The Work Thread

That feel when you apply for a job and look at the cover letter a few days later and find grammar errors oh well, not getting that one I guess

Garland Twinkleballs wrote:One of the advantages of working in IT is that it's quite easy to move on to doing something different without necessarily having to change employers. It's a pretty easy field to move around internally. The work I'm doing now, despite my job not technically changing, is a lot different to what it was when I started 2 years ago just through general involvement in Major and Side projects that get you in touch with different people who want different things.

Moving externally is typically a faster route to higher pay and promotion in roles however.

Trelliz wrote:That feel when you apply for a job and look at the cover letter a few days later and find grammar errors oh well, not getting that one I guess

Ending your letter with:

>>

Yours sincerely /Many thanks / Best regards

Trelliz

>>

is never a good move

Bunni wrote:Customer service with HMRC. It's not the job I want, but the progression opportunities are good. Also you can fast track into Civil Service roles usually reserved for graduates.

All else fails it's a 9-5 close to home without half the stress of nursing. I'll take that right now.

One of us, one of us.

Let us know how you get on with it. Chances are you'll be in the same building as I am. In fact my team is taking on some new starts so you might end up on the same Line of Business as me.

Trelliz wrote:That feel when you apply for a job and look at the cover letter a few days later and find grammar errors oh well, not getting that one I guess

I did that for the NT right at the end, something like "I I very much look forward to meeting you." I still advanced to 3rd and final stage and I submitted it 1 minute before the deadline on mobile internet on a train.

Another favourite, I got a tel interview after only writing , "I have done this job before and I can do it again."

Give yourself more credit.

Trelliz wrote:That feel when you apply for a job and look at the cover letter a few days later and find grammar errors oh well, not getting that one I guess

Given the number of errors that appear in adverts and contracts, you wouldn't think a typo in a cover letter would necessarily exclude you.

It's a gooseberry fool way of excluding talent. People who can't see merit through human errors are the worst.

Green Gecko wrote:Another favourite, I got a tel interview after only writing , "I have done this job before and I can do it again."

Give yourself more credit.

Hahaha that is excellent!

Cheeky Agent Johnson wrote:

Bunni wrote:Customer service with HMRC. It's not the job I want, but the progression opportunities are good. Also you can fast track into Civil Service roles usually reserved for graduates.

All else fails it's a 9-5 close to home without half the stress of nursing. I'll take that right now.

One of us, one of us.

Let us know how you get on with it. Chances are you'll be in the same building as I am. In fact my team is taking on some new starts so you might end up on the same Line of Business as me.

Portcullis house? Yeah. Interview went fine but I'm not too enthusiastic about the job. Looks like it would be a doss for two days, then boring, then I'd end up feeling frustrated at things being slow. I'm in it for the progression, but I'm not sure how tolerant I'll be to sticking it out for so long.

Bunni wrote:

Cheeky Agent Johnson wrote:

Bunni wrote:Customer service with HMRC. It's not the job I want, but the progression opportunities are good. Also you can fast track into Civil Service roles usually reserved for graduates.

All else fails it's a 9-5 close to home without half the stress of nursing. I'll take that right now.

One of us, one of us.

Let us know how you get on with it. Chances are you'll be in the same building as I am. In fact my team is taking on some new starts so you might end up on the same Line of Business as me.

Portcullis house? Yeah. Interview went fine but I'm not too enthusiastic about the job. Looks like it would be a doss for two days, then boring, then I'd end up feeling frustrated at things being slow. I'm in it for the progression, but I'm not sure how tolerant I'll be to sticking it out for so long.

That's the one.

It's not an amazing job but I enjoy it. It does depend on what line of business they put you on. Most people start out on the PAYE, Tax Credits or National Insurance lines. They can be a bit rubbish as the vast majority of the calls you get will be very similar queries and you mostly have a call guide to follow so there's not too much variety. You'll get the chance to move to more complex areas such as VAT, Corporation Tax and Excit which are a bit more technical but have more varied calls as well as better hours (Don't work any later than 6).

I'm on Excit (Customs and Excise) which is mostly general advice so it's all about explaining customs rules and procedures to callers. I get a broad range of stuff, from normal people with parcels coming in, all the way up to large businesses needing clarification of how changes to customs rules will impact them. There's no call guides and it's all to do with directing them to the appropriate guidance so I have to think a bit more than the other areas.

There's plenty of opportunities to move both in upwards progression and laterally to other areas of the department.

If you get it I hope you enjoy it.

Green Gecko wrote:It's a gooseberry fool way of excluding talent. People who can't see merit through human errors are the worst.

It's what I do, but then I am generally recruiting for proofreaders and editors. Even tiny errors are a complete no.

Got to the second interview stage for a job in Oxford. Eeeeeeeek.

Yeah that's fair enough.

Stuff like corporate communications, PR, marketing etc.

But for example, draftsman, sound technician, video editor. No, way more important stuff than some jobsworth.

Sure if it's riddled with bad punctuation that's just lazy not using spellchecker but the sort of stuff that even a third party proof wouldn't spot doesn't matter.

See some truly awful stuff on LinkedIn. Omg LinkedIn.

I don't talk about work on GRcade much (I prefer to keep work and play separate), but strawberry float it, I just got promoted to team leader.

First promotion I've had since leaving the army 9 years ago, so I'm strawberry floating made up.

Green Gecko wrote:It's a gooseberry fool way of excluding talent. People who can't see merit through human errors are the worst.

If the job advert says candidates require "a high level of attention to detail" and a candidate does not display this in their application, then I think it's a very good way of excluding them.

If you meet all the criteria for the job and there's a wide range of quality in the other applications then you'll probably get away with a few small errors. If you are up against a strong field of candidates who are all well qualified then the person shortlisting needs to find something to differentiate between candidates, and avoidable errors reflect very badly in that situation because they shouldn't be there.

Somebody Else's Presents wrote:I don't talk about work on GRcade much (I prefer to keep work and play separate), but strawberry float it, I just got promoted to team leader.

First promotion I've had since leaving the army 9 years ago, so I'm strawberry floating made up.

Congratulations!

Somebody Else's Presents wrote:I don't talk about work on GRcade much (I prefer to keep work and play separate), but strawberry float it, I just got promoted to team leader.

First promotion I've had since leaving the army 9 years ago, so I'm strawberry floating made up.

Very happy for you. Well done!

Cheeky Agent Johnson wrote:

Bunni wrote:

Cheeky Agent Johnson wrote:

Bunni wrote:Customer service with HMRC. It's not the job I want, but the progression opportunities are good. Also you can fast track into Civil Service roles usually reserved for graduates.

All else fails it's a 9-5 close to home without half the stress of nursing. I'll take that right now.

One of us, one of us.

Let us know how you get on with it. Chances are you'll be in the same building as I am. In fact my team is taking on some new starts so you might end up on the same Line of Business as me.

Portcullis house? Yeah. Interview went fine but I'm not too enthusiastic about the job. Looks like it would be a doss for two days, then boring, then I'd end up feeling frustrated at things being slow. I'm in it for the progression, but I'm not sure how tolerant I'll be to sticking it out for so long.

That's the one.

It's not an amazing job but I enjoy it. It does depend on what line of business they put you on. Most people start out on the PAYE, Tax Credits or National Insurance lines. They can be a bit rubbish as the vast majority of the calls you get will be very similar queries and you mostly have a call guide to follow so there's not too much variety. You'll get the chance to move to more complex areas such as VAT, Corporation Tax and Excit which are a bit more technical but have more varied calls as well as better hours (Don't work any later than 6).

I'm on Excit (Customs and Excise) which is mostly general advice so it's all about explaining customs rules and procedures to callers. I get a broad range of stuff, from normal people with parcels coming in, all the way up to large businesses needing clarification of how changes to customs rules will impact them. There's no call guides and it's all to do with directing them to the appropriate guidance so I have to think a bit more than the other areas.

There's plenty of opportunities to move both in upwards progression and laterally to other areas of the department.

If you get it I hope you enjoy it.

Wait, HMRC have customer service? Do you know if there's a team that deals with website issues? The amount of times people need help with the HMRC website and I can't help and have no number to give them is unreal.

Qikzmas wrote:

Cheeky Agent Johnson wrote:

Bunni wrote:

Cheeky Agent Johnson wrote:

Bunni wrote:Customer service with HMRC. It's not the job I want, but the progression opportunities are good. Also you can fast track into Civil Service roles usually reserved for graduates.

All else fails it's a 9-5 close to home without half the stress of nursing. I'll take that right now.

One of us, one of us.

Let us know how you get on with it. Chances are you'll be in the same building as I am. In fact my team is taking on some new starts so you might end up on the same Line of Business as me.

Portcullis house? Yeah. Interview went fine but I'm not too enthusiastic about the job. Looks like it would be a doss for two days, then boring, then I'd end up feeling frustrated at things being slow. I'm in it for the progression, but I'm not sure how tolerant I'll be to sticking it out for so long.

That's the one.

It's not an amazing job but I enjoy it. It does depend on what line of business they put you on. Most people start out on the PAYE, Tax Credits or National Insurance lines. They can be a bit rubbish as the vast majority of the calls you get will be very similar queries and you mostly have a call guide to follow so there's not too much variety. You'll get the chance to move to more complex areas such as VAT, Corporation Tax and Excit which are a bit more technical but have more varied calls as well as better hours (Don't work any later than 6).

I'm on Excit (Customs and Excise) which is mostly general advice so it's all about explaining customs rules and procedures to callers. I get a broad range of stuff, from normal people with parcels coming in, all the way up to large businesses needing clarification of how changes to customs rules will impact them. There's no call guides and it's all to do with directing them to the appropriate guidance so I have to think a bit more than the other areas.

There's plenty of opportunities to move both in upwards progression and laterally to other areas of the department.

If you get it I hope you enjoy it.

Wait, HMRC have customer service? Do you know if there's a team that deals with website issues? The amount of times people need help with the HMRC website and I can't help and have no number to give them is unreal.

There's the Online Services Helpdesk who can help with technical issues on the website. If they need help actually using the website (I.e the site's working fine but they're not sure how to do what they want) then they should call the Customer Service team for the relevant area (VAT, CT, Excit etc). Search for "Contact HMRC" on gov.uk to get details on the numbers to call.

I think a few chaps on here have noticed that I'm a bit busy & burned out at the moment (I feel so guilty about being so slow to edit the podcasts -- they'll be up really soon, I promise...).

Well, what I've been up to is working on a lot of collaborations with other academics (science but also networking ).

Anyway, this has culminated in successfully proposing an international collaboration with a researcher in Brazil -- my supervisor put us in touch so I could share my project proposal, and the academic thought it was a good idea, so we're going to be building some computational biochemistry software together. I'm excited

Karl's brother is dead wrote:I think a few chaps on here have noticed that I'm a bit busy & burned out at the moment (I feel so guilty about being so slow to edit the podcasts -- they'll be up really soon, I promise...).

Well, what I've been up to is working on a lot of collaborations with other academics (science but also networking ).

Anyway, this has culminated in successfully proposing an international collaboration with a researcher in Brazil -- my supervisor put us in touch so I could share my project proposal, and the academic thought it was a good idea, so we're going to be building some computational biochemistry software together. I'm excited

Congrats!

Does that mean you might get a trip to Brazil out of it?