Job Hunting…

Morning gorgeous xx

How are you all this afternoon, hope it all good?

This post is pretty self explanatory today, because it’s all about trying to find a job… Yep, Job Hunting – That glorious task bestowed upon all us westerners at some point in our lifetime, usually after leaving full-time education (remember?). Now this is a diffucult task anyway in the current economic climate, but I’m specifically going to focus on the extreme difficulties faced in the current job marketplace by a Transitioning/Transgender jobseeker (And they are extreme sometimes) – Especially in the early stages when you don’t look that feminine. So, having just described my current situation perfectly, what made me write this post then? Well; you guessed it, Iv’e been interviewing for jobs. And the results are not that pretty.

Let me say one thing though. My style of writing suggests I may have an attitude – And I get why people would or wouldn’t think that, but I feel it’s there. It’s been said to my face, so we’re all cool. Today’s incident though; If I hadn’t have had an attitude, I wouldn’t have handled it. So, let me explain…

I’m finding it difficult to find a job in my current market place. There’s been more than one reason for that, and my past career doesn’t help. You see I’ve been around the block a little bit, in the industry I was in; but that’s purely because it’s been a fixated interest, and I didn’t want to let go. I have to say though; doing that, and knowing what I know now, really helps me undertsand that most people would have given up by now and moved onto something else – as I say time & time again, Autism Rocks. So; something I need to do, and something I’ve decided to do, is to start to apply for jobs outside of my comfort zone. ‘Do something different’, I thought, ‘Get out there find out what you can’. Good idea Vik, do it. And so not knowing what to apply for, you apply for anything and everythingthat comes up; somethings got ot come back? And low and behold, a job did. Mortgage Advisor. £34k. Local Interviews. Lovely, I’ll have some that. Read the email:

“You’ve been selected to come to this local hotel, on this day, at 9am; for our recruitment event. Not many people are selected for these events; and so you should be proud to have been selected to come to one of these days with our company”.

Knew it was a con, right there. But I’d obviously applied for this job, correct? Don’t remember doing so, didn’t want sales. But when I looked; I found it in my account history on the job board they said. It was a Mortgage Advisors role; job description looked mighty inviting. I must’ve done. OK, lets have a look into this. So I replied…

“Thank you for giving me the opportunity to come to visit your company. I’d be glad to attend your recruitment day”…

You get the drift, right?… Right.

Fast-forward to the day itself. Beautiful sunny day in the english countyside, nice morning for a drive. So I got to the event early, parks up and goes into the hotel. I know the place but I’ve never been in there. Weird building. Off to reception, signs in, gets pointed in the direction of the event – Nobody said a word. That is important, because the next thing that happened; changed everything.

Walks up to the room, two guys stood outside, both talking away. They stop talking, both look at me, one looks me up and down, and I reach them; hand extended. Two broken fingers remember, as well!? Didn’t quite catch what the first one said; but second one greeted me warmly, as did the first on his second sentence. I was then ushered into the room to join the few people that had already arrived.

My head had turned, but my ears hadn’t.

“Is that a Tranny?” – said one, quietly. “Yeah” – said the other with a giggle…

Oops.

I stopped walking and turned round; poking my head just out of the doorway. Enough so they could see me. The laughing stopped. I looked at them both, they looked at me and turned away. Right.

Nameplate went up, did everything as I was told, rail-roaded four guys for something they’d decided bilaterally during one of the assignments; don’t pull that one on me, and reached the end of the morning session. Lunch provided, nice. Went outside for a cigarette instead. (Yes I shouldn’t be smoking; it’s an Anti-Estrogenic, I’m quitting). Back in for the afternoon session – One on One interviews. Great.

And then the kicker…

“Ok, so a change of plan for this afternoon; and we are postponing the one-on-one interviews…”; said one of the ‘Trainers’ as they’d called themselves during the morning. Immediately followed by, “…But what we’d like to do, is we have a few issues with some of your CV’s. Can the following people stay behind, as we’d like to have a chat to you about the gaps in your CV?”

I see, like that is it? OK.

I’ll bet that you can guess there was nothing wrong with my CV; there was definitely no gaps? Can’t you? No shit Sherlock, you are right; there was NOTHING wrong with my CV. Ain’t that a blast?…

So me and two other people rose and left. Out of Nine, one left a half-hour before the end of the morning for personal reasons, and us three left at this point. Strangely, we were the one’s who weren’t part of the crew that I’d had a go at earlier – Bar one young woman. Who mentioned to me as I was leaving about there being nothing wrong with her CV. I said to not worry about it, I think she’ll be fine and off I goes.

Because of that, I’m the last one to leave and I’m chaparoned out of the door. So I shakes both guys hands, and steps out through the doorway. Then immediately turned around before it could close and said the following, in a loud enough voice to be heard…

“Don’t do that again. To me, or to anyone else. And if you must do, don’t let me find out about it, OK.”

The one who called me a Tranny was about to swing into action with his mouth, when he was stopped by the other one; “Don’t”, he said. “We couldn’t win against her if we tried. She’s completed the morning.”…

I wonder what he meant by that?…

This has happened to me before, and I know it’s happened to other Transgendered people in the job market-place. The Equalities Act 2010; gives Transgendered people rights within the work-place, but it falls short on the job market. That is because you don’t have to hire a Transgendered person if you don’t want to, you just can’t say that’s why you’re not hiring them. You need a different reason, hence the change of structure to the ‘recruitment’ day; half way through.

It was at that point I turned around and left. Still, another lesson learnt. More experience for me; although I expected it all to happen the way it did.

Much Love,

 

Vikki xx