It’s not just Sir Alan Sugar, or ‘The Shug’ as we like to call him, who uses, arguable over-uses, this catch phrase. There’s unfortunate and not-so unfortunate employees up and down the country who face a career change with these immortal words.

Fortunately, the Internet provides a way for these newly-made job seekers to share their tales of woe. So, if you’re having a bad day at work, or you’re a boss whose team is giving you gip, check out Simply Fired, which gives readers a chance to rate the best firing stories submitted. There’s also the simpler, stream of fired bloggage at firedworkers.com.

It’s not all bad news though, sometimes getting fired can be just the push that’s needed to get a career started.

Got a funny story about getting the sack? Dropped a right clanger that saw you move to your next role? Leave a comment below and let us know your experiences. Feel free to be anonymous.

Far be it from us to encourage bad behaviour at work. Stop reading this now and get back to work…or maybe search Chinwag Jobs for something new and exciting?!

Update: From @mattalder (via Twitter) - not updated for ages but along the same lines www.iworkwithfools.com

Chinwag can be a tricky beast to define at the best of times. Having grown up from an email-based community, the company is evolving alongside and with the help of the community.

In February, I was invited to speak at Enhance Media’s annual conference, The Year Ahead in Online Recruitment looking at the lessons learnt, and still being learnt, from building Chinwag Jobs. As our team begun to think about transforming a basic email list into an all-singing, all-dancing jobs website, we aimed to keep the community at the heart of the development.

As always, these presentations fly by in the blink of an eye. Fortunately, the lovely Louise Triance from UK Recruiter managed to grab some notes, which she’s posted up her blog. If you want a bit of insight into the background to Chinwag Jobs and how we try and keep the community at the heart of our development, have a read.

Comments, as always, are welcome, as are suggestions for any of Chinwag’s activities: Chinwag Jobs, Chinwag.com and Chinwag Live.

The April showers seem to be echoing the current turbulance on the financial front, but is the general economic doom and gloom starting to effect the digital market place?

Digital Pulse  is a new feature from Chinwag that’s designed to provide a monthly confidence index for the digital industry. April’s Digital Pulse is now live and it will be very interesting to see if the current climate is having an impact on the confidence index for this month. The survey only takes a few minutes to fill out and we will donate 25p to charity for each survey completed so it really is worth a look.

The index for March’s Digital Pulse is on it’s way, so please watch this space!

Chinwag is going on a road trip. Next Tuesday (15th April), we will have our bags packed, (complete with a selection of crisp based snacks and various mixtapes) and will be piling into a van to drive up to Manchester for Chinwag Live: User Centered Advertising - Chinwag’s first event in Manchester!

As online content diversifies, new forms of advertising are emerging to keep in step with this ever changing landscape. The first Manchester event for Chinwag in association with Manchester Digital; Chinwag Live: User Centred Advertising asks if these technical innovations are enough in themselves to warrant the attention of ever more savvy consumers?

 The evening kicks off at CUBE, 113-115 Portland Street, Manchester at 6:30pm sharp so please get there about 5:30pm to get settled and grab yourselves a drink. With a diverse range of speakers, great venue, drinks and snacks and informal netwroking after the event - User Centered Advertising promises to be a cracking event. For more details please check out the website, tickets are on sale now and we look forward to seeing you there!

By Harry Fowler - Group Digital Recruiter for AMV Group

I think we can all agree that the finance markets around the world are not exactly stable at the moment and whatever happens in those markets will have an effect on the digital, advertising and communications sectors.

So with that in mind, where does this leave the digital market and more importantly where does this leave recruitment as we move forward?

I’m not wanting to talk us into a recession - but I remember the gaping holes that were left in the industry from the previous meltdown - very few people being hired, everyone struggling to keep their heads above water and PM’s working for £30k or less in some instances just to pay the mortgage! (I know, £30k for a PM - and a bloody good one at that!)

Now the knock on affect from that was felt sometime later when trying to find candidates with 1-2, 1-3 years experience. They were few and very far between and of course supply and demand drives the price.

So are we strong enough to ride out the storm? Yes, I believe we are - but be very wary.  If the market does take a wobble please don’t resort to the traditional tactics of cutting back on the service levels to your clients, getting rid of juniors and cutting out graduate hire. The industry continually needs new blood.

Keep feeding it please.