Summer disappointment on the Dutch job market

02 Friday Aug 2013

Posted by ZJShen-PSimon in applying for a job in the Netherlands, English teaching, job application, work in Dutch education

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failure of web-sites, Job Search, Netherlands

Netherlands (Photo credit: Vicki Devine)

I already described elsewhere how the Dutch job market is organized and what web-sites you can link to and search if you want to find a teaching job (in most cases other jobs as well) in the Netherlands. But what I have just found in some cases is worth complaining about. Not all is a bed of … well, tulips in the Netherlands.

Anyone can run into such disheartening experience any time from now, I thought, when I got my regular daily message from one of the biggest sites scraping the Dutch job market, Trovit. A click on the ‘Docent Engels (op Speurders)’ button, I did get to a place under Speurders, but inside, it appeared to be an ad placed there by Banenmatch. Because it concerned a vacancy in my area, I clicked on the link below on Banenmatch, which promised to give me more information.

When I did so, it gave me no more information (actually, being a very small text in the first place, it still did not give me anything particular about any details and circumstances concerning the job other than the area), but at least there was a button which said ‘Solliciteren’. This means ‘to apply’, so I hoped to get somewhere important by hitting this button, but I was only led to a page of another agency, Multilingual careers, which still gave me the exact same text as the one three clicks before.

There was then a button called ‘Apply at external website’, so I happily clicked on this. Then it appeared that the job should be on the site of DPA Detachering. If you look at this page, you’ll agree with me that this doesn’t get me to a description of the job concerned, only to their home-page. I have tried to find the job using the categories in their search window, but I failed to see the ‘Docent Engels’ ad anywhere. It just does not exist!

Reacting to another job ad, I came duly to one of the organizations where I am also already a member, also the above-mentioned Multilingual careers. Here, I had to find out that my personal info was not yet full because I should still upload my CV. I saved my CV in several formats and tried to upload them in turns, but none worked, my CV could not be uploaded. There’s no button to upload it in the first place, but I hoped that the Save button does the trick. Well, no, it doesn’t. The page offers a possibility instead to create my CV according to the formula of the EU system. The only problem is that getting to ‘Former employers’, one is required to give each and every detail about all my previous employers, which, after I have had about twenty former employers over about thirty-five years, takes a bit of time to fill in; even more dauntingly, I long ago lost addresses, names, or the then bosses and contacts leading to them, especially because more than one are already dead, and most of the others were probably replaced long ago. Important requirements I admit, but people with a longer career abroad behind them find it next to impossible to fulfill. One more reason why young people get the chances.

I tried to react to a third advertisement as well, but when I got to the site in question, Metafoor personeelsbank, where I am also logged in, it told me that I could raise the completeness of my personal page by adding information about my education. Well, there are details about that, and many more, on the personal page, but there is no place or button leading to a separate ‘Education’ page, so I can’t add anything new. Unfortunately, though the info is there in separate lines, to an employer looking at my description, it appears that I haven’t got any education, so he’ll abandon my page. And I am not given a chance to improve the situation. There is no category on the page to give info about the required category!

English: Different types of Dutch cheese (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So much about the famous Dutch organizational skills. Looks rather cheesy. The thing actually looks pathetic, but in my situation, I can’t really choose if I should laugh hard or cry hard … Any preference, anyone?

by P.S.