Monday 19 September 2011

The Meeting.

Today i had my first ever meeting with my new appointed job coach from the company TechROi that are based in a town quite close to where i live called Trollhättan.

If i had to be honest with myself i was pretty damn nervous this morning about the whole thing, i think it was probably fear of the unknown. I think Franklin D. Roosevelt said it the best with his statement "The Only Thing To Fear Is Fear Itself". Although i don't think i had anything to be nervous about but it still didn't stop the whole feeling i had inside.

Basically the whole point of the job coach is to help me get a job, they can't obviously physically get me a job themselves but they will help with things such as making my C.V. better and making it more aimed towards the company that i am applying to, it is something i need alot of help with since my current C.V. is pretty awful to say the least, so i think some pointers in that direction would be pretty handy. She has also said that she has a boss at her company that deals with I.T. positions so once we have revamped my C.V. slightly and got it looking a little better that she will take it to him for his point of view as to how we can improve it further which seems very positive.

Another thing we will go over is interview techniques, this is something i am in desperate need off, the main reason is that i have not been in a interview for a job in i can't count how many years now and even when i was doing them i always left them feeling a bit awkward, you know at the end of the whole interview the interviewee comes out with those dreaded words, "Is there anything you would like to ask?" i have never ever been able to work out what the hell you are meant to say, obvious things come to mind like pay, holidays etc but i think going into a interview and asking those types of questions make you seem like you are only interested in one thing and that is money. So in the past i have normally ended up just saying "No, i think everything has been covered and i am happy with everything" which again is probably not the best way to end a interview.

On top of all that we will be going over what to wear, i know that might seem a little bit strange to some people, but here in Sweden things are done very differently to other places around the world, i think the word that springs to mind when i think of people in the work place in Sweden is "Casual" the first time i ever entered the job centre here, i was greeted by a gentleman in shorts and a t-shirt, i honestly couldn't take my eyes off him and remember thinking to myself, what the hell is he doing? If i cast my mind back to Scotland and the way the people dress there it is alot more formal, Shirts, Ties and Suits. Unless your a delivery driver or something like that but even they wear a company uniform of some kind, pair of trousers and a company t-shirt or something, so i think some pointers in how to dress for certain types of interviews is indeed required.


But overall i came out of my first meeting with Kicki (Yes that is her name, very strange i know) feeling very positive, i was told before from friends around Sweden that there is many job coaches in Sweden who don't really care and don't want to do the job they have been set to do, but it was certainly not the impression i received from mines, i was given a pen drive from her so that i am able to place my C.V. on so that we are able to work on it and other items that we shall no doubt do in our 3 months that we have together, and a very informative binder with lots of information about C.V's and other aspects of the job coach experience. So i am currently home with alot of information to digest, and alot of things to get done before she rings me to confirm our next meeting. But i have a really great feeling about how the whole process went and i am looking forward to our next meeting.
If it continues to go as well as this one did, i'm sure that i shall be in some sort of employment in no time.

But for now i think i shall bid everyone farewell and go and have some dinner as i am absolutely starving, so until next time, take care.

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