The Work Thread 2 - Get back to work!

[Kezzer]

I'd lean more towards unorganised - I'm part of the full process on these things, it's just a very hap hazard process.

You have a lot of skills there that should be easily transferable to either a more dedicated role or to something similar!

Don't let the role responsabilities or duties stop you from applying for these posts. The fact that you can show you have worked in these areas generally or end to end is really good and worth pointing out.

Remind me what industry you work in again? Is it software dev?

[Zilnad]

It's now been half an hour since the director told me he was updating the accounts software.

Let's see how he ends up strawberry floating it up this time

[Drumstick]

@TNAG your experience would lend itself well to project work or relationship management.

[Zilnad]

"New" HR has sent everyone a pre-appraisal questionnaire and they can get strawberry floated

It's two A4 pages of essay style questions about you and your role and how you want to progress, etc. Basically it's the entire appraisal and we have to fill it out ourselves rather than the appraiser doing their strawberry floating job.

In all my life I've never had an appraisal like this. It's always been go in, have a meeting, agree on targets, sign and done. This is overkill. Looks like an application form for an entire new job.

I'm not going to waste my time though. If it comes to the end of next month (my scheduled appraisal meeting) and I haven't got a new job, I'm just going to tell them I'm not strawberry floating interested and I'm getting out ASAP. I'm not dealing with their gooseberry fool any more.

Keeping my fingers crossed that I might hear something about this interview later today.

[Kezzer]

@TNAG your experience would lend itself well to project work or relationship management.

And this is really broad spectrum - you could easily find yourself working in an industry you might not have expeceted.
I got my break into telecoms from a customer service background. They knew I had good people skills and that I could mange the relationships an be a point of contact. Started as a technical advisor doing basic things like feasibilty studies, then moved into drafting High level designs, to eventually ripping out and replacing telecoms cricuits for some very big and scary companies.

(Not going to lie, it did also help that someone took a shot with me and gave me the oportunity to learn about networking etc...)

[Zilnad]

I'm so strawberry floating done. Agency better ring tomorrow with some good news otherwise I might snap and quit on the spot. Which I absolutely don't want to do

[coldspice]

"New" HR has sent everyone a pre-appraisal questionnaire and they can get strawberry floated

It's two A4 pages of essay style questions about you and your role and how you want to progress, etc. Basically it's the entire appraisal and we have to fill it out ourselves rather than the appraiser doing their strawberry floating job.

In all my life I've never had an appraisal like this. It's always been go in, have a meeting, agree on targets, sign and done. This is overkill. Looks like an application form for an entire new job.

I'm not going to waste my time though. If it comes to the end of next month (my scheduled appraisal meeting) and I haven't got a new job, I'm just going to tell them I'm not strawberry floating interested and I'm getting out ASAP. I'm not dealing with their gooseberry fool any more.

Keeping my fingers crossed that I might hear something about this interview later today.

We're about to do appraisals too and also had to fill it in ourselves. Maybe this is the latest wanky HR technique

[Tomous]

Thats pretty standard practice in big companies. It's meant to be a reflective exercise and help you identify your own personal areas for growth etc. Personally, I hate that kind of structured approach but I guess it works for some people.

[Drumstick]

I'm so strawberry floating done.

What's cracking now?

[Zilnad]

I'm so strawberry floating done.

What's cracking now?

Same gooseberry fool, different day. Busy month end and the director feels now's the best time to update the system, ending up wiping all of my morning's work.

[Green Gecko]

backdating 4 years of VAT thank strawberry float for cloud accounting "find an recode"

[Green Gecko]

How are you on a system that wipes out half a day's work just because it gets an update?

What kind of shitty system receives updates on which recent data isn't compatible, but everything before the update is?

It's sage right?

[Zilnad]

You got it, it's Sage

However if he'd have let me run a backup, it could've been avoided. But that would've been too simple.

New company that I interviewed are running Xero so here's hoping I get to finally give it a whirl!

[Lagamorph]

I remember having an interview at Sage once in Gateshead. They spent more of the interview talking about how they were involved with a comeback of the Krypton Factor than about the actual job.

[satriales]

I'm on holiday this week. Turns out I missed a meeting where it was announced 8-10 staff out of the 45 employees will be made redundant. My role is likely to be one of them.

Been there for 9 years and wanting to move on for a while so it's probably the kick I need. I'm a software developer and there seems to still be good demand for that, so not too worried about finding a new job I just hate the job-hunting process.

[That's not a growth]

Thanks for the words guys.

I'd lean more towards unorganised - I'm part of the full process on these things, it's just a very hap hazard process.

You have a lot of skills there that should be easily transferable to either a more dedicated role or to something similar!

Don't let the role responsabilities or duties stop you from applying for these posts. The fact that you can show you have worked in these areas generally or end to end is really good and worth pointing out.

Remind me what industry you work in again? Is it software dev?

Some of what we do is software dev, but that's only a recent thing due to specific requirements from clients - it's a bit more broader solution / product / project based environment. I'd rather not get too specific on the forum as it's quite a small industry.

@TNAG your experience would lend itself well to project work or relationship management.

And this is really broad spectrum - you could easily find yourself working in an industry you might not have expeceted.
I got my break into telecoms from a customer service background. They knew I had good people skills and that I could mange the relationships an be a point of contact. Started as a technical advisor doing basic things like feasibilty studies, then moved into drafting High level designs, to eventually ripping out and replacing telecoms cricuits for some very big and scary companies.

(Not going to lie, it did also help that someone took a shot with me and gave me the oportunity to learn about networking etc...)

I thought my experience would be good for project based roles - like project coordinator or similar, but I've had a few interviews and no luck in a few years of searching (and the only bit of feedback I got was I was 'too technical', so I went for more technical roles since then, but they just ghost me on feedback). I just don't find many in this area, which doesn't help.

But again, I think a major issue with my experience is the way we currently work - the lack of structure in the way the department is run just means I would need to lie in certain interview situations if I wanted to come across well ("How do you manage your workload" "Well, I can't really plan too much in advanced because my manager could at any moment just have some conversations with vendors or the client without telling me, and I wont find out until a few days later and he mentions it in passing since he never writes down any notes. Also, rather than giving me the couple of weeks needed to plan out a project potentially worth over 20 mil, he expects me to figure it out in a few days in-between creating several reports for other projects - despite the fact the customer is advertising the solution and it'll still take months to develop.")

This is the main reason I'm considering a 'lower' role in an organisation I can grow in - no body here has any project management experience, I've had to make up what I do as I go along in an environment that's hostile to planning and processes, and I think that's what's holding me back from moving to a comparable role. I would like to be in an environment where I can learn from skilled people - even if it's not necessarily this kind of role - as there's no training / progression opportunities here.

[Red]

It's not lying to say for example that you work in a high pressure environment where things can change very quickly so you have to be adaptable and on top of the small things so you can effectively take up large amounts of work at short notice, etc etc etc... It sounds like you might need to reframe some of things in your mind and try to view them from the outside. What you see as chaotic etc (which I'm sure it is) can be presented as requiring you to be flexible and adaptable and able to take on a range of different tasks as required to get the job done as a team/individual.

[blackoutHERO]

Do you guys think taxed medical insurance through work is worth it? Can get it for free but it gets added onto my salary by £750 or something so it's technically not free? I don't get it.

[That's not a growth]

Edit: @red

I get what you're saying, but in my mind I tend to split this in terms of 'soft' and 'hard' skills.

What you're describing there I would say are my soft skills, which I agree I can talk up. My concern comes about with what I would consider 'hard' skills - project management type roles seem to expect you to be able to follow a certain methodology - and while I can read about this methodology and bullshit my way through using it a bit, the truth is almost all my attempts to implement it at work get trampled because you're constantly expected to drop everything at a moment's notice and just do what the manager tells you because of his lack of planning - which also effects the people in trying to tell to do tasks because they're also being given things by him which they have to do before they can do what I need them to. Never, ever does he ask what someone's workload is when he gives them a task, he just expects it to be done - and my attempts to explain how long certain tasks would take in the past have just caused shouting eruptions that people just need to do more over time to get it done in the time he expects.

[Drumstick]

Don't be too disheartened - I'm finding it tough to secure project roles even with accreditations that my company has paid to put me through (at my request).