Finding work here is hard as fuck IMO. I just advertised a position for a Trades Assistant in a small country town and got over 60 applicants, some of whom are way way over qualified for it.
It's hard for me to offer advice as I've always thought luck/timing and networking were the two biggest factors in getting jobs. Every job I've gotten (including promotions IMO) have been due to being the right time at the right place with the right attitude.
When my son was born I was lucky enough to get into great casual employment, referred by a friend. That led to full time casual work with a eye on an actual full time job elsewhere in the company through networking. This ultimately fell through due to bad timing and then the casual work also dried up leaving me unemployed for a month or two.
At that point I stopped looking for jobs I wanted and more just jobs that seemed like they might pay enough to feed my family. It sucked. It still sucks. I hate my job. But I love my family. Not giving advice here, just venting tbh. I still feel very lucky to have gainful employment, I don't see myself shedding the imposter syndrome I've developed over the last few years.
I applied for lotssss of jobs and had quite a lot of interviews, this particular one I was really lucky and had great timing with. The position I wanted had a stronger applicant but an identical position in a remote location had literally zero applicants. The interviewer has happy to straight up recommend me for the position as they couldn't be bothered going through the hiring process down in the remote location as long as I was happy to move and take it. Since then I've moved up to the top of that office/contract/whatever through again what I'd describe as luck, timing and knowing the right people. All of which hinged on being competent and meeting expectations though of course.
So yeah, main thing I can recommend is to remain positive despite everything your brain tells you. The whole process is soul crushing so do what you can to stay sane.
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In regards to interviews I definitely think everyone interviewed should get a call back and explanation why they didn't get the job.
I would also tell people upfront before asking them for an interview if it was an internal promotion, rude to waste their time unless they want the practice.
Even the people who apply and don't get an interview I make sure get a fairly automated response (recruitment system allows various reasons they didn't get an interview which is great).
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Uncharted 4 was amazing. Everything I expected and wayyyyyy more. Took me about 13 hours taking fairly direct routes and ignoring collectibles.
Art and animation were GOAT. Insanely impressive to pull off on the PS4 with such a solid framerate and IQ. Animation in particular was insane, lot of handcrafted stuff going on I bet.
Music score was sublime, huge step up from the much pulpier previous ones. Ebbed and flowed really damn well with the gameplay sequences. Really well implemented.
Writing was as expect from UC2/TLoU team, as well as the amazing Tom Bissell. Easily blew away the previous games and like in those 2 games worked to both serve and elevate the gameplay. Loved loved loved the dialogue, the ending, the set pieces, all the writing was gold. Took the pulp nature of the series and gave it just enough weight to make it powerful but enough delight to remain true to the core of the series.
Level design was A+ with a lot of really well designed puzzles, intelligent set pieces, organic feeling funnels and finally some reallllly wide open areas to play in. The amount of options to move forward through were great and reminded me of their Jak days at points.
Gunplay and melee were improved a ton even though they took a backseat to adventure moreso than before in the series. The addition of the rope led to a lot of fun options at times while the standard cover shooter option was still a solid strategy to use if you felt like it.
Probably takes Uncharted 2's spot in my top 3 GOAT games. Keen to replay as soon as I get time, only area I'm disappointed in is the lack of unlockable joke models to play as! They went with serious ones this time while having a shitttttttttttttttttttttttt load of unlockable extras which was mindboggling. No donut Drake but you can use 20 different visual filter!?!