Impulse job hunting hits London Workforce

Surfing for escapist jobs to while away five minutes of a dull office day is rapidly replacing surfing for exotic holidays, according to social, flatshare and recruitment site www.gumtree.com, which has dubbed the phenomenon impulse job hunting. Some of the extraordinary jobs advertised on the site include a physiotherapist needed for the Sri Lankan cricket team on their tour of the West Indies, India, Australia and Colombo and a crew member to sail a yacht across the Bahamas.

Anyone who fancies spending their time in front of a screen playing shoot-em-ups rather than filling out spreadsheets could consider the role of Localisation Tester for the latest Java games, posted on the Edinburgh Gumtree.com. Those looking for something a little more active may be interested in joining a troupe of professional Haka performers, for TV and rugby promotions all over the world. The only consideration is that candidates have to be well-built Maoris.

A private estate set in the mountains north of Seville in Spain is looking for a cook for six months, and a resort in the Tioman Islands needs an experienced gardener to maintain and landscape a tropical garden.

Gumtree.com in London has over 20,000 jobs, in over 70 different categories including health and beauty, farming, sports and accounting. Internet recruitment is ideal for allowing people to impulse jobhunt, ie to surf for jobs they would not necessarily ever have considered, or even be able to access the details of, says Gumtree.com’s founder Michael Pennington. There’s nothing to stop you browsing the most outlandish and interesting jobs and daydreaming about a total career change, even if it bears little relation to reality. Radical job changes receive so much coverage in the media at the moment that people are more open to a total switch of sector than they used to be. On average people will have four different careers within their working life, and the Gumtree’s listings provide an opportunity to browse, daydream, and also genuinely consider a role that you’d never have dreamt of before.

Community sites with a recruitment section are the main sources of this impulse jobhunting. Users build up a trust relationship with other areas of the site. For instance if someone has successfully sold a car through the site, and found a flat mate or a date, they are going to feel a level of trust in the site that will make them feel comfortable in browsing through jobs not only in their current sector, but also in more unexpected areas.

This is where community sites have the edge over purely recruitment sites, says Michael. We don’t ask people to register, so they have no reluctance in engaging with the site and looking for jobs. There is always an element of commitment for people in registering on devoted job sites - it feels like a definitive act, that you are declaring yourself as a job seeker rather than an impulse jobhunter who is simply mildly curious about what else is out there, whether it’s to compare salaries or decide to chuck it all in and become a go-go dancer in the Galapagos Islands.