The Trials of Looking For Employment Transgender Style

Good afternoon lady and gentle readers, as I type this blog on a cold Wednesday in January I find myself in a rather befuddled mood. Allow me to explain, last Thursday I made the trip over to Cardiff for a job interview which I passed! This has turned into a fairly regular occurrence as I have now passed my last four job interviews, however I am still unemployed.

Allow me to explain, in October 2018 I signed with a company called Compass who had the catering contracts for the Liberty Stadium, Cardiff City Stadium and Principality Stadium. This meant that I was in the position of having a bit of money coming in to help with applying and travel to full time work. However during mid 2019 Compass lost the contract for the Liberty and Principality. I then transferred / applied to Sodexo who took the contract for the Liberty stadium and got it. Although truth be told it was more of a transfer than an interview I am classing this as an interview for ego purposes.

During mid 2019 as football and rugby matches were scarce I applied with Hap for festival and event work. Again I passed the interview although due to them taking their time at the time of writing I have only done one event with them a Stereophonics concert. During this time I have been applying for other work and its effectively become the same stuff you'll be familiar with from earlier blogs. Lots of interest that dries up the moment they realise I'm transgender.

Last week I passed an interview with Arc Hospitality which means I should be busy over the coming months. I'm enjoying hospitality looking forward to all upcoming shifts although the major problem is that being casual and mostly match and event day there isn't a lot of hours. However I'm getting good at it, management are training me and upping my skill set. Hopefully this might lead to permanent work in something like a hotel or restaurant.

Personally I'm in a good place right now and can see things getting better.

Job Application Funk

I'm in a bit of a funk today lady and gentle readers, a proper funk. Like I've fallen down a dark hole and can't pull myself out kind of funk.

I'll tell you why, earlier today I saw my old job being advertised on a job site via an agency. This was a civil service job and I immediately checked if it was advertised on the civil service site - it was. This left me with a decision to make and I'll explain why.

Over the years I have applied for a number of civil service jobs directly and never got one. Despite the fact I am qualified and experienced in admin and call centre management - I believe the fact I'm transgender is a factor in this. At one point in 2015 I applied to what looked like a civil service job via an agency, I firmly believed this was a fake job advert but applied anyway as a job could still come out of this. I registered for the job, interviewed for the job and got the job, mainly due to the fact the recruitment consultant was stoned out of her skull and didn't realise I was transgender.

During the time I was there, the entry level (fixed term) in the workplace was removed which would have been the next level I got promoted up to from a temp. I wasn't allowed to apply for permanently, a number of jobs I was experienced in and qualified for came up and I was unable to apply for them because I wasn't permanent or fixed term. Eventually after 15 months I was phased out due to the temp contract coming to an end. During this 15 months I managed a department over Christmas and New Years, trained countless staff and got nothing from it.

My choice is do I apply for this as a temp or directly. Directly I don't get in, this is plain fact, I have helped manage a department for this branch of the civil service but it counts for nothing because I'm transgender. I've got no choice but to apply for this job as a temp and hopefully get more than three months work out of it.

I should be firmly entrenched in this branch of the civil service by now, a few levels up striving to get back to I was before two decades of work placed transphobia killed my career. But I'm sat here typing a blog with only four hours guaranteed work this week.

Like I said readers, I'm in a funk.

My Least Favourite Waste of Time

Good afternoon ladies and gentle readers, I hope I find you fettle. As I write this entry its a barmy August evening and I hope your getting the summer weather where you are. Anyway on with the blog, most of my blogs are written as a bit of fun however sometimes I have to rant and get something out of my system, this is one of those times. For the first time in a while (and because some of you requested) I'm doing a job search entry. This particular blog is going to cover two separate application processes with two parts of the same overall company.

In late December I left my place of work on a temp contract and was looking for work, which is a struggle at that time of year due to the first three months of the year being quiet in most industries. Someone shared on facebook that Admiral Insurance were taking people on so I logged onto Admirals recruitment site and had a little investigation. For those of you who don't know the Admiral Group is a large insurance company located throughout South Wales (Newport, Cardiff and Swansea). Apparently Admiral is expanding and was going to be doing some things I would like to do as well as things that I'm experienced in. So I filled in the on line application form for a CSR (Customer Service Representative) under the Gladiator brand. After completing the form I received an email saying I'd got through to the next stage which was a phone interview and asked to log back into Admirals recruitment site to select an interview slot. I chose 14:30 the following Thursday the 29th of January.

This was a few days away and it gave me a chance to have a more detailed look at the company. Go over my weak spots in interviews and come up with some answers for competency questions which I was a little out of practise with. Thursday 14:30 soon arrived and I received a phone call from a polite cheery voiced woman who proceeded to interview me. After forty-five minutes of stringent interviewing we reached the end and I was informed that I had passed and was invited to a 'meet and greet' the following Thursday at 09:30. All in all not a bad result and I had a week to prepare myself for what I was informed would be a three - maybe four hour chance for me to find out a bit more about the company plus be interviewed.

A week later and off I popped to Swansea, I'd been asked to get there for 09:00 which meant an early rise to leave the house 07:30, a twenty minute walk, half hour train journey and a slow amble to SA1 as I composed myself. Wearing my hair & makeup as professional as I could get it and dressed in professional top, trousers plus bag I looked the typical interviewee. I do have a confession to make at this stage, Admiral have three buildings in Swansea, one out in the vale and two in the SA1 development near town, along with 95% of my fellow applicants I went to the wrong building - I went to the main building 'Admiral Group House' when the Gladiator brand is located in the Ellipse building. After being informed we were at the wrong building I got directions from the security guard and led my fellow applicants three minutes down the road to the correct building.

We were greeted at the door by one of the recruitment girls (the recruitment team in Group House had phoned ahead to tell them what happened) and led through the call centre into one of the meeting rooms. The three recruitment people then took us through a presentation about Admiral (having done my research I knew most of it although I made sure to look interested). We were then given the traditional task of quizzing the person sat next to us fortunately me and the girl talked 10 to the dozen so we were able to get all the requested information out of each other. We were then given another presentation this time centring on the job itself and Gladiator itself.

At this point things got a little bit strange, we were then divided up into two groups of seven. The first group were to listen in to some agents on the floor (buddying) and be interviewed one by one while the second group (included) me stood waiting in a corridor for an hour. Every so often one of the first group would be pulled off the floor to be interviewed then we would 'buddy up' when they were all done. They did say we could wait in the chill out lounge but we didn't have a pass to get back in out of the corridor.

So an hour later the other team had been interviewed and left, meaning we got to 'buddy up' to an agent. I should say at this point that any name I give will be made up... just because. I sat down next to a young chap called Tim who gave the worst performance I'd ever seen in a call centre. After a few minutes I was having to point out where the information he needed was on the screen. During one call he put the client on hold and left the desk, I have no idea how long he was gone for but in that time the client had got bored, hung up, called back and had his query dealt with by another agent. Ideally I was hoping to pick something up to ask about during the interview but it didn't happen. Essentially for forty-five minutes I was sat at a blank screen whilst my agent was doing a tour of the room occasionally coming back to his desk (just to be clear he was not on a break) for a few minutes now and again. If this guy could get a job I was a dead cert to get a job if this was the level of worker Admiral had.

So after enduring this one of the recruitment staff collected me for the actual interview. It was her and another recruiter who I hadn't met yet sat side by side at a table with myself at the other end. The first question I was asked was 'had I enjoyed listening in?' I didn't want to start off on a bad foot or get a new colleague into trouble on the first day so I tried to sidestep by saying I didn't get to hear or see much due to the calls being long and awkward. After a 'how do you,' handshake and positioning myself on the chair in a positive open manner the interview began. The recruiter who I'd met I'll call Julie and the one who I'd not seen before the interview I'll call Bindy, they were both a bit 'sensible shoes' and it was quite hard getting them to open up - especially when they were the ones who should be getting me to open up. The interview didn't actually last long, I was asked a bit about my background and personal life which I answered in detail. I was asked a question about building rapport and asked to give some previous examples. I'd been expecting this and had practised an answer, I spoke about my previous call centre work and gave the examples of when I worked in a loan brokers talking about what the loan was for, when I worked for Vodafone I'd often chat about their model of phone and if they'd seen any models we had coming out they had their eye on for a future upgrade. Just giving examples that I could chat with a client and not leaving them hanging in an awkward pause - that kind of thing. They then asked about the gap I had in the last five years when I left the industry, rather than lie I said I'd left due to transphobia in the workplace and had looked to get out of the industry due to it having a negative affect on my career.

What I'm going to explain now is what every person in the transgender community has gone through. Their jaws hit the table and the penny dropped, given the clothes I was wearing, the makeup and the hair I'd have expected them to notice when I walked through the door. All of a sudden there was a panic in both their eyes, Bindy must have had some kind of auto reflex as she then gave a speech about Admiral being an equal opportunities employer. All very good to hear and at that point inside I gave a sigh of relief and was perked up for the rest of the interview, when (bearing in mind we're about six minutes in) Bindy ended the interview and and asked me to leave. I kept myself composed as its not the best idea to create a confrontation, a sentence famously said by Terrance Dicks or possibly Malcolm Hulke. I have put up with a lot of transphobic crap but I've never had the interview stopped and been removed from the building before. Everyone else got at least a twenty-five to forty minutes interview I was turfed out when the penny dropped that I was trans. Utterly disgusting.

I trudged home fully knowing I hadn't got the job, despite the experience of this 'meet and greet' when I'd looked into Admiral I thought it looked fantastic and thought (as I do now) it was an ideal workplace for me. The following Monday I received a generic email saying "we received a high calibre of candidate and some of the other candidates demonstrated a closer match to what we are recruiting for at this present time" in short absolute bull shit. My call centre experience was extensive - I'd done customer service, sales retentions, worked for brokers (which is what Gladiator is), managed departments, actually set up departments and worked in industries as extensive as banking to broadband suppliers.

However what this email also had which was rare on this day and age was a phone number to ring for individual feedback. I was still in this! Perhaps I could resit the interview with a non transphobe while management investigated Julie and Bindy!  I proceeded to ring the number and spoke to a recruitment girl, I asked for feedback first before I made any complaints and the feedback was 'I hadn't given any examples of building rapport' if I wasn't already livid I was even more livid now. Not only had they been discriminatory during the interview they'd put a load of rubbish in the recording of it to cover their backs.
 I told them that was incorrect and retold the exact examples I had given in my interview, I also said my treatment of having my interview stopped was nothing short of trans phobic. She escalated the call and eventually I spoke to two separate people who repeated the phrase: I'm sure that's not the case. Over the course of those two calls I stated my case that I'd had my interview stopped and been discriminated against by a transphobe but all I got in reply was 'I'm sure that's not the case' repeated back at me after every sentence. Eventually I was offered a call back from the head of recruitment which I accepted as I was getting nowhere with these two but I never received a further call.

There ends my first attempt to get a job with Admiral, ending in transphobia and a cover up by recruitment staff who didn't care. Despite my experience I still held hopes of working with them in the future, the fact is they are doing things I would like to do. Nevertheless as is the norm these days after getting rejected I would be unable to apply with them for six months. I'd like to say that I think this isn't an isolated incident and that Admiral is an equal opportunities employer but I'm sure that's not the case.

Selling Yourself For the Pound

For those who aren't aware I recently left Swansea's Amazon branch for the fifth time (sadly this is not a record) and have been since looking for work. However all this has resulted in endless days of applications and a few phone interviews. Although proving the old adage you wait half an hour for a bus and then two come along at once I recently had my first two proper interviews within a few days of each other.

I was perusing the Directgov website for jobs one day and noticed that Save Britain Money had been advertising for jobs about a month earlier. For those unaware they are best known as BBC 3's The Call Centre.

Rather than apply through some old out of date adverts I thought I'd send them my CV and details directly by the web site. I've got a lot of experience in call centre environments and thought it would be a good place to get my career on track. Lo and behold after sending my CV I got a call ten minutes later from a chap called Stephen on behalf of SBM. After a quick chat I was invited to an interview at 13:30 the following Wednesday.

I always say if you've got a company which suits your background and skill set nearby send your details in and get yourself noticed. I have an extensive background in call centres ranging from front line, inbound, outbound, sales, customer service, training, floor walking and management. On top of that after looking at the web site I found they were branching into financial services which is where I've had my most successful period in my career and got my management experience.

After doing my research on the company I set out to Swansea, a 20 minute walk to the train station followed by a 20 minute train ride into Swansea Central and then a 45 minute walk to Swansea Enterprise Park in pouring rain saw me arrive a good 20 minutes early. I stepped through the door and was greeted by the sound of a massive crash, I turned to my left to see that Hayley the tea girl crashing her trolley trying to exit a lift.

I was shown in to the canteen by the security guard and spent half an hour chatting to staff and other people here for the interview. On chatting to some new starters I found the procedure was a quick one on one interview and then you'd be brought back for a group interview. After fifty minutes I was called into an office by Stephen who I'd spoken to on the phone. I politely listened when he told me about the company and various things I had already found out and a number of things I hadn't. I then told him about myself making sure to focus on my call centre experience, extensive sales background and experience in managing a sales force selling financial services. After five minutes the interview was over and Stephen said he would call me later to schedule a second interview. I made my way home, that evening while playing Mass Effect 2 Stephen called. Apparently they had "sold their available slots" and would contact me in six weeks when they had openings. Needless to say this was disappointing stuff, I had hoped that given my experience it would have been a case of "blimey this candidates good get them in ASAP" however I went to them and knew they weren't recruiting at the moment. As I type this its two weeks on and only four weeks until they start taking people on so its something in the bank if nothing turns up in the mean time.

The next day I had a text from Hays (a recruitment firm) asking me if I was interested in working for Virgin Media in customer service. This offer brought up conflicting emotions, long time readers will know that I'm transgender. A number of years ago I applied for a job at the Virgin Swansea site (when it was NTL), I applied for a job as a Com which is a managerial level job. I interviewed for the job, however on informing them I was trans all of a sudden instead of a Com I was offered a front line job on customer service. It was my second experience of HR and the recruitment industries transphobic attitude and I took the job with the agreement after three months I could re-interview for the Com job. Three months went by and the Com job interview never happened and I left.

After some thought I emailed them saying I was interested, theres no way Virgin could be as bad as NTL so I had little to lose. The following day I had a phone interview which I passed and my in person interview was scheduled for the next Monday at 10:00. However I woke up that morning to see that there had been an explosion at Didcot which had screwed up the Great Western train line. This resulted in me having to run from Swansea Central to Matrix Court. The interview was a one on one in which I had to give examples of certain situations and also put over my experience. I mentioned I'd worked on the site before and went into detail on my call centre experience. On finishing I was told I should hear back later that day, in reality it would be a week until I heard back and that was after I had to politely push them that it had been four days when I was meant to hear back later that day.

The following Monday I was called and told I didn't get the position due to "a lack of experience" which is complete bullshit. As said earlier I have a number of years experience in call centres ranging from front line work, inbound, outbound, sales, customer service, training, floor walking and management. It really knocked me for six, I had done enough to get the post and had the experience. I should be used to this by now as its something the trans community are used to,  ie not getting jobs we should walk in to. Sadly the last few years have resulted in me going in and out of Amazon on a temp basis. Hopefully the next application will have a happier outcome.