?

A friend commented the other day that looking for jobs what a lot like online dating. After bravely selling yourself and putting yourself out there, no replies are pretty devastating.

Times are hard, people are going through jobs faster than hot meals. Divorce is on the increase, (if you can afford it), and its becoming increasingly difficult to meet people in a world where becoming socially acceptable (aka shitfaced) is becoming steadily more and more expensive.

So what happens in a world where you are getting no replies from job applications, but also the replies to your gaydar messages are equally scarce or solely comprised of the over-forties?

Here are my survival tips...

The similarities between the dating market and the job market are clear:

1. We are living in a recession, its time to lower your expectations.

2. If you are over 40, you are probably wasting your time.

3. Expect to send out considerably more than you get back.

4. Everyone wants a cleaner, a cook, a nanny.

5. Skillz kills, experience is everything.

6. A cock picture will get you nowhere.

And here we are again...

Over one year later. It all seems massively disconcerting to find myself in the same city, in the same position, watching June Brown on Who Do You Think You Are? Somehow ironic....

I'm right at the beginning of June Brown discovering she is related to some sort of Boxer, to be honest I am trying to ignore the other channels. Somewhere else out there among the digital signals, X quantity of the effluent of society is being pumped from Broken Britain into a small house filled with cameras, mirrors and hormone-enriched mineral water. There is a positive, if you will view it that way. That's twelve people not looting Britain's major cities and, presumably, they've had to give up jobs. So thats twelve (or so) jobs, around for us graduates to take from unsuspecting people that have worked, potentially quite hard...

Even as an avid fan for ten years (has it been that long?), of Big Brother, I somehow totally fail to understand the compulsion. It seems that even most Class-A drugs have more appeal (or at least social justification), than watching Two drunk young people squatting on each-other, drunk, trying to master the Karma Sutra, looking like they have the book inside out. If I wanted this surely I would A) take a walk down the high street, or B) do it myself at greater satisfaction.

Without wanting to sound like the risk of sounding like the Daily Telegraph, or the Daily Mail I shall probably stop now, until i can think about something less bitter. Or something at least someway profound.

Til' the next time.

J.