What am I doing wrong?

[Jinglebellsarenearlyhere]

So I have been in full time work for 20 odd years with one year break for maternity leave. In that time I have worked for two main companies (one 10 years, the other 6). Both times I applied direct, got an interview and got the job.

I left the last job and had a career break for 5 months. So am sending my CV to recruitment agents in response to specific jobs but getting no where, they don't even call back.

So my first question is how do recruitment consultants work - should you cal first rather than email cv, should you call after sending your cv? How do you actually get a useful conversation going?

I don't think it's my cv , it was professionally written but am going to get a friends opinion. I have applied directly to two jobs and got to final stage interviews but messed them up.

Please help, I'm getting really discouraged and I need to go back to work financially and for my own self.

Avoid them if you can! They are generally a pain in the butt.

Apply to companies direct. Look on Indeed and LinkedIn.

Often recruitment companies can't see a excellent candidate when they are starring them in the face.
Rather like you having had just 2 jobs in a 25 year career before I took a 6 month break 2 summers ago, when it was time to go back to the workplace I was unsure of where to start, I had an industry that I had always worked in an many varied skills as I had worked at director level, it took me 3 months to establish myself and find a new job and then I got 4 offers all at once.

What I did, I wrote my own CV, but not just one but many depending on the role I was going for, it was only an outline CV and each one just catered for the area of the job I was applying for. I did manage to register with some agencies but found it a real chore, 2 instances spring to mind, the first was an industry specialist for my area, they wouldn't take me on without meeting me, so I went off on a 40 minute drive to meet the consultant who was barely out of university who proceed to tell me how to dress for an interview and other really useless information, he didn't explore my CV or ask me what I wanted in a job. they never put me though to 1 interview. Another local branch of a national chain insisted that I come in and complete some tests before they would put my CV through for a role, fair enough psychometric testing can be a good indicator, only this wasn't what it was, it was simple maths and english questions. Unfortunately I got the highest score they had seen so was too overqualified for the management role I wanted to apply for.

Sorry for the ramble, how did I find a job. I set myself up a dedicated professional sounding email address. I created a really good linkedin profile and I treated job hunting like a job. I worked found about half a dozen or so websites that had jobs on, these included 2 for my industry, a national newspaper, the local newspaper, and 3 or 4 others such as reed and monster. I created profiles and email alerts on all of these and I reviewed every day sending off CVs as much as I could, recording each of them and following up if I didn't get any response. I did pester agencies but only if they advertised a job I was interested in and then I would call them first before I applied/sent a CV.

I also came up with a list of local (radius from my home) of companies that I felt would be a good place to work, using their websites I looked for vacancies or the details of the HR department and sent through my CV.

I followed everything up by email and phone, working on the basis of having nothing to loose.

Once I had secured my job I took everything down and closed the email account.

I have had a lot of experience with agencies. Some good, most bad. They will always ask you to come in and register and then sometimes you never hear back. Some roles you see online aren't actually live jobs. (I worked in an agency in London and this was common practice)

Finding a new job is a full time job in itself. I apply direct, look in newspapers, ask mutual friends to keep an ear/eye out. It really is the best way.

LinkedIn - and make sure it includes key skills for your industry. A lot of initial searches will be automated on keywords, rather than looking at what you actually say.

You 'll probably still have to deal with recruitment agents, but they'll be contacting you rather than vice versa. Once you tell them you're not interested in a particular role, they won't even bother acknowledging that, despite having been all over you til that point, because they are mostly gits with no manners. I think I'very dealt with only two over the years who did behave more nicely.