Careerchat II

[Liffguard]

Some personal good news amongst the possible end of the world, I got a job offer! It's only a temporary contract for now but there's a lot of scope to be made permanent at the end of the contract. I'll be working for the police as a researcher.

[S John]

39 minutes ago, Liffguard said:

Some personal good news amongst the possible end of the world, I got a job offer! It's only a temporary contract for now but there's a lot of scope to be made permanent at the end of the contract. I'll be working for the police as a researcher.

Congrats!  Indeed, life must go on.

I promise that the timing of this has nothing to do with Trump, but a friend of mine is referring me for a position that will require me to go and live in Germany for a year.  Still too much to parse out, and I reckon I'll have competition for it, so I'm treating it as a long-shot, but I'm very likely to do it if it works out.  Would be pretty cool under any circumstance, but the added bonus of it being not a bad time for a vacation from the 'ol US of A.

[Liffguard]

47 minutes ago, S John said:

Congrats!  Indeed, life must go on.

I promise that the timing of this has nothing to do with Trump, but a friend of mine is referring me for a position that will require me to go and live in Germany for a year.  Still too much to parse out, and I reckon I'll have competition for it, so I'm treating it as a long-shot, but I'm very likely to do it if it works out.  Would be pretty cool under any circumstance, but the added bonus of it being not a bad time for a vacation from the 'ol US of A.

Thank you. As you say, life goes on.

Sounds like a great opportunity. I have to admit, after the Brexit vote I started having a speculative look at working abroad. It came to nothing in the end. My life is here and my mum's not in great health so I wanted to stick around. I have started the paperwork for my Canadian passport though, just in case.

[Iskaral Pust]

Congrats Liff and John.  Both sound like good opportunities. 

We've just had another senior departure announced.  I didn't think people were this upset about the org chart changes.  My value rises with each departure.  I think I need to push for a specific retention bonus and/or a big raise.  My company hates to do stuff like that but the potential destruction is huge if I leave too. 

[sperry]

First year MBA recruiting in full swing right now. This process is a nightmare, but will be over soon enough.

[baxus]

I did a skill test for the position in Stockholm I mentioned earlier and am waiting for the feedback.

It didn't seem too difficult but I'm feeling like I did in college when I waited for results after taking an exam. You know, questioning everything and thinking if I made some embarrassing mistake.

Hopefully, they get back to me soon, either way.

[Datepalm]

I've never had that with exams, but I'm getting it now with every email I send someone about work/study applications stuff. Including things like 'I'll be there at four." Conviction of total idiocy the moment I hit send.

Good luck! It's probably definitely worse in your head.

[baxus]

1 hour ago, Datepalm said:

I've never had that with exams, but I'm getting it now with every email I send someone about work/study applications stuff. Including things like 'I'll be there at four." Conviction of total idiocy the moment I hit send.

Good luck! It's probably definitely worse in your head.

And that's exactly why you are looking into PhD studies and I'm not   

Thanks for the pep talk! 

[Datepalm]

Lol, I was never a good student, per se. Just not hugely self-doubting. I often had the feeling I just did terribly on an exam, it's just that this was usually in cases where this was, in fact, true.

[Proudfeet]

I'm at the end of a 6 months contract and looking at a conversion to a permanent role. However the salary offered was slightly lower than what I wanted, although still ~25% higher than my entry level temporary position. Would it be bad for me to accept the offer and immediately start looking for a new job? Would it be better for me to just not accept the offer? Should I just suck it up even though I already dislike the job* regardless of the salary? 

*Its more the working environment and culture than the actual job.

[Deedles]

Linked-in. Do you use it? How do you use it? Are validations important. How about the photo? 

 

Im considering looking for a new job and it's something I've never really paid attention to.

[Iskaral Pust]

2 hours ago, Deedles said:

Linked-in. Do you use it? How do you use it? Are validations important. How about the photo? 

 

Im considering looking for a new job and it's something I've never really paid attention to.

I use it, mainly as a cloud Rolodex to maintain current contact details for professional acquaintances to whom I don't speak often and would otherwise lose track as they change jobs.  I use the message function to exchange short notes with them and anything more substantive would shift to email.

I don't know that a LinkedIn profile will help you right now in a job search if you already know where you'll be sending your resume/CV -- it's more effective if you've been using it for years to keep in touch with people who might have alerted you to an opportunity.  If you are searching for new opportunities then it might help to start using LinkedIn now to reconnect with people and beat the bushes.  But most people are less inclined to help someone who only made an effort to connect when they wanted something from the connection.  

I do not use LinkedIn to maintain a broad professional social media presence by posting content or "liking"/"retweeting" content from others.  Those fuckers are really annoying and I just ignore the stream of updates.  If I wanted to be on Facebook, then I'd be on Facebook.  LinkedIn's attempt to replicate FB and convert low value, low effort spam into personal brand building misses the mark in a professional setting where people are more time-constrained and more skeptical of bullshitters & empty self-promoters. 

[Starkess]

On 11/10/2016 at 9:08 AM, Proudfeet said:

I'm at the end of a 6 months contract and looking at a conversion to a permanent role. However the salary offered was slightly lower than what I wanted, although still ~25% higher than my entry level temporary position. Would it be bad for me to accept the offer and immediately start looking for a new job? Would it be better for me to just not accept the offer? Should I just suck it up even though I already dislike the job* regardless of the salary? 

*Its more the working environment and culture than the actual job.

Can you negotiate with their offer at all? I don't think it's necessarily bad to take it and still keep looking for a new job, but it could rebound on you if you aren't careful.

[Proudfeet]

9 hours ago, Starkess said:

Can you negotiate with their offer at all? I don't think it's necessarily bad to take it and still keep looking for a new job, but it could rebound on you if you aren't careful.

After considering it for a little longer, I think my main point of reluctance is that I'm not keen on the job. The salary is disappointing, sure, but it isn't that much lower than what I wanted. I'm feel like I'm sticking to it because I want an excuse to myself to not continue. The only reason I am considering it at all is that if I were to take another job, I would probably have to accept an even lower offer because of my current salary. I don't have the leverage of saying that they were already paying the recruitment agency that amount after all.

Anyway, I talked to my manager and he said he would try to see if I could get that small bump. I feel kind of bad its not his decision.

[baxus]

I have passed the skills test I took recently for that company in Stockholm.  

The recruiter I was in touch with has informed me that the interview with the company's representatives won't take place for another two weeks or so, but that there are other positions available so I'll listen to what she has to say about those while waiting for an interview.

[Datepalm]

Go to an interesting and probably very small open workshop in one's professional field organized by the wife of the guy who - one is like 90% sure, with her knowledge - invited you to join them in a menage a trois? (Which one turned down?) Best practice? Etiquette? (Why do I feel like Chataya is the person to address this?)

[baxus]

@Datepalm

Can't speak on that from experience but I guess "pretend nothing's happened" is the way to go.

EDIT:

Unless the guy couldn't take no for an answer or anything like that.

[S John]

On 11/10/2016 at 5:30 PM, Deedles said:

Linked-in. Do you use it? How do you use it? Are validations important. How about the photo? 

 

Im considering looking for a new job and it's something I've never really paid attention to.

I think it depends a lot on your industry.  I made a profile there years ago, and recently updated due to job search, but mine is pretty basic.  Basically just contains the same info as my resume, no photo.  I figure that if I apply somewhere, there's a chance that whoever is hiring might look for me on linked-in so it couldn't hurt to have a profile that looked like it was constructed by a competent individual.  But with that said, I do not think that having a linked-in profile has been beneficial to me in any way.

[baxus]

On 11/11/2016 at 0:30 AM, Deedles said:

Linked-in. Do you use it? How do you use it? Are validations important. How about the photo? 

 

Im considering looking for a new job and it's something I've never really paid attention to.

I have a LinkedIn profile and I keep it pretty much up to date. I look through the feed every now and again but I wouldn't say that I use it all that much. I have put a photo there (which I might change since it's some 8 years old now ). From what I gather, endorsements are important because of jobs matching algorithms.

LinkedIn is mostly a channel through which recruiters contact me in case some interesting opportunity (like the one I already talked about in this thread) comes along.  It's been pretty useful for me, since I've already found jobs via LinkedIn.

It might be different for other fields of work.

[Iskaral Pust]

6 hours ago, Datepalm said:

Go to an interesting and probably very small open workshop in one's professional field organized by the wife of the guy who - one is like 90% sure, with her knowledge - invited you to join them in a menage a trois? (Which one turned down?) Best practice? Etiquette? (Why do I feel like Chataya is the person to address this?)

Does the invitation say "clothing optional"?  The workshop may be smaller and more interesting than you expect.