Image description: The words “The second time podcast” in black text on a purple background. There is also a sketch of a computer and mouse.
You can listen to this podcast in a number of places:
- Spotify
- Apple Podcasts
- RSS feed (to open in your preferred listening app)
- YouTube
This website is the only place which has the script for the episode.
I know some platforms and apps have automatic transcriptions but I cannot endorse AI and will not take responsibility for their accuracy.
Episode Script:
Welcome to The Second Time Podcast. I’m Vanessa Smith. This is my weekly update on how job hunting is going – it’s the end of my 11th week of job hunting.
I felt particularly unenthused this week. It is incredibly hard to convince yourself to spend all week doing tasks which have a very low percentage chance of having any actual value or outcome. Think about it, spending your entire week doing working knowing that less than 1% of it will mean anything. It’s illogical to expect someone to feel good about this situation.
The problem with expressing frustration at this situation is that people will suggest I take a day off. And I know this is done in a caring way. But a day off solves nothing. It doesn’t remove systemic discrimination. It just makes me feel like I’ve done less work than I could have and therefore I feel crappier.
Early this week I received a rejection from a job I had interviewed for. Only I had completely forgotten that I’d even interviewed for it. The people I spoke to seemed nice but the work was ridiculously junior and that’s a variable that can make jobs unsustainable to me, so no real loss there. It’s the type of job I would accept and then just keep applying for jobs. And I think it was only a few hours a week, whereas financially I need to work full time.
I also had to break my ethics this week, which is common when being a disabled job seeker. There’s one place where I have never ever wanted to work. And of course, they turned out to be the employer behind a job I applied for via a recruitment agency. I agreed to be put forward for the job, because I don’t have the privilege of having ethics; I need to keep a roof over my head. It’ll take at least a few weeks to know if I’ve progressed in the application, and overall it would be a month or two before I could start if I am to be the successful candidate. So while I’m cranky I have to not have the right to have ethics, it’s not like it’s a done deal or anything.
But this brings me to another factor. Companies who recruit slowly. It costs the prospective employee so much money when you recruit slowly. You have to be rich to be unemployed. I don’t think the variables of time and cost are considered enough from the prospective employee’s point of view.
This week I’m going to highlight a few flawed sections from job ads:
- Job ad one: Canberra, Brisbane or Albury (Hybrid) – if the job can be done in any of those cities, as well as at least part of the week from home, it’s actually highly likely that the entire job can be done from home.
- Job ad two: Flexible working with 1-day WFH per week – flexible work where you dictate or predetermine the flexibility is not actually flexible.
- Job ad three: Work arrangement: Onsite for onboarding and initial delivery; hybrid considered under agency flexibility guidelines – If the employer lacks the skillset to train remotely, this is not the responsibility of the prospective employee. The employer should consider up-skilling in remote training
The barriers I am facing to gaining employment again are mostly barriers which are a) artificial and b) actively created by the employer.
As I mentioned in episode zero, I’ve been editing a book based on my 2023 job search, which was the first time I had to job hunt as an openly / can’t hide it disabled person. I made good progress this week, to the point where the book is starting to feel like a “real” book now. I’m hoping to set a release date soon. I have some final tweaks and formatting and those types of pre-publication tasks to do, but the majority of the work on creating the book is now behind me.
That’s about all for this weeks update.
However, I also had a wonderful suggestion a few weeks ago – to include a mutual aid in my podcast. I think that’s a great way to support the disability community. I’ve decided to include this as a short spot at the end of my weekly update episodes. The person I’d like to tell you about this week is Anna, who is in desperate need of a new place to live in Melbourne. Her current living environment is unsafe and detrimental to her disabilities. I’ll put a link to her Chuffed page in the show notes – you can read the specific details there. And if you know someone who has a spare room, granny flat, or something similar, please reach out to me and I’ll pass on the details to Anna.
Links referenced in the episode:
Recorded and edited by myself, Vanessa Smith.
Intro and outro music by Ben Dawson.
