Job search is a tough business. You get an infinite number of negative responses, and you just have to keep going. But when is the moment you say enough is enough? How do you find your dream job?
Everyone looking for a job is treated like a piece of a product. Yes, a piece, not even a whole product. People are viewed as numbers without any respect from recruiters. Most recruiters.
When I moved to London, I was looking for a job because I thought I needed someone to say YES to me. Someone to give me the chance to make my dreams come true. In reality, I’m the only person who can make my dreams come true, but in a city where you don’t know anyone, you always choose the path of employment at the beginning. Even if it’s not really what you want.
Struggles of a job search
I had trouble getting personal interviews. Whenever I mentioned I had been in London for only a few weeks or months, they stopped responding.
When I dealt directly with the HR department and not with recruiters from agencies, I always got invited for a personal interview. Unfortunately, this happened only three times.
I wasn’t just a number to them; I was a potential employee, and they saw it right away. But still, they didn’t choose me.
The biggest struggle with job hunting is not hearing back from companies for weeks, months, and sometimes never. Being so passionate, driven, and motivated by my work, which is a lifelong passion – videography, and not being able to fully utilize my potential every day was incredibly painful for me. As a creative, I want and need to feel that I am needed, that my services, my creativity are needed and useful for others.
Being unemployed made me feel like a completely empty person because my work meant everything to me. I was a career woman, you could say. So not having a job and not getting a chance to prove my skills and hard work was very frustrating.
I was willing to work 24/7 without sleep. I had done it before, and you can hardly find anyone who can work nonstop and look like it’s nothing. I always believed my work ethics were very strong and not often seen in other people. Now that I’m 33, I realize it was a bit silly. HAHA.
Am I a failure for not finding a job?
But during job hunting and not succeeding, you feel like a complete waste of space. Like a failure. And you start doubting yourself very easily. Practically everyone is telling you that you’re not good enough. You hold on and keep telling yourself it’s not true, but when 500 companies tell you you’re not good enough for them, it’s really hard not to start doubting yourself.
It’s been six years since my job search, and I want to retrospectively share why I couldn’t find a job. Sometimes it’s hard to see things as they are. I was a huge introvert and visibly very scared. In other words, very low self-confidence and high opinion. It was definitely evident and heard right away (during phone interviews, there were about 50 of them).
At the same time, I lacked many skills. I was focused on filming and sound, but I had gaps in editing and marketing. Despite this, I thought I knew everything.
Anyway, it ended well.
That’s why I want to share this story with you because maybe you’re going through the same thing. I didn’t find anyone who would tell me they were rejected by 500 companies. Except me. So I thought, OMG, I must be a huge failure.
Some offers are so bad that you have to reject them
I have to mention that I rejected some offers because they were underpaid and a bit of a scam. In the sense that I was lied to many times during the interviews, and why would I want to work for people who constantly lie to me?
Do you feel that something is wrong with a potential employer? When you have that bad gut feeling, it’s better to walk away before you sign anything. So yes, some companies said YES to me but offered me a minimum wage. For six years of experience in video production of small and large conferences from Košice to Prague, it’s quite ridiculous.
Not anyone can do my job. Filming live broadcasts, sound engineering, live editing, and promo videos. I even filmed the Slovak president. Why then the minimum wage? Because the British don’t care about my success outside of Britain.
When you think it can’t get worse
One day, I even spent the whole day working on a project because I was promised to get a contract by the end of the day. I filmed, edited videos, did a lot of photos, and design for eight hours.
Do you want to hear the highlight? The company owner stood next to me during editing with a stopwatch. No kidding. He timed how long it took me to edit the video. Within 20 minutes, I had the video edited. He was very satisfied but requested a few adjustments. Then he left.
The adjustments took me five minutes. He came back after 20 minutes and stopped the stopwatch. He concluded that editing this video took me 40 minutes, and that is a very long time. I had no confidence to explain the reality to him.
At the end of the day, they called me into the office and told me they didn’t have time to prepare a contract for me.
They told me to come back the next day. Frustrated, I asked about the final contract terms so I wouldn’t waste my time again. They told me I would have to work through Christmas. Yes, the whole Christmas, including weekends, because they had a rush and my colleague had a holiday.
At the same time, they said that based on seeing my work, they would offer me a lower wage than we agreed.
Job search is almost over!
Another highlight was an interview with a huge worldwide company. The job role was called video producer. Creating and planning video content, overseeing filming and production quality. Hiring cameramen. Editing videos. Decent salary and benefits.
I passed the initial selection and before the personal interview, I had a phone interview with my potential future boss. I will never forget this experience. The manager was eating during the interview. Fine.
But what got me was the question: “If there is noise from the corridor during filming in the room, what will you do as a producer?”
A very good friend later amused me when he added: “And didn’t she ask you which side of the camera the lens is on?”
Highly unprofessional attitude
I apparently made an impression on them because they called me for the final selection where only four candidates remained. I didn’t go. I had enough. I had been communicating with the manager’s assistant, who constantly made grammatical mistakes in emails.
Twelve hours before the final interview, she sent me an email saying she forgot to send me the assignment for the project I had to create on the spot in front of the jury. The assignment was two A4 pages and had absolutely nothing to do with the job description. Upon closer reading, the role was suddenly called “assistant editor.”
I replied to the email requesting an explanation. The response was that due to the long selection process, the required video producer role was no longer needed, and therefore it was replaced by another position. And for a much lower salary.
Enough is enough
That was the last straw. Yes, 500 companies rejected me, so I should probably be grateful for any interest, but not at the cost of being treated like an idiot.
Instead of feeling sorry for myself, a fire ignited in me. It gave me courage.
I never thought I would become a freelancer because it requires selling, getting clients, and taking full responsibility for the whole business. And I thought I couldn’t do it.
My anger convinced me that I was going to do it. I was going to go freelance. But I thought, if no company wants to hire me, how will I get clients? Why would clients want to work with me if no one else does?
These were my thoughts. But I had to get it out of my system. I started creating my complete online brand, reworking everything, learning new skills and things, and putting them into practice. I started redesigning my website and trying to rank it on Google.
Let the education begin
Soft skills courses, SEO, marketing, blogging (I have an amazing PDF guide to help you with this), communication, confidence. I started making videos where I was a vlogger overcoming my fear of people laughing at me. Do I even speak good English? How do I look on camera?
That’s also the reason I created an online course called How to talk to the camera like a pro to help you overcome your fears and get super confident promoting your business online.
I started focusing on new editing trends on social media. Learned new editing software. New editing techniques. All of this in an incredibly short time, almost without sleep. That’s why it took just under a month, and I found my first clients, who were extremely satisfied.
My confidence skyrocketed, and that’s the moment when you really think you can do everything you’ve ever wanted. You can make it a reality.
Job offers are coming to me
After half a year of freelancing, at an event, I received a job offer on the spot from an entrepreneur who presented himself as a millionaire. Who knows how it was in reality, but I know he gave lectures all over the world.
It wasn’t the only offer. One of my clients, a private university with contacts not only in the monarchy but also in show business, offered me a full-time job. And another big client tried to lure me for quite good money, but I refused him too.
Six months before, I would have been amazed and wouldn’t hesitate for a second to be employed by these companies. Now I politely refused everything.
It’s been five years, and I look back with a smile. As a freelancer, I worked with more than 300 companies, including BBC, British Police, Cambridge University, Channel 4, NATO, Daily Mail, British Parliament, Sony, SEGA, Fremantle (Britain’s Got Talent, X-factor), Morgan Stanley, and others delivering them my courses which are not available online for everyone to purchase as pre-recorded videos.
And you know what makes me the happiest? That many of them refused to even invite me for an interview five years ago.
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