The job crisis

Musings on job hunting during a cost of living crisis as your industry crashes down around you…

Part 1
Three months ago I walked into work at TV3 after reading on multiple news websites that Newshub was being shutdown. My co-workers, supervisor and manager were all sitting in the control room, looking…perturbed. The manager asked me ‘what do you know.’ Obviously what I’d read on the news. It was worse than that. Not just Newshub, our entire Broadcast department was being disestablished, operations being moved remotely overseas. The reality of a global village and working for big multi-national corporations. But four months notice to look for a new job is pretty good though, with redundancy, admittedly generous, for people who stayed to the end. As a freelancer I get none of that but I’m happy for my co-workers who do. Been there, done that.

Time to start looking for another role. The next week TVNZ announced its restructure and layoffs. To say nothing of all the numerous public service jobs that have been cutback as well. Oh dear, our industry is in rather a state.

Three months later I finally got my end of contract notice last week, a month out from the looming end date. I’d been expecting that and it was exactly in line with my plans, but wow, that is still not a fun read. Your services will no longer be required.

Have I been pro-active in finding new work? Well, no, but I have collected a satisfying amount of rejections for new positions. Should I be anxious about having a month or so of remaining employment? Probably, except the last time I was unemployed and job hunting there was a global pandemic on, so the bar has been set. Last time was an interesting experience being on the job seekers benefit for a decent part of 2020, a fondly remembered year for all of us. I lucked out with a case manager who had come through the TV industry, so I didn’t explain my skill base to him. On one memorable phone call he said, ‘So I’ve looked at your breakdown and the benefit doesn’t even cover your rent. This is not working out for you.’

No, no it was not.

‘What do you need?’ the case manager asked me.

‘I need someone to say yes,’ after talking him through all the jobs I’d been applying for.

It’s that easy, and that difficult.

It’s interesting, my professional industry is basically in its Blockbuster phase. Not the hit movie concept, the video rental chain model. We are a sunset industry, the old model no longer works and franchises are shutting down. Time for something new, to workshop those transferable skills. I may have spent more time working on colleagues CVs than my own but I have done a few drafts, a few revisions. I’ve gotten myself into assorted employee databases at this point. It’s been intensely interesting watching colleagues switch it up for new employers, new avenues and entirely new industries. Some have gone onto familiar Stuff or former employers, many have not. Playing with trains has been a surprisingly popular one but the new roles have been of the variety. I’m not entirely sure where I’ll end up next but it will be somewhere new. That’s what I said in 2020 after my last redundancy but there were extenuating circumstances that drew me back for the last three years.

I’ve had a lot of good advice over the years, one of the gems was a former manager.

‘If there’s a solution, why worry? And if there isn’t a solution, why worry?’

I’m lucky in that I don’t have to worry just yet. Let’s see who says yes.

(Shorter than my LinkedIn post because FB has a bigger character limit. Absolutely not rewritten with AI because I am still a helluva lot better than that, for now.)

Part 2
I’m starting to think job hunting is a lot like online dating. A lot of pointless scrolling. The most interesting ones are above your pay grade or overseas. You’re one of hundreds of applicants. You spend a lot of time agonising over the perfect opener only to be ghosted or left on read.

You are far too excited about any kind of reply and try to convince yourself to ignore the red flags. You only need that one acceptance letter because who has time for moonlighting these days, but the longer it goes on the more you start to question your standards.

Is there something wrong with you or are you just being too picky? Is it bad form to try and stall with one potential if a better offer suddenly comes up?

And at the end of it all, is this really who you want to spend over half your week with? Every week?

Part 3
Nearly two months on and the job hunt for the next thing...continues.

If anything the film, tv and general media industry has only faced more cutbacks in challenges in that time. It's been fascinating watching where people have ended up; whether in the remaining bastions of media and communication or jumping tracks to new industries. Trains was a surprise popular career choice.

Changing careers or industries is challenging at the best of times, this isn't the best and it's not localised to New Zealand either. My inbox has been flooded with rejection emails, because for every worthwhile opportunity there's dozens of worthy candidates, and hundreds more hopeful and increasingly desperate applicants.

So what have I been going for? I'm still sticking to my guns to pivot away from broadcast. There have been a lot of admin type roles, council and government. The appeal of employers not being disrupted in the same way technology and media are. Coordinator roles, academic course advisor, review officers, digital publishing & asset management, complaint communications specialist, festival admin for fun stuff likes boats and other writers. And content writing for the dreaded AI overlords, but the background check into that situation could be a whole post unto itself. There have been a lot of balls thrown and I'm honestly not sure how many are still in the air.

You see, a fun game I've been playing with my fellow fiscally prudent friends of leisure is application bingo. Did you apply for this one? Did you get interviewed? Were you rejected? Were you ghosted? We laugh, we complain, we commiserate and then we do it all again. It only takes one success story. So we tell ourselves.

It's not all doom and gloom, we all have our projects and side hustles. I'm back doing some of that writerly stuff, studying up on AI, debating the merits of the various upskilling courses available. I've been sidetracked into critiquing a few screenplays, forayed into an emergent fashion empire and other buzz words that make it sound like I'm not going quite as stir crazy as I am.

So, TLDR, open to work and opportunities, and I have a bunch of very talented friends and former colleagues still in the same space.

Final thought: The AI rewrite of this was so unbelievably bad.