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Inigima

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Congrats Isk!

Congrats baxus!

 

While I got a decent pay raise, the high end of what was given out, I didn't get what my boss put me in for (or what I thought I should get :P ) and my bonus was a little less than I thought I would get (my rating was 110% but only counts for 1/2 of the score...it's the division & my company that failed to meet their goals)

I'm also starting to train our admin. She works for the top guy in our area, so there isn't any room for her to move up without changing locations, or moving out of admin and into another department, so if it goes well for her, and our work load continues to be high enough to justify a new hire, she could join our team. I like the idea of training her. I've helped to train the other members of the team who don't have my experience (they were with a different group, but got put onto the team over a year ago), but it was all through my boss, not me doing it directly, so I didn't really get the full credit for doing it. (partly because I am the newest team member, and some might not like the idea of me training them, maybe not even boss's boss)

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12 hours ago, Iskaral Pust said:

@baxus Congrats to you too.  I hope the offer matches your expectations.  Hopefully Snapchat's IPO has a coattail effect for comp in start-ups.

The problem is I don't know what to expect, really.

I'm not a legal expert, so this might be a bit confusing, but bear with me. In 5+ years since I've gradated, I've been a full-time employee of the companies I'd worked for and now I'd be switching to a consultant position employed full-time by the company. It comes down to basically the same, but legal stuff behind it is different - I'd basically count as a one man company cooperating with the startup I mentioned. A lot of IT companies in Belgrade, especially ones from US, handle their business that way. Bottom line is I'd pay less taxes, which would lead to me earning more money but I'd be giving up some other stuff.

Best part is that I'd qualify for stock options (US company, not the local one ;)) and I'd probably get to go to California, probably even Singapore or Indonesia.

6 hours ago, Lany Freelove Cassandra said:

Congrats baxus!

Thanks, Lany!

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  • 1 month later...

i am attempting to write a cover letter for pretty exciting (for me) job opportunity, but like, three hours in and i'd rather be fed feet first into a wood chipper. i feel i would be a good fit for this job, but when i try to put in writing why, i have such a hard time i start second guessing myself. with no education to speak of and maybe just more than marginally relevant experience, i am having a hard ass time making myself sound good and exciting with out resorting to 1) empty execu-speak platitudes or 2) outright lies. 

ugh, sorry for venting

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1 hour ago, r'hllor's reformed lobster said:

i am attempting to write a cover letter for pretty exciting (for me) job opportunity, but like, three hours in and i'd rather be fed feet first into a wood chipper. i feel i would be a good fit for this job, but when i try to put in writing why, i have such a hard time i start second guessing myself. with no education to speak of and maybe just more than marginally relevant experience, i am having a hard ass time making myself sound good and exciting with out resorting to 1) empty execu-speak platitudes or 2) outright lies. 

ugh, sorry for venting

It sounds like you should lead with your passion for the role and why you are so excited about it.   Best of luck. 

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11 hours ago, r'hllor's reformed lobster said:

i am attempting to write a cover letter for pretty exciting (for me) job opportunity, but like, three hours in and i'd rather be fed feet first into a wood chipper. i feel i would be a good fit for this job, but when i try to put in writing why, i have such a hard time i start second guessing myself. with no education to speak of and maybe just more than marginally relevant experience, i am having a hard ass time making myself sound good and exciting with out resorting to 1) empty execu-speak platitudes or 2) outright lies. 

ugh, sorry for venting

A friend of mine calls this "The Impostor syndrome". Basically, it's when one feels underqualified for a job or a task at hand without that actually being the case. Obviously, I can't say that you are suffering from it without knowing the details but we all know people quite often feel insecure during the interview process. If my experience is any indicator, the ones who show up with an "I can do this job without breaking a sweat" most often turn out to be the worst fit for the job. A little bit of insecurity is a good thing - it shows you care whether or not you get the job and that you're not some narcissistic douchebag.

Best of luck with your interview.

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On 4/19/2017 at 6:57 PM, Iskaral Pust said:

It sounds like you should lead with your passion for the role and why you are so excited about it.   Best of luck. 

yaknow, as obvious as that may seem, this actually helped tremendously. feeling pretty solid about it now, thank you

19 hours ago, baxus said:

A friend of mine calls this "The Impostor syndrome". Basically, it's when one feels underqualified for a job or a task at hand without that actually being the case. Obviously, I can't say that you are suffering from it without knowing the details but we all know people quite often feel insecure during the interview process. If my experience is any indicator, the ones who show up with an "I can do this job without breaking a sweat" most often turn out to be the worst fit for the job. A little bit of insecurity is a good thing - it shows you care whether or not you get the job and that you're not some narcissistic douchebag.

Best of luck with your interview.

yeah, i think (hope?) thats a good part of it. also, this is the first cover letter i have ever composed, so thats probably a big part too, haha

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11 hours ago, Xray the Enforcer said:

good luck, my favorite lobster!

thanks! not to put the cart before the horse or anything, but in your own self-interest, keep those positive vibes coming; if this thing works out I know a few people that will be secondary beneficiaries ;) 

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18 hours ago, r'hllor's reformed lobster said:

thanks! not to put the cart before the horse or anything, but in your own self-interest, keep those positive vibes coming; if this thing works out I know a few people that will be secondary beneficiaries ;) 

Good luck! :D

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  • 2 weeks later...

Is being asked whether you're 'in another recruitment process' a thing? Never been asked that before.

Anyway this interview (after the first interview which was after the test, before the next interview with the country team if they consider me for a specific role...c'mon guys) I think went ok, for a field position doing GIS with a sort of mid-sized NGO, but I'm wondering whether taking off to South Sudan would even be a good idea right now...(I have not often actually wondered this.) I'm not sure another field position, particularly onr which might be a little generic, adds that much to my credentials vis a vis PhD applications right now. It might be better to take the next six months or so and focus on academicy stuff until its all sent off in Dec/January again, and then I still have most of a year after to go do a short-term field gig if I find one, rather than trying to juggle applications while being neck deep in a full time job somewhere with dodgy internet and prohibitive travel costs to anywhere (like say conferences.) Then again, it's a difficult sector to get actual work in and I'm loathe to pass up an opportunity that could be career-building, since the PhD is hardly a done thing. Ideally, they'd let me put off starting until like September or such, but that seems a stretch. Hm. :huh:

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1) It's not particularly unusual to ask a candidate if they're being recruited elsewhere. It's usually to gauge if you have to speed up the process on your end in order to not lose out on a good candidate. I don't think I've ever seen a "yes" answer from a candidate being held against the candidate. 

2) My own gut-read on your situation is to not take the South Sudan job. If getting into academia is your mid-term goal, and you need to get to conferences to achieve that, it's harmful to take some shitty temp job that undermines your ability to meet that goal. This just seems to be one of those situations where trying to hedge your bets will end up being worse overall than taking the risk. There will be other mid-size NGOs and other field-work opportunities out there if the academic thing does not work out in the next six months.

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It's an automatic question for us and neither a yes nor no would be held against you.  It helps to know if you'll be faced with a decision on another offer possibly before we're ready to make our own offer.  It also helps to know what types of jobs you are considering, because it says a lot about what you want and how we should differentiate our firm and the role from other opportunities. 

If you're randomly responding to every job posting you see, then I wouldn't tell them that.  Almost any other answer is fine and makes your conversation more open and honest.

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I thought the point of job interviews was mutual deception? I've got an interview-test thing coming up I completely forgot about in the moment and a few applications out there, though mostly my current employer would like to know what I'm planning, I guess.

X-Ray - My gut agrees with your gut, I think, but would also like more information, as well as rationally thinking this is a good opportunity and as closely in-line with what i'd like to be doing as I'm likely to get right now. If nothing else, I guess its a push to reach out to a few people and ask polite questions about what went wrong with the PhD application thing, which I've been putting off doing. I imagine I won't be able to get any straightforward 'ah, yes, we really would have liked to see another year or so of fieldwork experience there. Maybe somewhere like South Sudan' but maybe some indication.

 

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On 5/2/2017 at 6:35 AM, Xray the Enforcer said:

1) It's not particularly unusual to ask a candidate if they're being recruited elsewhere. It's usually to gauge if you have to speed up the process on your end in order to not lose out on a good candidate. I don't think I've ever seen a "yes" answer from a candidate being held against the candidate. 

2) My own gut-read on your situation is to not take the South Sudan job. If getting into academia is your mid-term goal, and you need to get to conferences to achieve that, it's harmful to take some shitty temp job that undermines your ability to meet that goal. This just seems to be one of those situations where trying to hedge your bets will end up being worse overall than taking the risk. There will be other mid-size NGOs and other field-work opportunities out there if the academic thing does not work out in the next six months.

 

17 hours ago, Iskaral Pust said:

It's an automatic question for us and neither a yes nor no would be held against you.  It helps to know if you'll be faced with a decision on another offer possibly before we're ready to make our own offer.  It also helps to know what types of jobs you are considering, because it says a lot about what you want and how we should differentiate our firm and the role from other opportunities. 

If you're randomly responding to every job posting you see, then I wouldn't tell them that.  Almost any other answer is fine and makes your conversation more open and honest.

 

I would be kind of afraid to answer this question, especially in the negative. I wouldn't want them to know I don't have any other irons in the fire, I'd worry it would give them leverage. Oh, he doesn't have any other offers, I can lowball him because he doesn't have any other options.

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On ‎02‎.‎05‎.‎2017 at 11:29 AM, Datepalm said:

Is being asked whether you're 'in another recruitment process' a thing? Never been asked that before.

I always ask that question, because I would hate to miss a good match just because of bad timing. I will usually embed this at the end of an interview in a conversation on how I want to proceed and how the candidate wants to proceed. Some candidates may be under pressure from a competitor because they already have an offer on the table, others may want some time, because they still have 3 or 4 interviews lined up. I may also have similar constraints and depending on the candidate I may have to speed up my process.

If a candidate has no other offers, it just means that I may have more time to talk to others. That in itself gives me leverage, that's true. But on the other hand, if I take too much time, a good candidate might start to interview with others, so I have to consider making a good offer and quick (and I did that before) which gives the candidate an advantage.

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I agree.  It's not about monopoly power to lowball an offer -- my candidates almost always are currently in good jobs where they could remain -- it's mostly about timing.  It's better for both sides to evaluate carefully and find a good fit, but if they're already pretty far advanced with another opportunity then I might need to speed up my own process (sometimes we just won't) and at a minimum we can speak more directly at contrasting the two opportunities to see what the candidate really wants.  I'm a big believer in letting people self-select into the role where they'll be happy and successful.  I don't like situations where someone wants a job, any job, or where someone is gulled into taking a crummy job they'll hate. 

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Yeah, same here. I think once you get to a certain level of expertise with organizations who value that expertise, there's just way less fucking around on both sides. Like, we're all highly paid professionals whose time=money, so wasting time on subterfuge is just stupid all around.

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Yeah...hm...I think I'm still - and honestly, expect to be for a long time and also take as a norm, that the especially fraught interactions of hiring practices are extremely heirarchial and essentially aimed at structural exploitation, quite beyond any specific behaviour by a given person doing recruitment. Call it my inner Syndicalist or just the product of a few bad recruitment experiences - I'm still trying to get my pension contribution from the last place I worked at, at least partially because they refused to have signed contracts during hiring (they also explicitly lied about the salary, but that of course would be revealed a month after being hired) and none of us told them to go fuck themselves because we all really wanted (if not quite needed*) that job.

Being in a position to assume you are being negotiated with in truly good faith and openness is just not a privilege I think most people have, and I'm just automatically proceeding with caution, given that violations of labour rights that are startlingly more egregious than someone trying to manipulate or pressure you into a low starting salary are the norm more than the exception in a lot of places, including fancy pants high education types...yeah, I'm sticking to a certain paranoia for now. And I say that from a relatively priviliged place in and of itself, of being fairly highly educated and with some relevant and specialized experience at this point, and in a field that's surprisingly in demand, and still seeing that the way my working life is playing out (flaky as I am) is in positions with a built-in precariousness and disposability, where I'm trying to trade interestingness in work for a willingness to compromise labour standards - or have them compromised for me, rather - and quite explicitly told that they're doing me a favour for letting me work there.

/sorry labour aside, but labour politics/economics is one of the big reasons I enjoy this thread. I mean, this is a generalized tirade - I currently have more interviews on my schedule than I know what to do with, and reasonably good work arrangements** I could stay in to boot. I just don't expect to have any ability to translate that into bargaining power. I'll just get laughed out of the office. And niether do I expect any degree of honesty or openness from a would-be employer about the process of recruitment, and I sometimes feel that I'm being naive or even lazy in my due-diligence. This particular place, for example, has the worst set of reviews I've ever seen for a large organization on Glassdoor. But if they offer me a job, will I take it? Probably yes - and this I was perfectly open about - knowing that it wouldn't matter if I could only survive there a year anyway since everything is temporary and its experience I'm interested in rather than a career I will have.

 

*before anyone goes Millenial Snowflake on me, moving down the ladder of skillfullness in employment for a blue collar or service job would simply get me even more precariousness, even worse wages and even worse labour standards. That's doing just as badly and being manipulated and exploited way worse, it's just that precariousness has been built in to the idea of the 'Creative Class' employment in a certain way, (fuck you, Richard Florida) with its unpaid internships and so on, where its still innoccently assumed in some quarters that there are jobs out there you just show up to every day and do your job and get paid, and not be constantly re-negotiating every aspect of your employment from a place of inherent weakness.

You guys appear to describe the existence of this fabled thing at the other end - highly skilled, highly experience employees who can command basic respect and oppeness and from an employer - but I honestly wonder sometimes whether that will exist for anyone at all the way things are going.

**I tried writing 'job' here and just couldn't quite with a straight face.

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