The 2010 A/ W Job Hunt

I spent the first two years at The Bank looking for a way out, but a desirable one came there none (maintenance stock analyst near Heathrow?). At the start of 2009 a number of the agents I trust advised me to hunker down and ride out the recession. I did and they were right: my phone barely rang many of the stories I heard involved people taking new jobs that vanished two months later in a re-organisation.

My phone started to ring a month or so ago and it seems the market has picked up. So after the un-necessarily emotional couple of weeks I've hinted at, I wrote an update mail, assembled the "Agents" mailing list and hit Send. Within minutes the "Undeliverable" messages came back, and a day later the "Postmaster has given up trying to send" messages came. You use those to clean up your contact list.

I was thinking of applying for the supervisory role I've mentioned before. Right up to the point where the new manager told Jack he wasn't going to be considered for the grade two job (Jack's a grade one) , which in everyone else's eyes would be a deserved promotion for Jack, who is an all round Good Guy and knows both sides of the data-world we live in. He also said that if Jack wanted to apply for other jobs in The Bank, he would give Jack his full support - not that he was trying to get rid of him... This is the kind of manager who uses performance gradings to communicate his personal approval of your behaviour and what you'ver done for him lately. I am not going to justify his decisions to my staff when I don't agree. ("Fred felt that your behaviours / performance wasn't quite..."). I couldn't work as a line manager for the guy. That decision just made itself. And starting the job hunt has given me a sense of options that I haven't had for a long while. I feel so much calmer now.

Job hunts are different for different professions and people: a pricing analyst / manager has a very different experience from a credit control assistant. Above two-levels-below-the-Boardroom, you don't really go looking for jobs as mere mortals do. The headhunters call you. If you call them, they will be pleasant and put you on file, but until they get an assignment that matches you, there is nothing they can do. Senior guys and gals can spend a long time waiting for an opening. Many specialists turn out to have a simple plan. A friend of mine is a technical writer: the first time he was laid off in a re-organisation, his manager told him to register with agencies X, Y and Z, as they were the specialists in technical writers. Don't bother with the others, she said. He did what she suggested and it worked out pretty well. Sadly, there are no specialist agencies for pricing guys.