Careerchat II

[Datepalm]

Someone forgot their pencil case at a thing I was at, so I picked it up, found it had a disk-on-key, checked it and found a CV, and duly contacted the person to return it all...except I now have to resist, strongly, the urge to sit her down when I do and tell her to FIX HER CV. (Your phone number is wrong. Your experience is in the wrong order. And is way too long. And is a mess of obvious nonsense buzzwords that tell us nothing. Your email is clearly from highschool. And is yahoo. And more.) Because I am now apparently someone who has opinions about this kind of thing.

I won't though. Probably.

[Iskaral Pust]

3 hours ago, Datepalm said:

Someone forgot their pencil case at a thing I was at, so I picked it up, found it had a disk-on-key, checked it and found a CV, and duly contacted the person to return it all...except I now have to resist, strongly, the urge to sit her down when I do and tell her to FIX HER CV. (Your phone number is wrong. Your experience is in the wrong order. And is way too long. And is a mess of obvious nonsense buzzwords that tell us nothing. Your email is clearly from highschool. And is yahoo. And more.) Because I am now apparently someone who has opinions about this kind of thing.

I won't though. Probably.

We've been a bad influence on you. 

The part of that post that sticks out for me is that I would never have looked at the data on the flash drive.  That seems like an intrusion and possibly a malware risk.  I would have just handed the pencil case to the lost & found or closest available proxy, e.g. registration desk or whatever.  Am I being weird about that?

[Datepalm]

Yeah, I thought it might be a little iffy, but it was a part of the university that doesn't have an associated desk and, well, kind of an informal university setting, I guess. It seemed intuitive there wouldn't be anything on there other than a couple of assignments or something I could hopefully get her name or ID from and send her a message. If it had been in the library or the geography department, there would be an obvious person to hand it over to, but this was a big hall that isn't usually used for students at all* - the only alternative was to give it to campus-wide security who are kind of a pain to get to and not somewhere people stop by or expect their stuff to be found at. Don't know really - I'd be totally fine with someone going through my stuff, under the circumstances, but I think I'm unusually casual about this kind of thing.

*It was a fancy meeting room deep in the administrative building, and, ironically given the bad CV, only allowed to know the grubby touch of student feet because it was an OECD recruitment event. 

[Inigima]

5 hours ago, Iskaral Pust said:

We've been a bad influence on you. 

The part of that post that sticks out for me is that I would never have looked at the data on the flash drive.  That seems like an intrusion and possibly a malware risk.  I would have just handed the pencil case to the lost & found or closest available proxy, e.g. registration desk or whatever.  Am I being weird about that?

I was going to say this. No, you aren't being weird. Don't plug in USB drives that you find. It is a standard vector of attack.

[MercenaryChef]

I had to field a uncomfortable phone call checking the references on a pastry cook who moved across the country in november yesterday. 

it was for a upper management position in a large bakery. I researched the company when the former employee sent me a text expecting the call. it looked like a good place to work. I was hopeful for my former cook.

as the conversation developed I realized my former employee was quite dishonest with this potential new employer. she falsified her title, wages and whether she managed people.

I always give a good reference unless someone was particularly poor and simply say 'not eligible for rehire.' I did not enjoy being put in a position I had to try to vouch for someone who lied pretty blatantly. 

I cannot see her being hired. had she simply been honest they may have been willing to gamble on her. certainly I know I wouldn't put someone on my management team who lied on their application.

[Eponine]

9 months ago, I got an interview request from a large software company known for difficult technical interviews. 

I said I was interested but was 8.5 months pregnant and wasn't ready to take a job until after my maternity leave.

After being recontacted, I said I couldn't make any decisions until next year because of location uncertainty when my husband finished his PhD.

Now it's next year, and I really have to shit or get off the pot - either take the interview or say that I'm really not interested in the position. Problem is that despite the time to prepare, I'm still completely and utterly not ready for a rigorous technical interview. I'm just not. Part of me thinks I should do it anyway, go in despite the risk of immediate failure. And part of me thinks I shouldn't waste my time and theirs with my level of unpreparedness. I feel 100% like both things are the right thing to do.

[Xray the Enforcer]

Hey Ep! Good to see you again.

So...do you actually want the job?

[Eponine]

Hey Xray! So... yes and no. That didn't help, did it? I like the job I'm in, it's close to home, I like my boss and coworkers, but there's little opportunity for advancement. The pay is relatively not good, although it's enough for me. I might have a chance at a partial role change. I have a meeting about that in a few days and will have more information. 

If I got the job I'm considering interviewing for, it would be a chance to work on new products, a corporate structure where I could move up, better pay, and a good resume builder. The location isn't the best for me. If I didn't have to do the interview and was simply offered it, I'm 75% sure I'd take it. 

I'm 34 and I've worked most my life in smaller companies with flatter hierarchies. It's been good in terms of less bureaucracy and micromanagement - getting my own work done at my own pace and getting credit for it. There's definitely a place for people who never want to do management and simply want to become a more expert programmer. But that's not me. I don't want to become chief software engineer someday, but I do have ambitions to find a more upwardly mobile career path. So as much as I like what I do and where I work, I think I'm going to have to make some changes eventually so that I'm not feeling stuck in 5 years and realizing I took too long to develop a longterm plan.

[Xray the Enforcer]

Ah, I totally hear you. I've gone through similar (although totally different fields). 

In this case, I think I'm going to encourage you to go to the interview. I was in your place in my field at around the same age (maybe a couple of years older) -- quite content with the work and had a lot of respect for and from my coworkers -- and at some point I realized that if I didn't make a change soon, chances were extremely high that I was going to be stuck in a non-advancing career for the rest of my life. So, don't become 38-year-old me, waking up at 3am in a panic about never going anywhere in life. The interview might not work out, but I think you should at least give it a go. 

[Eponine]

Thanks, Xray!

[Rorshach]

I tend to think in a "what have you got to lose"?-way. 

You would have to go there, but if that's the drawback, I would go for it. Perhaps, then, things will be clearer after the interview. You may have learned that it wasn't for you. Or you would learn more, and think it would be to your liking to continue. But, you being uncertain, I think more information (which an interview may provide) is worthwhile. 

[Iskaral Pust]

Sounds like you should at least try it out but perhaps do some prep beforehand so that you don't end up discouraging yourself if you're really that unprepared.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

Agree to go for it, prepare, and you are probably better qualified than you think you are.  And if nothing else, it's an experience under the belt and more contacts for the network.

[Eponine]

1 hour ago, Iskaral Pust said:

Sounds like you should at least try it out but perhaps do some prep beforehand so that you don't end up discouraging yourself if you're really that unprepared.

I'd do a lot of prep if I had the time, but I've been in pretty much a perpetual time crunch for the last 9 months, and the preparation involves a lot of things that most programmers don't use on a daily basis and generally either wouldn't implement themselves or wouldn't implement more than once. 

[Iskaral Pust]

31 minutes ago, Eponine said:

I'd do a lot of prep if I had the time, but I've been in pretty much a perpetual time crunch for the last 9 months, and the preparation involves a lot of things that most programmers don't use on a daily basis and generally either wouldn't implement themselves or wouldn't implement more than once. 

In that case, the technical interview shouldn't make or break the conversation.  Set expectations with your contact, take the test, and proceed from there.  If you want to pursue your ambition you should at least start trying on some opportunities for fit.  Best of luck.

[Liffguard]

I have £3000 worth of educational funding, max £1000 a year, that I need to use in the next five years or it disappears. Awesome! I have no real idea what I want to use it for though. Not so awesome. I'm enjoying my new job quite a bit but I'm not sure if it's a field that I'll stay in long-term. In any case, all the potential future training for that job is entirely in-house since it involves specific government systems that can't be used outside of this particular environment. So I need to think of what sort of training might be useful for me in the future outside of this particular role. I'm sort of leaning towards something IT based and generic that could potentially apply to a wide variety of roles. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

[Angalin]

Nice to see you back, Ep! Congratulations and best wishes for everything!

Liff, have you done any aptitude tests to narrow down the possibilities? The Things have to choose GCSE subjects soon, and a friend recommended this one which was quick and fairly accurate, at least in my case.

After a lot of depressing searching, I have finally found two jobs which sound exciting, one in Birmingham and one in London. Changing mental gears from a part-time editorial job to graduate student to next-level job hunting has been far more challenging than expected: when I first started looking for post-degree work, I still felt very unqualified for anything more than basic. These two, though, make me feel like I could use what I've learned instead of just hitting reset to a previous existence.

[Datepalm]

1 hour ago, Angalin said:

Liff, have you done any aptitude tests to narrow down the possibilities? The Things have to choose GCSE subjects soon, and a friend recommended this one which was quick and fairly accurate, at least in my case.

...and I got a perfect match for urban planner. But I already know that that's what I'm doing (and enjoying) (and what it involves) so really I guess I was working backwards on the questionnaire.

[Liffguard]

3 hours ago, Angalin said:

Liff, have you done any aptitude tests to narrow down the possibilities? The Things have to choose GCSE subjects soon, and a friend recommended this one which was quick and fairly accurate, at least in my case.

 

Thanks, that quiz was interesting. Apparently I should definitely be some sort of engineer, followed closely by military or technician. Military, been there done that. But the engineer thing looks interesting. I don't have the money or the patience to properly go back to uni for that sort of thing, but I can do some research into what sort of non-academic qualifications are available.

[Iskaral Pust]

I tried that quiz but got bored.  It starts from a really basic point and effectively tests your existing impression of a wide range of work areas and work styles.  I would prefer to look at characteristics and abilities of people and then help them see where that might apply in a career.  By leading with job types you conform too much to their existing impressions.  There's little room for surprise or challenge to preconceptions. 

 

Unrelated: I have interviews soon within my current firm for one of the alternate roles I mentioned a couple of monthe back.  If I don't get or take that role, there's another alternate role for me just for the asking.  I've been warming people up to the idea that I may be changing role soon.  Nothing too dramatic but the timing is good to shift focus and work style a bit.