When last semester began I was offered some job working for a start-up company that was interested in having “university-ties”. I thought it would be a pretty good opportunity. It involved using web technologies and python. A month after the offer, I still didn’t hear of anything, I wasn’t too phased about it. The excuse was “investing company haven’t put through the project yet”. I went through 4 whole months of unemployment, living off youth allowance.

Thank god for youth allowance and the stimulus package. Don’t know how I would survive uni whilst maintaining some sort of social life. Most of it went towards the ski trip and it was also meant to pay off my old iphone contract (which for some reason they still haven’t charged me for).

I applied for another job through the same job agency for Intersect (a not-for-profit organisation). I blogged about it as well few posts back. I was pretty hopeful, the Director of Engineering and Senior Developer seemed to be pretty happy with my performance. I thought “Finally, I can make some money and actually buy things without having to worry about whether or not I can afford it”. I got pretty excited when I got told that I would be starting work on 5th August. I even bothered to go shopping at Tarocash and bought myself 4 shirts, pants and a belt. All up around $250 (last minute sale ftw). I was pretty damn excited.

Days came and gone with no response. The excuse this time was that the HR manager is apparently “sick”. Well, fair enough. It’s flu season after all. I even caught the cold the weekend before I was meant to be working. Since I didn’t get any responses I decided to call them up myself. Apparently the person that’s coordinating my job with the company is also sick. How convenient. I had to call up somebody else that said will try and get in contact with me with the situation.

Days later, I got a call from that person telling me that the CEO of the company decided to not go ahead with the recruitment. At the time I didn’t really feel anything. I didn’t really care, I can’t get emotional on the spot when it comes to these things.

A week later, I decided to contact Intersect. They told me that because I was referred by SydneyTalent they cannot hire me. I thought fair enough., I’ll contract SydneyTalent instead. So I did. I got a reply the next day saying that I’ll receive a follow up email. I didn’t. A week went by and I sent another email asking for the status of the situation. I got a reply within a few hours telling me the same things that I already knew, however with one extra piece of detail, they told me:

“As with all students you are free to look for work as and where you see fit – SydneyTalent is only one avenue available to you.”

So I got in contract with Intersect again explaining to them they shouldn’t have any problems with hiring me. The person on the other end doesn’t seem to know what to do, she told me that the positions have been filled up but told me that I would be considered for future roles. Bullshit. There will be no future roles and if there are I won’t be considered.

What annoys me is the fact that I wasted one whole month chasing this up to find out that NOBODY can help me. The people who wanted to recruit me couldn’t any more. The people who was trying to help me get recruited wasn’t considerate of my situation at all.

I guess there is one thing I’ve learnt from this experience. Don’t sit back and let these corporate dogs shit all over you. Chase things up if you don’t hear back for a few days. Get both sides of the story cause chances are it’ll save you from losing a job.