Tag Archives: Work

Posted on by
Reply

 

It’s been slightly more than three weeks since I started working and I got reacquainted with the beauty that is Office Politics!

 

For those who don’t know, Office politics “are the strategies that people play to gain an dvantage, personally or for a cause they support”. The term often has a negative connotation, in that it refers to strategies people use to seek advantage at the expense of others or the greater good.

Love it, revel in it, hate it or just play along with it, office politics are a staple in every organisation, be it a small organisation or a large multinational company. Someone who wants to be successful in his/her career needs to know how to play the game and eventually become a master at it!

 

I’ve seen different forms of the games people play at work and sometimes am amazed by the audacity of some of the tactics some people employ to get ahead. I always wonder if these people are wasted in the role they are in, they may have been better off as politicians instead of being a corporate slave.

 

 

To win at this game and come out smelling of roses, here are some strategies you should use, preferably as soon as you join a new organisation:

 

Map your organisation

In most organisations, the real power is not where the formal power lies. For example, maybe someone who has been there for a long time and knows the organisation inside-out, but who is fairly junior in position, may weld more soft power than the head of the organisation. This person may be able to influence people across the organisation and so has more power as he/she can people towards or away from someone.

So when you join a new organisation, watch for a couple of weeks and find out who the real influencers are and make them like you too.

 

Build social relations across the hierarchy

Make sure that the social relations you build in the organisation across formal hierarchies, you should be friends from people across the strata, most junior to most senior. This helps you to win people across the organisation and also know what is happening elsewhere in the organisation. When you are friends with people, they tend to help you, not only with information, but also with things that may be new to you or things you may be unfamiliar with.

I had a colleague like that, this person was super friendly and made friends easily and across the organisation. This person was also very helpful and would go out of their way to help people and so used this currency to build relations and also get the gossip from across departments and sections.

 

Be Neutral

At work, it is very easy to get caught up in gossip and eventually end up taking sides. This could misfire horribly. So the best thing to do is to be completely neutral. Even when people rant about other people in front of you, just nod neutrally and move away from there as soon as possible. When you take sides in any issue, it will inevitably come to bite you in the back.

 

Be Objective and professional

When office politics comes to play, personalities are involved and we may be mad at someone or the other. At times like this, maybe you want to vent out to someone and this most likely takes the shape of a gossip and veers to the person’s personal characteristics. Don’t give in to this! Even if you win this war, you will ultimately lose the larger battle.

Be professional in your attitude and your exchanges with your superiors, peers and subordinates at all times. This attitude will pay off in more ways than one.

 

So here you have four ways in which you can play the office politics game and come out a winner. Do you have any more strategies which help in navigating the minefield which is office politics? I’d to hear from you in the comments below.

Job Search Woes: An Interview Episode

Posted on by
Reply

While I am actively looking for a new position, I thought I’d do a series on job search woes. This will document the random and sometimes funny and weird people I meet while looking for a new position. Here’s the latest one….

Earlier this week I went for an interview, which should rate as one of the weirdest ones I’ve ever gone for!

Early in the week, I chanced upon a position in one of the job boards I frequent which really appealed to me. This was very similar to a previous position I was doing and I could do the job easily. Plus the position would also stretch me professionally (or so it seemed) and so very excitedly I applied for the position. This was around 10 am in the morning. Sometime around 1:30 pm in the afternoon, I get a call from someone asking me if I was interested in coming down for an interview. I don’t think they mentioned the name of the company (or perhaps I didn’t hear it?), but I agreed and we discussed dates and times and agreed to meet the next morning. Soon an email arrived from the person I spoke to earlier confirming the interview, but again no company name, just the time and address.

I reversed searched the number from where the phone call came and got the name of the company. When I logged into the job board, I was very excited to see it was for the job I had applied that morning. I did notice that the same company had multiple positions open at that point, but didn’t really check them out. I was very excited thinking that they had seen my resume and since I checked all the items they needed for the position, decided to call me for an interview so soon. Boy, was I to be proven wrong! I spent the rest of the day preparing for the interview.

During my research of the company, I came across some points which made me a bit nervous. Like this place, I had worked briefly at another place which had a similar structure and was essentially a one-man show. The owner/founder called all the shots and if they were unhappy with someone, out they went, justified or not. I hated working there from my second week and could not wait to get out. I am sure I do not want to be in a similar environment.

The next day I reached on time for the interview. When I arrive at the venue, while searching for the stairs to get up to the office, I saw two women seated at some chairs downstairs in the open. From the body language, it seemed that one lady was interviewing the other. My feeling was that this was my interviewer and the person they were interviewing was the person before me. I did wonder why they could not do the interview in the office but walked to the office to find out.

At the office, which was a small open-plan office, I was met with 4 youngsters (early to mid-twenties, all of whom from the accents and the way they spoke English seemed to come from the same Asian country). I was asked to fill up an employment form, which had no space to write anything (even the space for telephone numbers was woefully inadequate). So I wait there for the lady to come up to interview me. She comes up after a bit and then starts my interview. She asked me to go downstairs with her which I did. Now comes the fun part.

While walking down to the chairs arrangement, she starts by asking me if I have sales before. I found the question a bit funny because the position I had applied for was not a sales position. I thought she was pulling it from my resume and started talking about all the times I did sales and what I did in the different roles.

She keeps talking more about sales, asking me about big achievements and targets when she realises that I’ve applied for another position. She turns to me saying, “Oh, I see you’ve come for this position and not the other one”. I say yes and start talking about why I am a good fit for that position. So then she starts reading my resume and can’t find the information I am talking about. That’s when I ask her if she has a copy of my resume and she says, “Yes, I have this”, showing me a print-out. The print out was a screen shot from someone’s phone with just the top quarter of the first page of my resume (I have a three -page resume). The paper she had just had the accomplishments and core competencies, with nothing of what I had done previously. So I laughed and told her this is just a fraction of my resume and asked her if I could send her a copy. I didn’t have a soft copy with me but emailed her a forward from another application. All this while talking to her about myself.

Later, on reading my resume, she asked if I was interested in this other sales position. When she explained the position, I did say it was interesting, but I am clearly not very interested in it. She also spoke about working late on a regular basis, but I was quite pissed off by then, so I told her that while working late was not an issue with me, I am a big proponent of work-life balance. I also brought up my India trip in November (even though I wan’t going to at this stage), but I wanted to put all my cards on the table so if they do want to proceed further, they have all the information. As with all companies, salary also seems to be an issue here, with her asking if I will reduce my asking salary.

We quickly wrapped up the interview in less than 30 minutes (including the time I took to send her my resume) and she said she will speak to the CEO and see if she can try to arrange for a second interview with the CEO based on my resume for the position I applied for.

What was so strange to me was that it looked like they’ve just called all candidates who applied for an interview, without even going through their resumes. Second, they can’t even print out a legit, full copy of the resume which the job board would have sent to them. Third, they don’t even know the position the candidate has applied for!

I’ve pretty much written off this company and am not expecting anyone to call back. But the position (as it sounds on paper) was fascinating and if it is as it looks like, it’ll be something I’d love to do. So let’s see what happens. So far, they’ve not gotten back to me, though I suspect they won’t.

Ah well, c’est la vie….

Job Search Woes

Posted on by
Reply

 

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

Posted on by
Reply

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!!

Posted on by
Reply

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!