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Work may be bad but job hunting's worse

Patrick Hind

Apparently people don't like working. Britons are overworked, stressed out and don't have enough time for their families, according to new research by the Work Life Balance Centre.

The research shows that millions of Britons could well be suffering from depression as a result of their jobs. Eight in ten people questioned in the online survey said that at times they could not cope with the demands placed upon them and two thirds admitted they had been made ill by work.

Nearly half of these said they were suffering from depression while another 43 per cent claimed they had anxiety or panic attacks.

Among the more remarkable findings of the study was that one in five feel that their relationships outside of the workplace are placed under strained because of work and are often left too tired for sex.

But they want to know what it's like not having a job.

It's not exactly a walk in the park every day (well, sometimes a leisurely stroll can kill the hours) when you wake up every morning having to fill in application forms and email people requesting job interview after job interview.

When you catch sight of a job that should have your name written all over it, your heart skips a beat and you then deliberate over the application with almost paranoid accuracy. Should I have written my name in capitals? Will black ink make me look stronger? Will they spot that gap in my CV that I imaginatively filled with "travelling".

It's a stressful business this job hunting. And my love life hasn't exactly improved since I gave up temping and decided to pursue a more solid and fruitful career. My girlfriend, who always saw herself as 'a bit of a leftie', 'alternative' and 'indie' has become ever more vocal in her calls for me to jump on the career ladder.

She always admired my long hair, my days spent strumming my guitar and reciting poetry while smoking myself into an early grave when we were students, but now I get dogged with naggings such as: "you're not in touch with the real world" and "grow up".

She now works in advertising, absolutely loves it and I can't stop her telling me all about it. Thus behind closed doors this job-hunting business is not exactly a barrel of laughs either.

Commenting on the survey, Julie Hurst, director of the Work Life Balance Centre said: "I would urge all employers to look carefully at these issues and arrange access to the appropriate forms of help, as it is in the long term interests of the business to support healthy, and ultimately productive, employees.

"At the most basic level having employees absent through these illnesses costs an organisation far more than it does to provide the proper support to help them get back on their feet and back to work."

Then it struck me. The survey was conducted online… as I spend most of my job hunting on the net I realised, the respondents to this survey were probably so down because they were suffering the same affliction as me, they too were probably job hunting.

Therefore there's only one solution: I need to churn out those application forms.. in black ink and capital letters.