My old and wise friend Paolo
Hello Anca! On my very first job after university I met a man named Paolo, who went on to become my best friend. This man has a very refreshing, independent way of thinking, and he enjoyed nuking my preconceptions. One thing he liked to say is that it is much easier to find employment in a very narrow, ultraspecialized area than in a very broad and defined one.
My friend’s thinking has had a lot of influence on the way I looked for work ever since. I try to be very specific: “I want to develop industrial policies for the music industry to maximize its beneficial impact on regional development”. “I am an advocate of open government, skilled at designing online and offline collaborative environments for citizens to cooperate contrsuctively with institutions.” I emphasize activities, not skills, so that I don’t have to say “I have a degree in this, a master in that, I have worked in this and that other areas, find me something to do”.
I realize that this does not solve the problem of structured recruitment: in fact, I got nost of my jobs through informal recruitment procedures (I played this mission too - see here - , and I, like you, am skeptical). But hey, I cannot influence the way recruiters work; what I can do is control my own angle of the interaction.
Interestingly, another Edgeryder called Marco - also a foreigner in Scotland - has painted a much more optimistic picture of the labor market in the UK (see here, also the comments - maybe you want to add to that discussion?).