<b>Land of Hope and Glory, Mother of the Free,How shall we extol thee, who are born of thee?</b>Nice words by A C Benson there, supported by Elgar&apos;s tune.Sadly, however, it doesn&apos;t even remotely tie up with my experience of job hunting in this market. Lots of hope, yes... but any glory? No.Even the hope is switfly fading.How do you guys keep your head up high in these kinds of situations? It&apos;s fricking depressing to know that every time one door closes, another is about to slam in your face.

I cope with these situations by not getting mired in them in the first place: I prepare, I apply, I get offers, I accept them, I work hard, I get promoted, I stay put.

VVVYou seem to think it has been your choice to stay put rather than luck; and you offer a view on job hunting that is not based on any personal experience at all in the current market. Of course you just "know" that you could go out and get offers whereas everyone else is an idiot.This is self-righteous and ignorant.

No, it would be self-righteous and ignorant if I wasted 20-odd years of education and parental investment (emotional and financial) then blamed my personal failings on "the market".You, my fine friends, are the egregious ones. Put down the cheesy Wotsits, get your bloated corpse off the sofa, get down the Job Centre and start recognising your (limited) worth. Oh yes, and move out of your parents&apos; home - you&apos;re pathetic.

veni - go and re arrange your try hard patrick bateman-esque apartment. Or give your father a call - I&apos;m sorry he was never there for you.Job seeker - take a step back and recognise that everything is temporary. Give it time, go and have a read of anything by Martin Seligman. One of my favourites is "Learned Optimism". It will pick up and you will find a position eventually, you just have to keep at it, building networks by any means necessary.Oh and try to avoid those that have "conquered" nothing but a misconceived notion of self entitlement.

VVV - you are both very fortunate and very naive.In case you hadn&apos;t noticed we are in the midst of the worst downturn most, if not all of us, will have ever experienced.Whilst there will be a lot of the usual suspects out of work there are also a lot of very talent capable people who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. The amount of people applying even for more senior level jobs is astonishing.To my fellow jobseekers - keep the faith, something WILL turn up.To VVV (and others like him/her) - remember pride comes before the fall - it might not happent to you this time but that in no way guarantees it won&apos;t happen at somepoint and when it does you will appreciate the shock and learn sometimes it is better to keep your month shut!

jobseeker(s) - you all sound very pathetic. Stop whining on this forum and spend that time job-hunting. As VVV said, get out there - the jobs won&apos;t come to you.

Thanks Anon that is really helpful. Up until now I had just been sitting here waiting for a job. Now with the benefit of your advice I can now get myself back on the right track. I could never have done this without your deep insight.Fabulous.

Happy to oblige. Now toddle off and get on with it. Remember, no more playing on the forum until you&apos;ve done your homework and got a job.

VVV & Anon. I kind of agree with your sentiments but not so much with how you express them and you&apos;re not really helping these people. I&apos;d like to try. I took a nice severance package after 5 years with my employer at Christmas. Quickly found the job market was much different from last time I was looking. 5 years ago I made a couple of calls to specific contacts/companies, got two offers and took one. This time, same calls obtained meetings/interviews but no jobs and mostly just them gathering intel/leads from me.Therefore had to change approach and this is the advice. 1. Be as flexible as you possibly can on everything. Industry, role, location, salary etc etc. If you do that, it is not so much the lack of opportunities out there the problem is more that there are a lot of applicants for each role, therefore:2. Tailor every application. I ended up with 5 different CV&apos;s stressing slightly different aspects of experience most relevant to the roles I was applying for, tailored my application and followed up. Also got some advice (free) on my CV as I hadn&apos;t needed it for years. Once I did this, I made progress.3. Network. I made most progress through contacts and my network. In fact there are still two things of interest that may come back later this year. I got my current role after speaking with someone about a completely different role that came to nothing. They then came back to me on this before anyone else even knew about it.Becuase of this approach and my willingness to consider anything, I&apos;ve ended up taking an interesting interim assignment that I wouldn&apos;t have considered under normal circumstances (mostly due to location but also I was looking for perm positions).I&apos;ve moved from working with IB clients to the Public Sector (adding experience and future job security/opportunities in this sector) and I&apos;m on a nice daily rate (so earning more this year than previously in my career) which both mean that at the end of this contract I will either have more options open to me or can afford to take the rest of the year off and ride out the storm. OK, so I&apos;m travelling 3 hours a day to and from my client, but as it is PS hours, I still get home at the same time as in IB.I tell you this to show that whilst the market is a threat right now, it can also lead to opportunity if you approach it in the right way, consider every opportunity and be a little assertive/pushy.Oh, and the best bit is that VVV and anon are kindly paying me by way of their taxes!!!!!! Thanks.

What, you&apos;re not paying taxes? You mean you&apos;re earning less than the lower earnings limit threshold? Impressive...

No. As I&apos;m consulting to a Public Sector body that is funded by the tax payer, my invoice is paid for by tax payer funds.Think I&apos;m starting to see why you are still a job seeker and suspect my taxes may go to fund your Job Seekers Allowance for quite some time to come!

So what you&apos;re saying is that you&apos;re eating where you sh*t?You&apos;re paying taxes which then go into your wageslip, which you then put into a public sector bank, which is used to pay your wageslip, from which you pay taxes, etc.So you&apos;re really just treading water until you die? Does that mean you can&apos;t even be bothered to job seek any longer?

Jesus H. Christ Job Seeker - you were just given some helpful advice. I think you&apos;re going slightly offpiste telling all public sector workers that they&apos;re eating their own Sh*t - and can&apos;t really see much value or point to your comment.

Because it&apos;s an anonymous post, I doubt it is the real Job seeker that posted the negative comments. It&apos;s a pity we get some unhelpful riff raff on these forums.But I appreciate the post from FJS. Your tips are useful and I hope more people can provide their insights.

Some excellent advice on this thread from "Former job seeker" - I&apos;d certainly endorse all 3 of those recommendations.My additional thought would be that if most people are bumping up against disappointment and lack of progress in this job market, then one way of looking at all aspects of your job search is to <b>ensure that you are going the extra mile and doing all the things that most other candidates would not bother doing or would shy away from doing</b>.A couple of examples below, hope this gives a flavour for what I mean:1) References - the vast majority of candidates will state that references are available on request, meaning that the recruiter will only ever get to hear from your referees if they&apos;ve been impressed by the rest of your CV (and often only if you actually make it to the stage of being made an offer). Why not turn this on its head and actually go away and source 2 or 3 stunning references, so that your CV is massively strengthened by the 3rd party endorsement of some prominent clients / colleagues / academics, whose glowing endorsements you include with your applications?Most candidates don&apos;t do this, so if you go that extra mile you&apos;ll give yourself a great edge.2) Actively seek input and critique from friends / colleagues / former colleagues regarding the look and impression created by your CV. Most candidates will shy away from seeking this advice through shame, embarrassment, shyness... However there are 2 very very good reasons for going down this route. The most significant is that you never know the opportunities that your friends and colleagues may be aware of. The sheer act of making some trusted contacts aware of the fact that you are job-seeking will usually throw up some introductions to potential hirers / openings, as people generally like to help when they can - and most of us would feel less self-conscious asking for help in reviewing a CV than asking someone up front to make introductions. You also look far less desperate as a candidate if the introduction comes about indirectly like this rather than via a direct plea for introductions.The secondary benefit is that a handful of people reviewing your CV will throw up all sorts of areas for improvement, points of clarification, potential for precis&apos;ing the CV, etc that you as a candidate would simply not see from re-reading your CV for the umpteenth time.Again, most candidates will not go this extra mile; many of the successful candidates in this market will. In everything you do, try to think what additional effort you could make that would really differentiate your approach from that of the masses.Hope this helps and provides some good food for thought for the Bank Holiday weekend...Tony Restell<a href=http://events.top-consultant.com/UK/careerconference.aspx?ID=413>Revitalising Your Consulting Career --- Securing a Career Move in Consulting in 2009</a>