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+--- Thread: BAJR jobs and the 8 month high (/showthread.php?tid=3770)
BAJR jobs and the 8 month high - troll - 2nd March 2011
From Reuters today as seen on uknews.yahoo.com
" Construction activity grew at its fastest pace in 8 months in February"
"Construction sector is on course for reasonable growth in the first quarter of 2011"
"Construction sectors recorded growth last month with civil engineering enjoying the strongest expansion in 3 years"
" Home-building increased and commercial building continued growing for the 12th successive month"
"New orders drove the improvement with firms saying the go-ahead had been given for some delayed projects and there were more opportunities to bid for new work"
"Construction firms are shedding jobs at their slowest pace in 8 months with some firms recruiting more staff to cope with higher workloads"
And yet........... there aint no none archaeology jobs. Are we to take the above as good news that things are changing for the better or more cynically..........is archaeology no longer seen as relevent planning mitigation on local levels? :face-thinks:
BAJR jobs and the 8 month high - Jack - 2nd March 2011
Except:
Not all construction 'activity' requires breaking the soil
Not all construction requires an archaeological condition,
Not all archaeological conditions require excavation.
Not all archaeological excavations require additional staff
Not all excavations that do are advertised on BAJR.
From the perspective of the company I work for.........there was a bit of a pause in work in early 2010, but later that year there was a surge in tenders and consultancy stuff.
Work has now picked with with a number of small excavation/monitoring, surveying and building recording projects completed and/or ongoing. Several small to medium sized evaluations are looming, as is at least one large infrastructure project. But one very large consultancy/evaluation and excavation project has been put back a year due to the client wanting to make the project bigger!
Unfortunatley few of these have needed any additional staff.
BAJR jobs and the 8 month high - GnomeKing - 2nd March 2011
we have been lied to about the state of the economy, its causes, and the solutions......this is a huge scam, and yes, archaeology is marginal to it.
BAJR jobs and the 8 month high - Dinosaur - 6th March 2011
No need for job ads, we're just phoning people up, and rolling existing staff from one job to the next - there seems to be plenty of work coming through, at least in Northern England, another huge development scheme's just been confirmed this week up here, on a massive green-field site with two known Iron Age settlement complexes and who knows what else, and there's lots of smaller stuff coming up
BAJR jobs and the 8 month high - J.McGraw - 6th March 2011
Dinosaur Wrote:No need for job ads, we're just phoning people up, and rolling existing staff from one job to the next - there seems to be plenty of work coming through, at least in Northern England, another huge development scheme's just been confirmed this week up here, on a massive green-field site with two known Iron Age settlement complexes and who knows what else, and there's lots of smaller stuff coming up
Great! Do you need any more staff?
In all seriousness, this seems like a good time to ask a question I've been wondering about for a while. I know a lot of my archaeology friends have got work in the past simply because they know people at the right units, and I'm certain that practice has become more common over the last few years. I think it's a great thing for companies, because they get people they know can do the job, but I'm finding it pretty hard to break back into the system. I've been out of archaeology for two years, and even though I have two years of experience and a human osteology masters, the few companies that are hiring don't want me. I've been put off sending out unsolicited CVs by a friend of mine who received some very discourteous replies, but if there's work out there and no one's advertising, I don't see any other way of getting back in the game. Does anyone know how unsolicited CVs are received by companies?
In reply to the OP (since I don't want to be accused of hijacking the thread
) hopefully once the construction industry has settled down a bit and isn't feeling so light-of-pocket we'll see an increase in archaeological units hiring staff. The only thing that worries me is the realisation that companies aren't suddenly going to return to spending lots of money on advertising when they've discovered that the free ways work just as well.
BAJR jobs and the 8 month high - Dinosaur - 6th March 2011
In my experience companies either keep a cv file or they don't, if the latter then if they don't immediately need people then unsolicited cvs go straight in the bin. A few of the more council/museum related ones (whether they admit it or not) will only take applications on their own or the parent body's application forms (hence the ones with only enough space for two previous jobs etc). We keep a cv file but admittedly it gets spring-cleaned occasionally (or it would be 100 files by now!), the latest ones go in the front so older ones tend to lurk at the back and don't often get reached when recruiting...the upshot of that is to keep reminding units that you're available for work, just not so often that they get sick of hearing about you. Just keep trying :face-approve:
...the osteology qualification isn't going to help at most digging units? Not many can afford to permanently keep a bones person in coffees, and I'd imagine those posts that do exist are pretty solidly occupied already. Thats what independent specialists are for when the rest of us carelessly find some bodies (although round here the only evidence there used to be any is usually the grave-shaped holes, with the occasional pot etc if you're lucky)....
BAJR jobs and the 8 month high - J.McGraw - 6th March 2011
Dinosaur Wrote:...the osteology qualification isn't going to help
I'm getting that feeling. I might play it down on my next application, then. Thanks for the encouragement, though
I'll have to learn how to pester...