Category Archives: Work

Job Search Woes

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As you all know (reading my weekly rants), I’ve been actively looking for a new job the last few months. As it happens, nothing has yet materialized, but I have been mulling about this for the past few days.

 

 

In addition to corporate organisations, I have also been applying to educational institutions and government agencies. Most of these have a form that you have to fill in, which includes your credentials. These credentials include transcripts and marks for all the subjects you gave exams for from as far as the equivalent of your O and A levels. I understand that if you are a fresh graduate applying for your first job, these marks would make a difference to the hiring manager, especially if the position is in your field of expertise and your marks reflect your understanding of the subject.

But what if the position in question is for someone with a couple (or more) years experience? Why would your ‘O’, or ‘A’, or even graduate degree marks and grades matter? Most likely than not (except for some specialised fields), the person’s educational qualifications have nothing to do with the position in question. I mean a marketing or admissions officer would not have studied anything of this sort in school? At the most, the most relevant qualification in question to the position should be taken into consideration when asking for transcripts.

 

I can never understand this obsession with irrelevant grades here (though I am not sure how this works elsewhere). Recently the government made much-needed changes to the PSLE exams (which BB & GG went through last year) and the goal is not to compare children against each year and remove the dreaded T-score but allow for a more holistic educational experience. But with this in their lives 10-15 years down the line, what message does that send to children?

 

Another thing which really bugs me no end is the ghosting by companies. When you send applications for a position, you mostly don’t hear back from them, unless you have been short-listed for an initial interview. While I understand this, given the sheer number of applications each position must receive, what I don’t understand is a similar stand when they call applicants for an interview. Unless you are the successful applicant, you will have no idea on the status of your application – it’s all floating in the ether! Surely when companies take the time to speak to an applicant to gauge if he/she are a good fit for the organisation, then surely, they can take 5 minutes of their time to let the applicant know if they make the cut or not.

 

After going through years of my applications being lost in space, I’ve learnt not to take anything for granted. I will consider the job mine, only after signing on the dotted line and perhaps completing the probation period. After all, anytime between the signing of the contract and becoming permanent, the company is still within its means to say goodbye to me summarily.

What about you? Do you have any interesting job search woes? I’d love to hear from you in the comments section…

TGIF

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This whole week, I’ve been in a funk. It’s 80% work related and another 20% stress over GG & BB’s exams.

Please feel free to not read today’s post as its mostly a rant and also I want to get it off my chest. I’ve found that writing it down helps me do this the best otherwise I tend to brood about it all day long and screw up my days and nights.

OK, here’s my 80% rant. If you remember I applied for the internal job and within a few days the recruiter’s assistant got in touch for a phone interview with my current boss. Then two days later she called me to cancel saying since he is traveling they will reschedule it this week when N, my boss is in town. I waited and even started work on something to show him during the interview. This week i waited for the assistant, lets call her J to confirm the interview date and time since i knew N will be in office this week.

When nothing came by till Wednesday, I reached out to J to check. I was told N is busy and she will get back to me. I know N is busy – interviewing people for the role, both physical and phone interviews!. In fact he also spoke to me in passing about that saying we need to talk. But this was after i told him that J had cancelled the phone interview. From what I understood, N was interviewing people via phone the week my interview was supposed to have been done.

Now i really don’t know what to do – am I not in the consideration at all? Or i am in the race, but since N has seen what I am capable of, he would prefer to screen the others for a first round? This is so confusing and I hate to feel like this!

I am OK if I am out of the consideration totally, but would have appreciated if someone told me that so i don’t build any expectations. This is not like other interviews where you don’t hear from companies (although how long does it take someone to drop the applicant a one liner about the status of their application is beyond me) but since this is the place I work with, I will ultimately know who the successful candidate is and will be working with him/her in the near future!

I’m trying to be positive, but somehow this week has been difficult. Thank Goodness today is Friday. I can’t wait for the week to end. Monday is a new week and hopefully a more positive week for me.

It’s Friday!!

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Today is one of those days where a hundred thoughts are swirling in my head, and none actually seem to make a lot of sense to me.

I am at work, and it is one of those days where I am just not motivated enough to work! Also, it does not help that its Friday today and the weekend is beckoning….

So what does someone do in such a situation? I read up a couple of articles and it basically boils down to this – are you not motivated to work because you are actually procrastinating about doing something you probably don’t want to do right now? I can hear you loud and clear! Some days, you know you have to do something, but you just can’t get yourself to do it at that particular time, so you try and postpone the inevitable! In such a case, just tell yourself “So what” and then start doing it. You’ll probably not want to do it, but after a while, you start to get into the stride of the job and soon you are in the zone!

Here is a nice list of things you can do on days when you don’t feel like doing ‘real work’, but can still be productive at work and accomplish something! Note though, not all of these things in the list can be done at work, but there’s enough in here to keep curious co-workers and your boss off your back for the day! But don’t do this too often or you’ll be in trouble!

Wish we could mute some people!

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When you work with someone eight hours plus everyday five days a week, you get to learn quite a bit about that person!

Some people immediately connect with you and you become friends at the snap of a finger and some people, for reasons probably unknown to you, except at a very subconscious level, you just can’t seem to be in the same room with without getting irritated with something they say or do.

There was this person J who worked with me a few years back who was someone like that. He walked into a cushy job with hardly any talent, actually I am wrong; he did have the talent to schmooze with the boss and since he used to help the boss with a lot of personal things (read ferrying him home and to the office, using his personal time to do the boss’ personal work), you get the drift right?….

Anyway, this person used to bulldoze people and get them to do work and take complete credit for it.

This story is about one such incident, which at that time made me mad, but now in retrospect, makes me laugh!

At that time, the management committee wanted to hire a deputy for ‘the boss’, but the boss didn’t want anyone but him to be the alpha male of the pack. He didn’t have much choice, so he reluctantly advertised for the position. When the applications started coming in, he sent the whole bunch over to me to short-list, which I did. Then interview invites were sent to some 7-8 of my top picks and the big day arrived! Since I was responsible for shortlisting people, I was asked to join the boss and two other senior persons for the interview. J could not take this lightly, since he saw that as diminishing his status, so he got himself also invited to the interviews. Another colleague, who was in the same position as me and J (experience, qualification etc.) rounded up the number as she could not be ignored too.

So we are six people in the room, of which four are technically people who could be reporting to the successful candidate. The interviews start and by the second interview I realized one thing – every question I asked the previous candidate was now posed hurriedly by J to the next candidate. The first time he did it, I thought it was a coincidence, the second time I noted it, I got irritated and by the third candidate, it became funny! Then it became a game with me to ask the most candidate-specific question I could ask (which was easy for me since I had reviewed their resumes before short listing them) so that J could ask them the next time round.

And it was funny the way J would ask the question quickly (the first or the second) before I was able to do so, so it that I could not reuse my own questions…

The shocker was that at the end of this whole pointless exercise, ‘the boss’ was quick to appreciate his protégé with the insightful questions he asked.

It was puke or laugh hysterically there and then! I took the cowards way and excused myself to run to the washroom where I could laugh and rant simultaneously

I finally did i…

Aside

I finally did it! After months of agonising over it, I took a huge – and I mean a really HUGE leap of faith and did it on Monday. What did I just do? Well, I resigned from my current employer without having a new one all lined up. This is the first time in my career that I’ve done this. And it seems not a moment too soon. My domestic helper who returned back from her holiday after unexpectedly getting married has been giving me so many problems. Today she crossed all limits. She likes to dish out insults to me all the time, but will not take anything. So I’ve decided to terminate her services and send her back to let her transfer to another employer.

So now I’ve to review what I want to do in life plus search a new helper. Wish me luck…