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- 1 “the job has been withdrawn”; and,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