T1Cybernetic:
UrbanKayak:
The only thing that gets me down is the shockingly high number of places that don’t return phone calls or emails. I know they’re probably overrun with applicants but still, only takes a second!I’m with you on that. It’s disgusting the ignorance when applying for a job. I have fired off hundreds of applications in email /post /phone calls and messages for all types of jobs over the last 20+ years and probably 99% of them have had zero reply.
Yes, that kind of thing can be very disheartening, but like Paul Weller sang years ago “This is the modern world”. Sifting through applications then responding doesn’t “only take a second”; most job adverts these days clearly state something along the lines of “only applicants selected for interview will be contacted” because every vacancy for every type of job is oversubscribed massively, often by people who come nowhere near fitting the job description.
Not too long ago we had a driver applying for a vacancy for an “Experienced Class 1 Tipper” job. When the gaffer phoned him, it eventually turned out he only had a Class 2 entitlement and zero tipper experience 
He was totally BS’ing the gaffer on the phone, wasting the time of a busy guy who even on a good day “doesn’t suffer fools gladly”, yet thinking he could potentially blag it. That kind of thing tends to annoy people.
Word of advice for when you do get a shot at a job: a decent operator doesn’t care about how fast you can get from A to B, or whether you do or do not need to do a shunt (or several!) to get onto a bay, they don’t care about what is basically all the usual driver BS.
They care about you being a liability or an asset to their company: do you “know your stuff”? Can you look after your hours and breaks, do a decent vehicle check, report your defects properly, stay within the speed limits, stay off your phone, interact with the clients in an appropriate way, secure your loads properly? And lots more stuff like that.
Basically doing your bit to keep the company out of trouble. I don’t see many people these days who know how to “sell their self” in interviews, the “gimme and chance and I’ll show you what I can do” approach isn’t enough.