Job hunting and interview help

NEW AND WANNABE DRIVERS (INTERACTIVE)
1

there are lots of new drivers that are changing career or spending their redundency money to get the job they’ve always dreamed of.

you spent all that money, passed the test. now the hard part comes. door after door slams in your face and you keep hearing the dreaded “2 years experience” some even give up the dream because they think it will never happen.

I noticed there wasn’t a thread on this, bits and bobs on other posts but not a specific thread. if you guys want to share your experiences or tips to help others. maybe we could put it all together on one thread.

there are differences, agencies will interview you differently to the boss of a skip hire firm.

then when you get the interview for your dream job, they start throwing you the stock questions:

“why do you think you’re right for this position?”

“what are your strengths and weaknesses?”

“what will you be doing in ten years time?”

“what do you know about the company?”

“why do you want this position?”

etc.

your mind goes blank and you babble and try to blag it on the fly. this is your first driving job, you are honest, reliable and bursting with enthusiasm. but how do you make your experience as a chef/office worker/brickie relevant to this job? how can you come across to make the interviewer decide that you are the right person for the job?

any tips that you would share to help others, or personal experiences of interviews that went well, or not so well? any methods of job hunting that worked for you. I knew one guy who passed class 1 and had cards printed from vistaprint, then personally took them to every firm he could find.

2

Well said.
I managed to make my way into a skip hire firm 4 years ago by relating all my previous experiences (mostly van driving jobs) to the prospective work that I would be doing. It turned out to be a great way of getting experience of a wide range of different vehicles, and has enabled me to go from job to job as I pleased, within the same industry.
Getting that first job is the hard part, but persevering and presenting yourself well is definitely the key.

3

nice one :slight_smile: glad you found a start. van driving is a good background to move up from. a lot of tms tell you that van experience doesn’t count for cat c or that rigid experience don’t count for artics. it does count! its the way you sell it. if you’re applying for a multi drop cat c job and you have a background as a van driver with TNT and UPS you could probably do the job with your eyes shut. the interview is a game of sorts, their part is to make you work for it.

or for example if you have 5 years of experience driving a rigid tipper, moving up to artics is a natural progression. same job, just a different vehicle.

the whole job hunting and interviews process has changed (my opinion not for the better) you need to understand how the game is played.

when I was 18 and I passed my car test, I was working as a forkie (and a crap one at that) the company had a high turnover of drivers, crap pay, long (illegal) hours (no driver went home till every wagon was tipped and loaded for the next day). I was always chucking sickies cos I hated the job. I asked the boss to send me out in a 7.5 and the next morning I was in one. I had no idea what I was doing and thought I’d made the biggest mistake of my life :slight_smile: the other lads covered for me and taught me how to drive it (I was really really crap at the start) but I took to it and ended up loving it. the sickies stopped and I don’t think there is anything else I would do now :slight_smile: