Assayers of a Lambent Break,

I was lucky. I finished learning and I left. I didn’t discover the formula for finding employment after a PhD. The problem is that employers cannot afford to have a distracted employee. It’s a risk to hire someone who is ‘writing up’ or even someone who has ‘just submitted’. A pre-arranged appointment may be possible but no one can be certain when it can be fulfilled. Everyone has to go somewhere; graduate schemes seem to be aimed at undergraduates; positions in the open market require experience, so the PhD finisher is stuck.

I was gobbled up by a company who misguidedly decided to take advantage of the excess of PhD graduates in the market. Their policy, if followed through, would have seen them fill every position, from the top to the bottom, with a doctor – and they’d all be on temporary ongoing contracts.

There was an initial honeymoon period, I was trained, I learned and I was promised that I would be allowed to expand the current portfolio of the position – I would be allowed to study and experiment.

I started alongside another graduate, and after a few months, we were joined by another and installed in a 24 hour shift system – round-the-clock development. I was deemed most competent of the three and the first to work the nightshift. There is no sufficient preparation for the nightshift. I am ‘a morning person’. On the first night, before midnight, my body was in shock. Hot and cold, hot and cold – my body’s way of saying ‘I’m usually somewhere else.’ I experienced this at the start of every nightshift week. Unlike many nightshift workers, I could go home and sleep, however, I couldn’t eat. I only really wanted to eat cereal and ice blocks. I managed to play football of the evenings before work but I felt as if I was playing with only 75 % lung capacity. The worst part was always the re-adjustment, I couldn’t sleep on the evening of the first weekend day, and as a result, I was so tired that my second weekend day was ruined.

I knew that I was never going to stay. I wanted to think, I didn’t like completing jobs without engaging in them. I knew that I wasn’t working at full capacity, nor could I, in my upside-down world. I would be given projects whilst on dayshift and I wouldn’t be able to resume them until I was on dayshift again; any research or focus was lost in the interim blur of nightshift and backshift.

My heart was always too good. Sometimes others didn’t match my application. Most of the time, I was exploited. I didn’t mind, I liked to be busy and I enjoyed doing a good job. I always cared. I never complained. I did what I was asked to, I did it well then I went back and asked what I could do next. I thought ahead. I tidied up. I was professional despite the fact that I was never fully immersed in the work. I felt as if I was liked in every department across the site. I was genial. Management were impressed, I knew that they thought highly of me, but it was never rewarded with the security of a contract, improved shift or a more challenging role.

I applied for jobs every day, I rarely missed a relevant advert. After 6 months in the job, I attended my first interview; it turned out that the job was outside my field, but it signalled a change in fortunes. After this, the offers of interviews started to come in. I believe that I must have crashed through some time barrier; perhaps a suitable length of time since leaving university or a reasonable number of months experience had been attained. My interview technique improved after attending a couple. I was actually offered a job, but I declined on the basis of the working conditions.

One of my 2 colleagues was offered the same position I turned down and he left, I was happy. I thought this would rattle management a bit and perhaps persuade them to improve our contract situation. I was wrong; this would only lead to more erratic shift patterns. Around this time, rumour arrived that I was to expect to be offered a contract after the Christmas holidays. This news didn’t change my resolve to leave.

I became a bit of a joke at work; a haircut and a shaved face would always indicate an interview. I built my hopes up when I had two interviews in one week, I thought I was departing. When I had three interviews in one week and still I remained, I was devastated. The phone kept ringing, agencies swarmed over me. They wanted to send me far afield, so I knew I had to do this by myself. The interviews helped me expand my knowledge, I had a boss who had others in awe – he was able to say something about any subject. I was a little sceptical, such understanding might be superficial and picked up from travels through industry – I was now collecting that type of experience; at the very least, I have become aware of the standards of others.

One of the most common interview techniques for employers seems to be to downplay the role on offer and attempt to talk the candidate into wilting and admitting that they might not want the post so much. They can be persistent to the point where they ask no other questions; the only way to combat this is to be resolute and not show weakness. This occurred during the interview for the position I eventually decided to take up; I suppose by this time, I knew nothing could ever be as bad as where I was.

On one occasion, I attended an interview for a company that worked in a similar field to the company I was trying to escape. The interview was simple, I marched through the technical questions with style and I fielded the other questions with ease. I left knowing that I had performed well but I was open-minded as to whether I’d be offered the job, I was ‘waiting to see’. Next day at work, I told my colleagues at work what had happened at the interview, they said, ‘That’s it, you’re off, the job’s yours.’ As the day wore on, I began to believe them; I had gone from nonchalant and patient to expectant. I called the company to ask if I had been successful, and I was told that, ‘Your current job seems so similar to this one that you might want to leave us too so we have offered the position to another candidate.’ I was taken aback; this was something new to consider. I was confounded; I had been laid back about the outcome until my colleagues convinced me that the job was mine; they built my hopes.

One rejection was quite lovely. I applied for a temporary role at a company where I had completed a work placement. I was greeted by a former colleague at reception and interviewed by a former manager. They had brought out some of my old reports and it seemed like an informal meeting of old pals. The manager asked what I had been doing since the end of my placement and then he held up the reports, ‘These tell me that you can do this job and you’d be good at it, but I can make no promises about what would happen at the end of the contract.’ That was when he did me a favour, I consoled myself with my interpretation of what he was saying ‘We don’t want to make you unemployed but we’d probably have to.’ and I believe that rejection was a friendly act.

Around a month before I finally left the job that had made me miserable, I said to my colleagues that I felt very close to leaving, I had no interviews on the horizon at the time but instinct told me that my departure was near. The next interview would be the one. I was positive. My daily applications went on, and then there was one where the company’s HR department personally thanked me for my application almost immediately. They then allowed me to choose my own interview time. There was no structure to the interview, there were no questions. I travelled, the job was described to me, in its gory detail, and then I went home. I felt that I’d be offered the job. A few days later, they invited me for a second interview, the same events took place, except, on this occasion, they discussed the possibility of a more senior role than the one I had applied for. I waited a few days, and then, they called me to offer me the job. I accepted in principle and I was told not to resign until I had signed the contract. After a nearly a year of misery, the time between agreeing to take up this new post and actually being able to resign seemed the longest. Contractually, I didn’t have to work a notice period so I knew that I could drop a bombshell. I handed in a letter of resignation calling the day after ‘my last day’. After just over a year, my misery ended, I wandered off to a company that really wanted to use my talents.