MBAs in China: UNLEASHED

Here's what you've all been waiting for:

The adventures of four MBA students in China for 11 days and nights through Hong Kong, Shanghai & Beijing.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
Dinesh, Mitesh, Bobby, Yanal, Shef, Ping Ping, Marcelo, Katya, Oksana, CJ, Rupert, Brendan, Nicolas, Kat and the rest of the MBA China posse.

Extra special thanks to:
Sam Collins (who did all the hard work of editing, ie not watching someone else do it!)
The Chinese people - thanks for tolerating us!

A taster of the current job market

So, I've been unemployed a couple of weeks now and this is what I've discovered. It's tough out there, it really is. Changing career right now is not going to be easy (or perhaps even possible at all), everywhere is downsizing and they're not prepared to take on someone inexperienced in that field.

Take a look at this email I received from a well known marketing & HR agency and tell me if I should start panicking or not:

"We believe in managing people's expectations as best as we can and, on reflection, I'm sorry to say that it's unlikely we will be able to help you in your job search. It is simply the nature of the current market place whereby competition is tough and our clients have very specific requirements.

We wish you the best of luck in the future."

Was my CV so bad that the "Candidate support team" decided that not only was I unsuitable for the job I applied for but also worth telling me that I stood no chance whatsoever in ever getting a job. Ever. Someone actually took time out of their day to tell me that no matter how hard they tried I wasn't worth the effort. Lovely.

So the job hunt doesn't look good and to be fair I don't think I've seen the market this bad. Last week a colleague of mine had an interview with Icelandic bank Landsbanki only to see them nationalised this week! Yes folks, it's all crumbling around us, let's just hope for this country's sake that we haven't all buggered off to other parts of the world by the time it comes to rebuild...