Any ideas please

[majoc]

Hello Everyone. For some years now I have been self employed but I am now not making a good enough living doing what I do and want to get a job. I mistakenly assumed employers would look favourably on someone who has tried to be self-employed but this appears to be a problem.

I have tried Monster and a few other similar sites but almost everything advertised is by recruitment consultants. I have mentioned to several of these consultants that I no longer wish to work in the sector I have spent the last ten years in but they keep coming back with jobs in that sector.

As I am not qualified beyond school qualifications I suspect I am looking at sales jobs, I need to earn a decent living and cannot relocate.

Does anybody know of any good consultants in North West England that might be able to help?

Thank you.

[gsfrontera]

I purposely dont apply for jobs which are advertised by recruitment consultants. They never reply to emails, dont call back when promised, just a complete bunch of tossers. I prefer to deal with companies directly, the organ grinders so to speak, not the monkeys.

If your looking for some kind of sales role might be worth keeping an eye on the actual job centre website

http://jobseekers.direct.gov.uk/homepage.aspx?sess...

[AJS-]

Recruitment consultants charge quite a chunk for finding a permanent employee so someone without direct, relevant and recent experience they can't really present that person to a client and expect a fee.

Lots of companies are always keen to hire a good sales guy, but without experience you would be going in at the bottom so to speak. The good news is that you can still earn decent money, but the bad news is it will have to be commission rather than a big basic.

Working for yourself should not be a bad thing as such, it shows initiative, self discipline and other traits which are good for sales roles, however it will raise a few concerns.

Firstly - how will he react to having a boss, and colleagues to work with after so long working on his own. Will be be able to adapt to doing things our way, or will he always think he knows better?

Secondly - why aren't you still working for yourself? If your business failed, don't try to hide this, it just won't look credible to say that you had plenty of money, no boss, and now you want to pack it in to take a bog standard sales job. Tell them the reasons it failed, and/or the reasons you are now looking to go back to regular employment.

Finally - Related to the above, will you pack it in and go out on your own again as soon as you can. Especially at the moment it's hard to run a business, so going and taking a salary for a year must be tempting. Obviously not many businesses want to provide this salary only to have another competitor spring up, perhaps with a couple of their clients, a year down the line.

Again, talk about your future plans - if you do intend to work for yourself again at some point in the future you can mention it - just make sure that you give a credible reason why this will be 5-10 years down the line. Alternatively keep it under your hat and give a credible reason why you would rahter be an employee for the foreseeable future.


My advice would be go around the sort of companies you would like to work with (if a visit isn't practical then phone), try and speak to the sales manager, tell them your situation and see if they have any openings. If practical see if you can do the job part time while winding up your business, and to get a taste of the job and whether it's something you would want to do full time. If you're really struggling, perhaps even offer to do this commission only on Saturdays or something - unless you have two heads and will scare off all their customers then who could say no?

[majoc]

Some good points thanks.
I'm still working for myself but levels of business have droppped massively because I can't compete on price against the bigger guys and because lending is so difficult now. I initially set my stall out to give a better service but sadly most people can't afford it these days and just go with the cheapest internet price.

I sell business vehicle leasing on an agency basis and am an expert but am sick of the industry. I also don't really want to go back to earning a £12k basic when I know how much the business can make.

Because of my utter lack of qualifications (A-Level only) I am pretty much restricted to sales roles but hate the thought of Appprentice-style brown nosing and politics.

Ultimately yes, I do want to strike out on my own again but haven't the money to start anything serious right now.

[AJS-]

If you are looking for a complete change of industry, then really taking a step back down - apprentice style brown nosing - is the way to do it. You don't have to see this as degrading or get really involved with politics, but just enough to give you an opportunity to show that you can do the job and earn your money.

Maybe a better step would be to approach either the big companies that you are struggling to compete with or approach clients etc and see if you could get in as a fleet manager, or something on the other side of the fence.

It sounds like you have some good experience, so changing industries completely would be a bit of a waste, unless you really want to make a fresh start and are prepared to jump through the hoops a bit to do that.

My experience with even graduate sales roles was that after a couple of months on the job, once you get money coming in, the politics disappear very quickly. You are as good as your last months billings.