That certainly makes things more difficult, so let's try a different tack.
Can you think of any advice which you have received recently which might assist you in your predicament?
Like many a young New Zealander I expect that you have taken some driving lessons in the past few years. If so, you will probably have been preserved from disaster by an instructor whose oft-repeated mantra guaranteed safety and progress - so "mirror, signal, and then manoeuvre," let it be.
MirrorThe key to any problem is to see and understand it clearly, and getting a job is no exception.
Begin by asking what you can bring to the party and how you can sell it to an employer.
You will have been told your CV is the most important document in any application. That, like most conventional advice, is wrong - it is, in fact, the second most important document.
CVs are fairly standard nowadays and the eye of the reader generally glazes over at the usual array of degrees, Olympic medals, schools built in Third World countries and starring roles in theatrical productions.
What is a great deal more revealing is the letter which accompanies the CV. Does the candidate sound like someone who the reader would like to meet or does he or she sound, well, rather a prat? Better the former than the latter, eh? Well then, a few don'ts.
First, do not patronise the reader. It is just a little irritating to be told that a 23-year-old will transform your business.
Enjoy working in it, yes: transform it, no.
Then do not bleat on about how you have followed that particular sector since childhood when actually you read it up from scratch a week ago. No one will be fooled and, anyway, the employer who is hiring an astrophysicist to reinforce the intellectual backbone of his bank might expect him to have spent his degree years studying astrophysics rather than in a somewhat eccentric devotion to the bond markets.
It is, of course, good manners to find out a little about the firm interviewing you and the issues they face but "I saw from the paper that you are expanding into the Far East" is more honest and less creepy than pretended insights which will inevitably be found out.
Then avoid at all cost the awful line: "If I have one fault it is that I am too hard on myself."
Once upon a time a student must have asked a careers adviser what to say if he was asked whether he had any faults. The latter, presumably neither belonging to nor having met a member of the human race, thought this dreadful response would combine a becoming modesty with an assurance that the candidate had no weaknesses. That careers adviser should have been fired.
So annoying is this asinine and complacent line in an application, the only proper response by the interviewer is to ask: "Would you have written this to a family friend?"
The best candidates will laugh and say: "Of course not" and a good interviewer will forgive them. Those who persist in their folly should be cast into the outer darkness.
Now let us shift the lens to the employer. What do you look for there?
These days, the young graduate cannot be as choosy about his prospective employer as the prospective employer can be about him. Nevertheless, there are limits and a job with an employer you do not respect is likely to end in tears. Keep your eyes peeled, then.
Most employers will reveal a lot about themselves in the recruitment process and the game is to interpret it.
Suppose a firm asks you to take psychometric tests. Is this because they:
1. Have a huge number of applicants and have to reduce the list to manageable proportions? That may be an attraction if you are ambitious and tough.
2. Are a box-checking and bureaucratic organisation? That might not be so bad if box-checking and bureaucracy are your thing.
3. Are so lacking in human skills that they cannot distinguish between candidates in any other way? Um, let's just hope that the salary makes it worthwhile.
Often the signals are more subtle and I remember being put off a job by being offered tea from an antique porcelain tea pot. It wasn't that nice people do not use such pots or even that there was anything wrong with the quality of the tea, but the elegance of that pot, together with disconcertingly opulent offices, made me realise I would prefer to work in the harder-edged world of the City of London.
A candidate's antennae should not just be tuned to information about the prospective employer. Interviewers are often genuinely interested in young people and their careers and sometimes make useful comments and give valuable advice which, even if it won't get you that particular job, may help you to choose another which suits you better.
Many years ago, I went to an interview with a bank. The interviewer was pleasant and his questions shrewd. He drew out of me where my interests lay and what I would like to contribute. Then he stopped the interview.
"I am not going to offer you a job," he said. "You don't really want to work for us - you would be much better placed to do the things you describe if you joined a law firm." He was completely right and I have always been grateful to him.
SignalSo, having assessed the situation, identified your contribution and chosen the targets, how do you actually land the job?
The first hurdle is to get an interview; the second is to get the interviewer to make you an offer. What instruments do you have for getting in the door?
The obvious answer is: "Why, the CV and letter, of course". But that is only part of it.
Remember, the employment market really is a market - a place where buyers and sellers are brought together. How do markets work? By the spread of information, through networking, through gossip, through recommendation, through the exchange of favours and in a thousand other ways.
Sometimes you will hear a young graduate say: "I would never use my parents' contacts." Brilliant. He has left a whole layer of market connections untapped - and anyway his fastidiousness is unlikely to commend him to employers who will expect him to develop all his contacts for use on their behalf.
Make sure your friends and your parents' friends know what you are looking for. Many an outstanding career has started with a chat between middle-aged men in adjacent aircraft seats.
Of course, the letter and the CV cannot be ignored and it is worth taking the trouble to see that they are interesting.
The discriminating employer will want enthusiasts, so some enthusiasm about what you have done previously is in order; a little self-deprecation can be attractive and a hint that you could say more if you chose can be enticing.
My father once ended a letter to the bishop about the shortcomings of the local vicar with the line: "By the way, it would be nice if he wore shoes at Holy Communion."
Actually the vicar wore trainers, but you can imagine the possibilities the bishop discussed with his wife over breakfast and how it kept that particular letter in his mind. Remember then that those who read your application are human and they generally prefer those who interest and amuse them to those who do not.
Manoeuvre
If Machiavelli had ever attended a job interview, I have no doubt that he would have obtained his appointment by manipulating the interviewing panel. That sort of thing is fine if you are Machiavelli, but there is nothing more painful than watching the elephantine dance of those who attempt stratagems without the ability to pull them off.
The pretended expertise, the boast which does not bear examination, the bogus references to an all-consuming passion for auditing - they will all add to the world weariness of the observer and make him long to exchange your company for that of just about anyone in the pub as soon as he can.
So do remember that being interviewed is about forming a human relationship and that that is more easily achieved through relaxed and honest chat than through the application of fiendish cunning.
"Keep it simple, stupid," applies in the interview room as well as elsewhere. If you can keep it pleasant and amusing as well, then so much the better.
Finding a suitable job is a matter of trial and error. Spread the net wide by using your contacts and do not restrict yourself blindly to a narrow band of employers.
A less likely application may throw up an interesting opening or show you a different angle. Alternatively, it may increase your network of contacts and produce a lead indirectly. In any case a large number of applications improves the odds.
Whether a particular interview will produce a job may be a matter of luck but whether a series of interviews will do so is a matter of statistics.
The fact that luck has a great deal to do with the success of a particular application was brought home vividly to a friend who was sent by an investment bank to Oxford University to interview that year's applicants.
There were two interviewers - my friend and a more experienced colleague - and a room had been set aside for their use and in it there was a pile of several hundred application forms.
My friend was aghast. It would take days to read them all and only a single day was available. He asked his colleague what they should do. The latter smiled patiently and, after walking over to the pile of forms, dropped all but the bottom 20 into recycling.
"The bank wouldn't want to recruit anyone who is unlucky," he observed.
So remember, when and if you are rejected, that it is probably not your fault. Maybe another candidate was the child of a major client; perhaps he shared the interviewer's interest in butterflies; or was freakishly good at figures; or worshipped in the right church; or his mother was the chairman's mistress. Who cares? It really doesn't make any difference.
Dust yourself down; remember Robert the Bruce and the spider whose persistence inspired him, and send off some more application forms.
Remember: Luck always gives way to statistics in the end.
John Watson writes from Islington in London
