting back into work after the Christmas break is proving to be a challenge; I’ve been back for two weeks now and I still can’t get back into the routine of things. This time last year I had just found out that I had got this job and was so excited by it, but now that’s a whole other story to me. I think with a new year I always want a new start, but I can’t keep changing jobs every January, which makes it even more important for me to land that dream career, and soon.

I’m just going to keep applying for as many graduate schemes as I can for now - I’m determined that something has to come through. It is a job in itself doing all the applications, but I need to stay focused. I’ve found this blog to be the most difficult blog to write so far as I really have nothing new going on, everything just seems to be on hold at the moment. It’s like a waiting game, anticipating when the right job will come along for me, but with all this talk of people losing their jobs recently I’m just grateful that I actually have one.

Since I’ve been back at work I’ve been so tempted to quit on the basis that I could work part-time, therefore allowing me to put all my energy into applying for jobs that I would want, but the problem with that is a) there are hardly any jobs at the moment and b) after checking my bank balance I realised there’s no way I could sustain working part-time, especially now that I’ve booked those two holidays. So in a way the holidays have kind of forced me do the right thing and not give up, which is what I would usually do if I had a get out clause, but this time I really haven’t.

Read my earlier job logs