“I’d really like help, somebody to sit down with me and map out what it is that I’ve done, what it is that I’m doing to help myself and where I need to go from here, to actually, to get some sort of aim, because it’s all very well applying for every job in the paper, at the end of the day you need to be more specific.”

“I became unemployed on the 22^nd July. I was working as a cover supervisor. I’m a fully qualified teacher and since February 2010 I’ve been applying for jobs as a teacher and have failed to gain any form of interview and so now I’m looking at other ideas, other things to do. I am always keeping an eye on the market because my contract was only temporary and so I was aware and this was meant to be a stepping stone and it hasn’t turned into one.”

“A lot of my salary goes on childcare.”

 “For the last 10 years I have been bringing up my children, I’ve got a 9 year old and a 7 year old. I have also going through a really hectic divorce. So now that I’m a single mum. living in Truro with my own house, I’m actually able to go out and actually get employment and find childcare for my children but it’s quite hard.”

“I’d really like to teach languages which is what I’m trained to do, I’m bilingual; Spanish and English and I also speak French but because I did a shortish subject degree 15 years ago, it was only a 2 year degree, I ended up now without a PGCE and I can’t do a PGCE because I’ve already got a teaching qualification.”

“I would really like to ‘up’ my degree, which is only 2 years to a full degree. I’m looking at doing that through the open university because to doing it through Camborne College isn’t possible because you have to have done a degree within the last 5 years. I’ve also gone down the line of finding a life coach, getting psychometric  testing done, making sure that I was registered with the job centre, with all the job agencies, with the teaching bank. I have left very few stones unturned that I know of, but it’s been really hard work finding out the information and actually getting an agency who can help somebody of my age because they’re not really interested in anyone over 40.”

“A problem that I have had to face is being overqualified for a lot of the jobs that I was applying for.”

“I applied for a secretarial job. Even though I’ve got a secretarial qualification, they want someone with current secretarial experience. I’ve got good WordPerfect and word processing skills but I’m not very fast, I’m about 60 words a minute typing. They want somebody up at 90 or they want somebody who’s got medical secretarial which I don’t have. But then the overqualification of having a degree, being a teacher, being used to being in charge of 30 students and leading their learning, people tend to sort of go ‘whoa, no, we’ll get somebody who may not be quite so forthcoming with their ideas’.”

Deborah Cotterell