Episode 15 – Why are you doing this?

I’m pleased to say that yesterday I released my newest book - the First time. A memoir about job hunting for the first time as an openly disabled person.  https://normalness.com/2026/07/27/the-first-time/

Welcome to The Second Time Podcast. I'm Vanessa Smith. This is my weekly update on how job hunting is going - it's the end of my 12th week of job hunting.   Objectively Pointless is my phrase of the week. That's how it feels, knowing that less than 1% of what I do each week is likely to have the d…

Welcome to The Second Time Podcast. I'm Vanessa Smith. This is my weekly update on how job hunting is going - it's the end of my 11th week of job hunting.   I felt particularly unenthused this week. It is incredibly hard toconvince yourself to spend all week doing tasks which have a very low perce…

Last week I wished for a quieter week, and I got it this week.   I spent a lot of of time trudging through temporary recruitment pools - lots of them closed with the end of the financial year which means you have to reapply to be in the new pool each year. That was half this week - applying for a l…