Success in 1998
Unable to attend course
In February 1998, I saw an advertisement for training courses in Oracle and RPG400, for which a place would be available to me. On further investigation, I felt unable to accept because the provider wanted me to agree not to look for any job by any other means, in direct contravention of rules for those claiming jobseeker's allowance. I could have cheated but that's not my style. Nevertheless, the episode showed the difficulty of getting official training that I could benefit from. I was very thankful for my personal computer and even more thankful when, a few months later, I finally secured a job.
Y2K saves me
With the impending Y2K crisis, I was getting more positive response from employers, who no doubt also appreciated my efforts to learn new stuff. Y2K created a sudden surge in demand for COBOL programmers so employers were forced to consider what I had to offer. At this stage, it is worth noting that when Y2K finally arrived, it was a huge non-story in the media only because the IT industry had done what was required; it really could have been a huge disaster. I really felt that 1998 was going to be my year but I decided to take no chances. I didn't quibble over salary and I made up my mind to take the first job offered. This latter decision may have been wrong but I'll never know for sure. In any case, my jobseeker's allowance and other benefits could have been stopped had I rejected a job and the jobcentre found out.
My decision to move to Birmingham was a good one, never better illustrated than when I attended three widely scattered interviews, all with local councils, in North Shields (near Newcastle), Aberdeen and Plymouth within a period of around a week. I believe that I came very close to landing the Aberdeen job but didn't get it. I also came close to getting a job with a local council in Sandwell, not far from Birmingham. Had I got either of those local council jobs, I would have been able to use my existing COBOL skills to begin with before re-training in more modern languages. Whether I would still be there now, I don't know, but even if I'd been made redundant, I'd have had some useful skills to take to another employer. As things turned out, I secured a job in Narborough (near Leicester) although I had decidedly mixed feelings about it even at the interview. If I'd been looking to transfer there from another job, I'd have declined politely and walked out long before the end, but I'd been out of work for over eight years and that created different considerations.
An unlikely success
I had heard a lot about the IT skills shortage, but it seems that many employers would rather leave vacancies unfilled than employ me, despite my willingness to work for a very modest salary by IT standards just to get back to work. I did some good interviews and some bad ones but when I finally secured a job, it came as a complete surprise. My interview technique is not always good although I tend to do better if I sense that my chances are good. Having done some particularly good interviews that I felt should have been successful but which failed, my confidence was low and there was nothing obvious to latch on to during the interview in question.
I was also ill that week and I'd done another interview the day before, which did not help. I was not so ill as to be unable to attend but I seriously considered postponement. However, I might have lost the interview altogether and I did not want that. I had to keep attending interviews to prevent aggravation from the jobcentre. From that perspective, it was irrelevant that they failed as long as they happened with sufficient frequency. I therefore attended the interview on the given date despite being ill.
The first person to interview me (the overall boss) clearly had his doubts, but he realised that I could probably do the job. He had interviewed a lot of clearly unsuitable people. He might well have rejected me there and then, but I made it clear that I was prepared to undergo a work trial if that was what it took to get back to work - and I was cheap. Apparently reluctantly, I was then passed to two of the people who the successful candidate would be working for. We looked at some of their programs on a screen. This part of the interview secured the job for me. I discovered that the technical aspects of the job were limited and would remain so, which may explain why the business had difficulty in recruiting suitable staff. Nevertheless, I had to accept the offer because I could not be sure that something better would come along.
Silence is golden
In these unlikely circumstances and with serious misgivings on both sides, I started work again. I can't say too much about the Narborough job because, when I eventually became redundant after working for four and a half years, I signed a secrecy agreement in return for some extra money. Nevertheless, the fact remains that I used my COBOL skills throughout my time there, with never any prospect of learning any modern programming languages. So I knew that when redundancy came (and I always assumed that it would eventually unless I was able to learn new stuff there), I would have real problems finding another job.
Nothing lasts forever
During my time in that job, I bought a contemporary PC and MS Office. I also discovered Amazon's websites, which have been a significant part of my life ever since. Redundancy came in December 2002. For a while, it seemed that I might quickly find another job as there were still COBOL jobs around, albeit far fewer than in the seventies and eighties, but in the event I didn't even get an interview. So I was into my second long period of unemployment but this has been a very different experience from the first.
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