Posted By Exdeeps Dave, the single largest employer in Plymouth is DML who run the dockyard. Might be worth looking them up as there's always stuff going on and with a service background you should fit right in ( if you can take a ribbing from the Navy bods) Jim

Posted By John Caboche Sadly, I have to say that Devon and Cornwall (and Plymouth in particular) is a bit of an employment black hole, especially for people in our profession. Hence the reason that I now live in Swindon (not as bad as people think......) rather than Plymouth. There are jobs down there, but they are few and far between and in all honesty you will need to demonstrate qualifications to Dip/VQ4 level along with relevant experience rather than relying on NEBOSH Cert. The local branch of IOSH however is very active, and is a good place to network. Sorry to be negative, however my point of view is based on 40 years of living in the place.

Posted By Bruce Sutherland David suggest exactly what a minister once said - get on bike - DML have a switchboard try it!!! You do need to be aware that there are a significant number of ex forces people down here and for some reason elf and safety seems to be a popular exit profession If you perhaps googled or even yell(ed) health and safety in the area then you would find out who you would need to contact. You do need to be aware that most business will welcome spec applications - agencies are in my opinion not particularly useful and cost the employer a lot of money. Please do not bother applying to us via one. Just so that the message gets out if we took someone on from an agency for £30k then it may cost us up to £10k for the privilege - the simple thing is to do your own leg work and I believe that most employers will be sympathetic - you will also not have the normal issue that the agency sends you for an interview where the employer has specifically said Dip and you only have a cert but live close..........which surprise surprise normally means no job offer and I am not interested in the oh well I can do it argument - if I have a job for a dip then I want a dip - if I will accept some other form of qualification then I will say that (rant over) Politely suggest you also follow up on other people who have offered to advise you on the situation - I have spoken to another poster and at the time you had not taken him up on his offer of advice about employment in the area. Cheers Bruce

Posted By DennisH Sorry I may have misread that, but would you really knock someone back for being over qualified? Some people may just want to get out of the office and back to the "sharp end".

Posted By David Jakowyszyn Thanks to all for your replies, I've spoken to a number of agencies and I'm pretty underwhelmed by their response. (One of them saying they'd found me a very good job in York.) Dave, thanks for all the information that you've forwarded, I've sent you a personal e-mail, which i'm hoping will get through as the last one I sent you kept getting bounced. I also sent e-mails off to the companies you suggested, hopefully they have been received as well, including one to Mr Sutherland. I attended the IOSH branch meeting in Plymouth last week and was really impressed by the strong turn out, as well as the excellent CPD talk. I'm planning to attend the next meeting on the 21st of February as well, hopefully to chat to a few more people this time. Thanks again Dave