Has turned out to be that of an oncoming train. In a good way. After being unemployed since early March I have finally found a permanent job. I have been in sales basically since leaving school 174 years ago. I have been branch manager and sales manager and a raft of other names for the same thing in the paper and print industry. I have also managed to be made redundant 4 times, the last being early this year. As I am nearly 50 this last time was of concern. The fact I actually had finally found a job I didn’t not want to wake up on Monday for as well was particularly annoying.
I have applied for various sales roles but of course if you are not from the industry then you obviously could not possibly be trained to sell whatever product or service these people have… And there are precious few and even less desirable opportunities in the printing industry at the moment.
I have not been idle of course. Can’t afford to sit back and starve so I have undertaken a couple of temporary roles over the past few months. First involved in the fruit fly outbreak role early this year. Basically walking around with a back pack fully of bait and spraying trees. Most recently finished the “Norwood leaf blowing program”. A slightly eloquent way of saying walking around the streets of the “leafy suburbs” with a 15 kilo industrial blower on my back blowing leaves off the path in the wee cold hours of the morning. That I managed to keep up with and even see off my coworkers who were half my age was a little gratifying. That came to an end on Thursday which serendipitously coincided with a most welcome call to advise me I had been accepted for the October intake of suburban train driver.
The recruitment process for this is rather convoluted with a detailed written application, on line psyche test, two hour test at the premises and then a final interview.
"A large number of candidates apply to the Suburban Train Driver role. As a result, the selection process is very competitive; the application process can be hard work and often time consuming. The testing is rigorous, and there are specific benchmarks for each assessment; therefore only a small percentage of candidates will be successful to the interview stage."
Anyway got through. There is an 4 person intake in July which would have been a lot better and one in October but at least we are back, dare I say, on track.
The training takes 45 weeks or so but at some stage late in 2013 look for me driving one of these-
It is a huge step outside my comfort zone, will include shift work and working over public holidays but I am quite quickly coming to terms with not having budgets and the associated crap that comes with sales for the foreseeable future.
On we roll.