Guy Bailey, a former Media Relations Officer at The Open University, emigrated to America earlier this year. Here he blogs about the soul-destroying task of trying to find a job, the lack of communication if you're unsuccessful and how there's never been a better time to sharpen your skills...

This has been something of a momentous week for me out here in Northern Georgia. I finally got a job.
 
By that I mean a real job, one I am not ashamed to tell people when they ask what I do; one that I care about being on time for, that won’t look out of place on my resume (CV), and crucially one that I don’t have to wear a name badge for.
 
I left the warm, cuddly embrace of The Open University on 30 January 2009 with nothing more than a ticket to Atlanta, a hatful of dreams and a suitcase full of slightly unfashionable clothes. Sure, Georgia had an unemployment rate of nine per cent higher than the UK, and I didn’t have any actual US working experience but I did have a degree, an OU diploma, a solid working-background including a six-year stint with the BBC, back when it was worth boasting about, and most crucially of all perhaps, a British accent. Simon Cowell, Cat Deely and even Piers Morgan were enjoying a modicum of success over here, so seriously, how hard could it be?
 
Here’s the stats:
 
Jobs applied for – 521
Interviews obtained – 9
Rejection acknowledgements – 45
 
Out of all the applications I was making, just over 10 per cent would get in touch and of them; just over one per cent would actually offer me an interview.
 
Exhausting
Job hunting itself was a full-time occupation. After getting up, getting dressed, making a nice cup of M&S Gold Label tea (I allow myself some home comforts), I then settled down to a minimum of two to three hours of internet job searching via a myriad of job sites such as Monster, Yahoo Jobs, Indeed, Job.com and lately Craigslist. As well as searching each with customised searches and keywords daily, I also did manual searches in case there was anything I missed and after a couple of months, started increasing my searches into other categories I could do such as admin or clerical work. As the months dragged on, I started considering employment for which the minimum requirement was having two working arms – achieving a similar degree of success I have to add. Add in the phone calls, on-spec emails, job club visits, advice session and ultimately volunteer work at a job retraining center, and it was exhausting just keeping still.
 
The hardest part of the interminable hunt is keeping your motivation and ego levels at a normal level. You can only take so much rejection before beginning to believe that your achievements so far have been one giant fluke or confidence trick. Actually, rejection would have been nice; it was the ignoring that got to me most. Some companies, Universities mainly, would send you a nice, formal rejection letter but that was the exception, apart from the odd email, nothing, nada, not a sausage. How much does it cost to send an email to put you out of your misery?  As John Cleese said in Clockwise – “I can take the despair, it’s the hope I can’t stand”.
 
Interviews themselves were also nerve-wracking as the stakes became increasingly high not just for me and my sanity, but my family too. Phone interviews are more common and prevalent here, mainly because of the distances involved in some positions but also as a pre-screening device due to the sheer number of applications being received. Many times I had a positive conversation with a recruiter or HR employee on the other end and that was literally the last I would hear from them from that day to this. I began to feel like a character in an episode of The Twilight Zone – the amazing disappearing man – speak to him and you will vanish.
 
Even “real” interviews could take on an impersonal and soviet quality. I had three and if I hadn’t followed up after seven days for feedback and potential good news, I wouldn’t have heard back from them yet. That is even ruder than the email blanking in my opinion – at least you’ve actually met these people now. My wife comforted me that this is how it works in the US and if you don’t hear back then you can comfortably assume you haven’t got the job – that much I get, but a quick missive informing you that you are quite the worst human being they have ever encountered, and if you come within one mile of the premises again then they will contact the police and the military to deal with you  would at least suggest that next time when an interviewer asks you for your main weaknesses you should not say “Redheads in black lace, smelling of Vodka and Red Bull”.
 
I told you so
During this time, the unemployment rate in GA crept up to 10.3 per cent as it is back in the UK, and I started to contemplate the unpalatable prospect of returning home, tail firmly planted between my legs, to a long line of naysayers stretching from Heathrow Terminal 5 to Teesside and back with large grins and “we told you so” looks on their faces. Belying its German roots, nobody does Schaudenfreuder like the British and studying the political columns from the past six months, both potential Governments-in-waiting are getting in on the act. Deep and savage cuts await no matter who gets in, benefits and pay for public sector workers are first on the block, despite being certifiably underpaid compared to the private sector, and this whole rotten British attitude that “if they are doing better then me then I won’t be happy until we’ve dragged them down” is coming to the fore, aided and abetted by the media, politics and the general zeitgeist. 

I apologise for sounding like an American for a moment but honestly, if you have ever thought this in the past few months whilst reading a website or paper or listening to the radio or TV about somebody whose only crime is to be exceptional at what they do then take yourself off to the vending machine and deny yourself a Kit-Kat chunky.
 
If the hard experience of the past year has taught me one thing it’s that if you aim for the stars, you might just get to the ceiling but that’s better than being stuck in the gutter poking holes in everybody else’s fuselage. Yes it’s tough out there right now as it is here, but there has never been a better time to stay close to the OU and sharpen yourself and your skills up until the winds die down. They will and when you go to interview and they ask you what you’ve been doing for the past year, it’s going to be a damn sight more profitable, personally, financially and yes, spiritually, to unveil your growing student achievement record rather than admit to just reading Heat and hoping Jedward get beaten up.
 
Read Guy's blog BlessayfromAmerica  - The further adventures of Mr Guy Bailey in the USA
 
What are your experiences of job hunting, in the UK or abroad? Share your views in the forum.