How to get a job (or not)

[GenMarshall]

What city are you in again @GenMarshall ?

I don’t wish to disclose the exact city/town I live in.

 

[Synobun]

Hey @Arwon I saw this today. Y'wanna move to Barcelona?

https://optimasports.freshteam.com/jobs

 

[Birdjaguar]

Barcelona would be a great place to live!

 

[hobbsyoyo]

This is going to come off as a humblebrag or weird flex and I apologize for that but I wanted to share some things I've come to learn about the white collar world -

• Companies that don't respect your time when it comes to the interview process are likely going to make crappy offers or otherwise be crappy places to work.
  
• Conversely, the companies that are on the ball when it comes to holding up interview commitments and keeping open communication rank higher when comparing offers in my experience.
  
• When interviewing, it pays to pay attention to your surroundings. You can learn a lot about working conditions and company dynamics just by looking around and asking questions based on what you see. You can then use that information to help your position during salary negotiations.
  
• Some companies are open to negotiating over non-cash compensation and job titles; others are not. Come up with some numbers for how much non-cash things are worth to you to help compare offers that differ in those aspects. For example, you might value working at home as equivalent to X many dollars, or each day of PTO is worth Y, etc.

That first point was really what I came here to say because it's been chaffing my ass pretty regularly lately.

 

[REDY]

I was marketing manager/data analyst/CEO assistent in the small company, now (about 5 months ago) I moved to the international corporation into IT field as DMS specialist. I think its logical step, because sadly, I enjoy data more than people. The thing is that everything what I got from the school doesnt matter. I got much less pay and honestly I do not know much about IT. I know some simple programming (it was my hobby in free time) but learning company infrastucture and workflow seems quite challenging. I will fight, for sure. But my dream job is still a lighthouse keeper.

 

[Birdjaguar]

But my dream job is still a lighthouse keeper.

With 5g you can probably be a lighthouse keeper and do remote work that pays well.

 

[Sommerswerd]

my dream job is still a lighthouse keeper.

Like Jango Fett in Aquaman?

 

[uppi]

With 5g you can probably be a lighthouse keeper and do remote work that pays well.

If the lighthouse has good 4g coverage, you can do that even today. And if it doesn't, 5g isn't going to change that.

 

[Birdjaguar]

In Saturday's WSJ there is a great article about how to shape your career in an evolving workplace.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-an...er-your-nose-11555689542?mod=itp_wsj&ru=yahoo

It shows how to create a career path from different entry level and not very glamorous starting points like: data entry clerk, warehouse worker etc. If it is behind a paywall, wait a few days and try again. The best stuff won't copy.

 

[Synobun]

Paywalled for me.

But in general, I agree with the sentiment you've offered, but I feel like it depends greatly on the company. If you're anchored at that entry-level spot then you're kind of trapped. It's easier to turn a "crappy" job into a career if you get some movement in the company, even if it's only a title change. If you're a data entry clerk and that's all you ever are, it's tough to turn that into something else.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Paywalled for me.

But in general, I agree with the sentiment you've offered, but I feel like it depends greatly on the company. If you're anchored at that entry-level spot then you're kind of trapped. It's easier to turn a "crappy" job into a career if you get some movement in the company, even if it's only a title change. If you're a data entry clerk and that's all you ever are, it's tough to turn that into something else.

Damn, I'm sorry it is walled. It's pretty good and talks about re-skilling people for new jobs. Please try to look at it on Monday or Tuesday and see if it is still blocked. Its diagrams map out various pathways and salary growth. If it opens, please post here.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Paywalled for me.

But in general, I agree with the sentiment you've offered, but I feel like it depends greatly on the company. If you're anchored at that entry-level spot then you're kind of trapped. It's easier to turn a "crappy" job into a career if you get some movement in the company, even if it's only a title change. If you're a data entry clerk and that's all you ever are, it's tough to turn that into something else.

Fully agreed with this as it lines up with my own experience. At a previous job I was classified as a technical writer (which was the company's way of saying you are an entry-level manufacturing engineer) and no matter how many hoops I jumped through, they would not re-classify me. I spent over a year working with my lead and manager to work out a plan to 'prove' myself and they would come up with projects to tackle that were allegedly gating me from promotion. I would successfully complete those projects, only for them to shift the goal post, over and over again. I could put up with the insane hours and low pay* but the inability to move around drove me out.

When I left though, my group almost immediately promoted a few other people who had been on the same shifting-goal post promotion path as myself for even longer than I had. I made it pretty clear I was leaving because of the goal post shifting during my exit interview and it seems they took it to heart, at least within that group.

*The pay situation got worse right when I left, unfortunately. Before I left, they re-baselined the salaries of the entire company and those with an engineering title got a substantial pay boost not tied to performance or anything like that. As a non-engineer, they gave me nothing, which reinforced the crappiness of the position they had trapped me in.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Err, trapped isn't the right word there at the end of my last post. I willingly took that job because it was easier to get than a manufacturing engineering position at the same company. I was completely, miserably broke at the time and couldn't afford not landing a job so I intentionally went for the lesser classification just to ensure I'd start earning an income. My manager even asked me during my interview if I didn't want to go for the manufacturing engineering position and I declined. And trying to get promoted within a year or two out of college is somewhat aggressive, though at companies with traditional Engineer 1/2/3 promotion paths, it's actually not that crazy to get bumped from 1 to 2 pretty quickly. That company did actually roll out those promotion paths right as I left but that wasn't the case most of the time I was there.

My point is that I shouldn't be so loose with my words and I don't hold them fully at fault for the way all of that played out. There were absolutely at fault for making me jump through hoops when they had no intention of following through, but no one forced me to take that job.

 

[Synobun]

Trapped is a fine word to use if you were stuck at your current position, which wasn't even accurately titled. You mentioned that they promoted people and gave them new titles... after you put them on blast while walking out the door. Would twiddling your thumbs and waiting have brought that result to you?

 

[rah]

10 years ago, people were trapped in jobs. In today's market, if you feel trapped in a job, you're either an illegal or not very good at your job.

 

[Synobun]

"There are 20 vacant positions at the Burger King and only 1 for manufacturing engineering in your area. That means there's 21 jobs! Why can't you just get a better manufacturing engineering position? Are you bad at your job? Do I need to call ICE?"

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Trapped is a fine word to use if you were stuck at your current position, which wasn't even accurately titled. You mentioned that they promoted people and gave them new titles... after you put them on blast while walking out the door. Would twiddling your thumbs and waiting have brought that result to you?

That's true and I had some circumstantial evidence that my manager was having discussions with other managers to prevent me from transferring. It was very difficult to hire people on at that company which drove managers to do some shady crap to retain people. In my case it backfired and the HR guy during my exit interview was incredulous that I didn't just threaten to quit to let them know I was serious. I never did make an ultimatum but I've got a big mouth and I let them know things needed to change for the month it took me to find another job. That they weren't listening isn't on me.

"There are 20 vacant positions at the Burger King and only 1 for manufacturing engineering in your area. That means there's 21 jobs! Why can't you just get a better manufacturing engineering position? Are you bad at your job? Do I need to call ICE?"

Funny side note -
About a month ago I applied for a process engineering job at Taco Bell HQ down the street because there aren't many jobs for space nuts like me in my town.

 

[rah]

"There are 20 vacant positions at the Burger King and only 1 for manufacturing engineering in your area. That means there's 21 jobs! Why can't you just get a better manufacturing engineering position? Are you bad at your job? Do I need to call ICE?"

Neither, you move. Employers are fighting for employees around here. Not just Burger King. If you can't leverage it, you're not trying hard enough.

 

[Synobun]

Of course. Any failure or stagnation is due to inherent personal flaw and lack of bootstraps.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Of course. Any failure or stagnation is due to inherent personal flaw and lack of bootstraps.

Of course, millenials are all a pack of shiftless bums....