You know how it is. Recruitment companies are to the unemployed in London what Moses was to the chosen people.
Or, maybe more appropriately, the Peter at Heaven’s door blocking your passage to unlimited banoffee pie at the buffet of the afterlife. You hate them, but you need them. You love them, but they treat you worse than your first high school boyfriend who decided to take someone else to the Year 12 formal. You want them to like you, because without them, you’ll be selling oversized Union Jack coated top-hats at Embankment Station.
And yet. And yet… They can destroy you with a single word: ‘typo’.
Having been in the legal field in Australia for a number of years with a couple of degrees under my belt, I came to the UK with the assumption that I was, if not employable in the same role, then at least qualified to photocopy someone’s documents or make them their morning coffee. Cue the endless rounds of submitting CVs to recruiters so that they may deign to throw me the crumbs us Antipodeans must scramble for at the edges of the cockfighting ring of the UK job market. Most I didn’t hear back from. Except for one.
The email went something like this (I may be paraphrasing):
Dear Applicant
Like hell we’re interested in you.
And did you know you had a whopping big typo on the front page of your CV, you illiterate peasant??
Go back to convict country.
Sincerely
Fancy Pants Recruiter
To be fair, it was a significant typo. An embarrassing one, which made me look like I either had George W Bush’s knowledge of world geography, or a severe inability to proofread my most important job-hunting tool. Which was awkward given it was the CV I had recently used to apply for an editing, proof-reading and researching role at a prestigious think tank.
Basically, I was proclaiming an in-depth knowledge of European Politics and European Law through a year-long study abroad program spent at the University of Vienna, AUSTRALIA.
Which, as they repeatedly remind you on entering the actual country Vienna is located in, is AUSTRIA (above Slovenia, next to Germany, below Czech Republic — just trying to redeem myself here…).
So I guess, top-hat anyone? Or how about a lovely pair of boxer shorts with the Tube map on them? 10 pounds, just for you…
IMAGE: Via Shutterstock.com