Weeknote S17 Ep9
Shush brain.
Ok, another 2 week stretch between notes, I guess some of that was taken up with Easter weekend. Hard to justify noting when you’re not actually working. I mean I could tell you all the details of my life but it’s going to be of limited interest to many. So, what are the highlights?
- I’ve applied for a couple of things but nowhere near as much as I thought I would.
- I’ve bookmarked a couple of roles, one at a local authority and one at a consultancy.
- I didn’t make sift for another Senior Service Designer role. This in turn put me off from applying for a couple of similar roles because I feel super unconfident about it right now.
- I had a screener interview for a Digital Expertience role at a charity. These screener interviews are really strange to me, like you need to say enough to impress someone who you won’t be working for or with, so that they can make a decision about whether to put you in front of the actual hiring manager or person who will understand your skill set better. Getting this right, explaining things in a way that someone will understand but also feel is compelling enough to put you forward is weird. I understand why organisations do this, but it’s not very candidate centred.
However I did have a few good conversations:
- With a hiring manager for a job that I need to get my head around
- With my coach, and we talked about skills this time around. It was interesting connecting these back to all of the motivations and strengths I’ve been over recently. But also still so easy to downplay those things that I feel like are “bread and butter” for me.
- With Sarah Drummond about shifting my career into service design. Sarah has been so generous with her time, support and feedback, she really is one of the best. I am so grateful.
- With Ian Ames because I read Ian’s blog post which resonated a lot with my current thinking about career stuff. It was really interesting to see how Ian is thinking about things, because it’s also quite similar to the coaching I’m currently doing.
- With Debbie Blanchard although I was a bit late due to not having MS Teams on my laptop. Debbie is starting a new role which is very exciting. Generally any time with Debbie is lovely, it was lovely to see a friendly and happy face.
What’s been hard?
I know I’m only 3 weeks into this job hunting malarky, one of those has been holiday and there have been 2 bank holidays, so the reality is job hunting has really been about 8 days. I’m also managing childcare because I’m at home so that’s making my days shorter. Even so, I feel like I’m procrastinating. I’m finding a lot of things to do (see: emptying my wardrobe, writing weeknotes) rather than spending the time applying because applying is hard work.
It’s also been kinda difficult because it’s school holidays, so people are on holiday and things are slower than they might be, but if you look on LinkedIn you’ll see lots of people getting promoted, changing jobs etc. because it’s end of year / new financial year budget time. So while things feel slow for me, it’s hard not to think that everyone else is still making progress. I know that this is situational, but I’ve had to limit my LinkedIn use because it’s making me anxious.
And what else?
- I had toothache, like the worst pain I’ve experienced in a very long time (I literally went as far as to compare it with childbirth) which meant needing to go to the emergency dentist over the bank holiday weekend. No chocolate for me.
- I finished watching S2 of Extraordinary
- I got my nails done, and am enjoying making them some random colours, this time something akin to Pantone 2382.
- I went on the twister at the funfair and thought I might throw up because the sadist ride operator kept it running for 6 minutes #puke
- I pulled a ton of things out of my wardrobe and put them on Vinted, and made £400 in 2 days.
- The weather is so beautiful today that I have flung open all the doors. Spriiiing!
- I start my Service Design course next week, 2 evenings a week for the next 12 weeks is feeling much more like a commitment now but I know this is more procrastination and once I get into it I’ll be into it.
- I also booked a little weekend away in Margate for next week so that little man can go on the rides at Dreamland. I am more excited about going to The Crab Museum and wondering if I can sneak off to Haeckels.
And that’s enough I think. Until next time.
