Posted By bereznikov
Good afternoon everyone,

The current financial climate and the associated scarcity of health, safety and environmental jobs have undoubtedly and understandably influenced most of the discussions on this careers forum in recent times. This is completely understandable as losing a job or searching for a new one creates feelings of real anxiety, worry, pessimism and frustration – all of which have been evident to some extent or another on this forum.

The aim of this post is not to patronise or gloat, nor is it to play down, gloss over or exaggerate the problems encountered by the health and safety professional (employed, unemployed or aspiring) in this economic recession. It is purely to demonstrate to readers that there are genuine jobs on the market, new recruitment/employment is still happening, and never to lose hope. I would encourage others to post here too about recent new appointments to reinforce these points.

No doubt this post will be met by sighs of “easy for you to say…” or replies of “that’s all good and well when your already in a job…” – but all I can offer is my own experiences and opinions in the hope that it benefits those that need it. Believe me, I was as cynical and unhopeful as most about my chances of getting a job.

Anyway, onto the main point. I am a young health and safety professional by anyone’s standards, currently employed as a HS&E Coordinator for a chemical processing plant for just over 5 years. I do have the NEBOSH Cert, but not yet the Diploma, and am TechIOSH, but a long way from CMIOSH. Like most manufacturing company’s we have been hit badly by the recession throughout the last 9 months, with redundancies and wage cuts/freezes all-around.
Basically, and in a nutshell then - I am by no means anywhere near the type of standard/competence of many (most?) of the health and safety professionals around, and my reasons for looking for a new job can be attributed to a combination of economic pressures and doubt over the security of my current role.
Therefore, I started looking and applying for all appropriate vacancies in my county. I found it a very frustrating and demoralising experience. Typically, if sent out 10 applications, I’d receive:
- 5 Agency “we’ll get back to you…”;
- 3 no replies;
- 1 “the job has been withdrawn”; and,
- 1 invitation to interview.

However, I was eventually lucky enough to get invited for an interview for a great job. The interview went well and I was delighted to receive a formal offer of the position a short while ago.

Searching for a job was a very time-consuming and difficult time, never knowing whether you would even get a response to a CV submission, let alone an interview. There is an abundance of fantastic interview, job research etc advice on these forums and I would strongly urge people to search for it when in the process of looking, applying and preparing interview answers for new jobs. However, if I had any advice to people still in that position it would be this:

- Persistence pays off. It is so important to keep your chin-up and motivated throughout the whole lengthy process. Use interview/CV rejections to your strength by finding out the reasons why you were unsuccessful and using these points as points of personal improvement for the future. It is indeed a fact that there are fewer jobs and therefore more people applying for the ones that are vacant, but people are getting jobs in health and safety – and not just the ones with all the letters after their name! So keep applying and use all of the knock-backs to your benefit.


Good luck all,

bereznikov

Posted By Jim Walker
Nice one!

Can I just say it was never easy (in my experience)

Last time I job hunted was 6-9 years ago.

I reckon for every 100 applications I got 20 replies (of any sort) & 10 interviews, half of which I declined to follow up due to a shift in the advertised offer.

For ever 10 interviews I was called back or an offer made on 3. I also told 5 of them to forget it at the time (interviews work two ways). I was lucky i could be choosy I suppose.

And of course the inevitable happened - after 3 years trying I was offered 2 jobs I wanted within 24 hours!!

Posted By www.hsepeople.com
[reference removed] is a new website designed exclusively for people working or recruiting in the area of Health and Safety. The site is 100% Free to join and offers members the ability to exchange information and network in a way that has not been possible until now. [reference removed] combines the best features of Social Networking, Job Sites and Training resources all in one place.

Members can build a profile advertising their availability, services they offer and any company information they wish including contact details and web links. Other members can browse profiles and search using key words or location. It is easy to send a message to a member’s inbox or to leave a comment on their profile. Members can upload pictures, safety videos or even music to their profile and can easily add other friends also on the site.

It is easy to view who is online and rather than send a message or email, members can chat quickly through the sites instant messenger or using the sites forums where discussions can range from requests for information, exchanging general chit chat or talking about job leads. The forums offer freedom of speech and are not over moderated like other forums on the Net.

One of the main features of [reference removed] is the free jobs pages and RSS Jobs Feeds. The first allows any Recruiters / Companies on the site to list HSE Positions on the forums for FREE. The jobs pages are proving very popular with already over fifty agencies posting jobs in the first six weeks and many success stories starting to emerge of successfully placed candidates. The second is the RSS job feeds which are pulling jobs in from lots of other job sites all over the Web. These are broken down into categories and update as soon as jobs are listed on the relevant sites. This means that we are very confident you can find more HSE jobs on [reference removed] than any other site on the Net! The best part is it’s FREE to list, browse, search and apply for Jobs.

More ways of exchanging information is also available to any member on the site. Any member can create a blog to their own profile. If the content is relevant to other [reference removed] then that blog can be posted to the site magazine with moderator approval. Everything can be done from the control panel at the left hand side on every main page on the site.

[reference removed] is a community site and in looking for ways to fund the site, keeping the content relevant to Health and Safety and not plastering the site in banner advertising we have came up with a few ideas that may work well with your business. Firstly, the Events page, this page allows Trainers or Course providers to upload details on training events they are holding in the near future. Members of the site can then enlist for the event. [reference removed] will only charge 10% of the course cost per delegate signing up through the site. It is free to upload an event so you have nothing to lose by giving it a go.

Secondly, is the addition of a links page that will be coming very soon. This page will be broken down into three categories: Recruiters, Trainers & Consultants. Here you can place a link on a main page of [reference removed] and advertise your business to our members. As the site is new we are offering the first 25 links for only £150. If you would like to show your support for [reference removed] and promote your business to our ever growing number of members please contact Kevin@hsepeople.com



Thirdly, we will in the future be offering a product review page. This will be a great way of getting your product out into the market and visible to our members. We particularly want to hear from PPE Companies or Safety Equipment manufacturers who would like us to review their products. This service may eventually expand to course providers.

Lastly, [reference removed] is hoping to soon be able to offer a Document Library that any member will be able to add documents too. Other members will then be able to browse, search and then download any document they need. We think this will prove to be a very valuable and popular page. How many times have you been required to write a new procedure or produce a risk assessment or training presentation on a subject that you know other [reference removed] have probably covered thousands of times? No longer will you need to reinvent the wheel… Power points, Presentations, Forums, Posters, Regulations, Procedures, Formats and much more will all be able to be uploaded. This page is proving expensive to make and it would be great to hear from companies interested in sponsoring it. We are sure it will be the most popular page on the site and we could offer your company some fantastic exposure.

[reference removed] is only six weeks old but already proving hugely popular with almost 1000 members, the site has so far grown mostly on word of mouth. Only now are we starting to appear in search results and directories. I think this demonstrates how much of a hit the site is. We hope [reference removed] becomes the one place recruiters go when looking for candidates, Candidates when looking for jobs, Companies when looking for Consultants and [reference removed] when looking for information or training courses.

The site is currently receiving over 2500 hits a week and that is increasing with every new member that signs up. We are working hard to appear at the top of Search Engine Results and even though it takes time and a lot of effort we are committed to making [reference removed] a Success.

I would like to take this opportunity to invite you to create a profile on [reference removed], Advertise your company or business and have a feel round see what you think. If you see the potential in the site and wish to support it by any of the above mentioned methods then please do drop us a line. Your support will make the site a success and hopefully the one stop shop for everything HSE.

Hope to see you there.

Kevin Forbes
www.hsepeople.com