Disguising the timeline
You spend three hours trying to disguise a forty-year career as ten years of highly concentrated experience. The dates give you away anyway. The application system asks for the year of your first graduation, and the drop-down menu requires a long, depressing scroll.
The cover letter
Writing a cover letter requires demonstrating you have enough energy for the role, without so much that you sound unhinged. You use the word ‘adaptable’ twice in the first paragraph just to assure them you know how to use a shared network drive.
The interview panel
The interview panel consists of three people who look like they belong in a sixth-form common room. They ask where you see yourself in five years. You try not to say you would like to be sitting in a quiet room with a decent chair.
The software question
There is always a gentle, slightly patronising question about software. They want to know if you can handle their digital systems. You have to stop yourself from pointing out that you were building databases before most of them had learned to read.
The automated rejection
The automated rejection email arrives at three in the morning. It praises your impressive background before explaining they went with a candidate more closely aligned with their needs. That usually means someone cheaper who will not mind working through their lunch hour.