Careerchat III

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

@S John, I agree with everyone else. You did nothing wrong assuming you didn't sign some type on contract that was based on the upcoming project. Congrats! 

@Triskele, You can upload the cover letter with the resume and at the bottom of your resume, assuming there's space, write see attached cover letter on page (x).

 

Speaking of page count, when does your resume become too long? My template resume is close to two pages, but I normally pare it down to a page if possible when applying for a gig. 

 

[Iskaral Pust]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

@S John, I agree with everyone else. 

Speaking of page count, when does your resume become too long? My template resume is close to two pages, but I normally pare it down to a page if possible when applying for a gig. 

 

Two pages is OK if you have more than ten years of industry experience to describe.  Don’t exceed two. 

[Theda Baratheon]

9 hours ago, williamjm said:

That does seem very poor from your manager not to get in contact about it. Hopefully they manage to make it out of administration (again).

Yep - not a word from him...I’m not looking forward to having to deal with grumpy assholes wanting to cash in their gift cards. Oh you’re losing 10 pounds? I’m losing my job  

[HexMachina]

1 hour ago, Theda Baratheon said:

Yep - not a word from him...I’m not looking forward to having to deal with grumpy assholes wanting to cash in their gift cards. Oh you’re losing 10 pounds? I’m losing my job  

That sucks for you  sorry to hear it Theda. 

Your manager may not know a lot him/herself at this stage though. S/He is your senior but I would guess they are pretty low down the totem pole overall. A heads up as to what was coming mightn have been nice though.

im filling out training contract applications. For positions starting in 2021. Ugh, the application process for solicitors (and barristers) is ridiculous

[Isis]

Two weeks notice? For a salaried post? Wowsers. For anyone, any position, at my School it's a month. For my grade it's three months notice as hiring a replacement would take at least that long (although training would take much longer). Congrats on the pay rise etc. 

That sucks, Theda. Especially not being told directly. 

[ljkeane]

30 minutes ago, Isis said:

Two weeks notice? For a salaried post? Wowsers. For anyone, any position, at my School it's a month. 

They aren’t legally required to have contracts in the US so my understanding is most jobs don’t have them. If the company can pretty much let you go whenever they want I’m not sure I’d feel too much obligation to give them much notice.

[Deedles]

Yeah, I’m 2 months notice but that’s under EU work regulations. If you can be let go with no notice and no contract (or a contract that has minimal notice), I’m not sure why you should be made feel bad. They could have future proofed this with a good contact with benefits for both sides. Congrats on the pay rise and what sounds like interesting opportunities.

 

ive to start thinking seriously about my career. I’ve topped out where I am, so it’s either go part time and focus on the family, or move in the company, which is likely to involve people management. 

 

[S John]

Yes employment in the US tends to be ‘at-will’, meaning either party can terminate employment at any time for any reason except illegal ones like age, sex, disability, or racial discrimination.  I could be wrong about this because I’m speaking just from personal experience, but I think it is the norm here.  Every job I’ve ever had has been this way.  

This heavily favors the employer for obvious reasons as it boils down to they can shit-can you whenever they feel like it without warning on any pretense, hence employee loyalty pretty much needs to be bought and there is a general culture of ‘fuck ‘em’ when a better opportunity comes along.  They’d do the same to you in a heartbeat if they needed to and it would hurt you more than it’ll hurt them.  I don’t particularly like that it is this way, but that’s pretty much how it works.

Honestly, if I could have given them 4 to even 6 weeks notice I would have.  The new company had a pre-scheduled training for the week of the 14th that they wanted me to get in on.  It still enabled me to give my current employer more than 3 weeks notice, but we are on paid holiday some of that.  My preference absolutely would have been for a little more time to set them up for success, but I do think I can get my coworkers in fighting shape in the remaining time.  They aren’t screwed but some people are going to have to step outside their comfort zone for the time being.

[Iskaral Pust]

I know “at-will” employment sounds terrifyingly callous to Europeans, but salaried employees with significant roles do get other considerations.  For example, I know my current and former employers would put a terminated employee on garden leave until the end of the month (or even longer) and then give them 3-6 months severance package, which pays their normal compensation each month through that period.  Only those being fired for cause (which I’ve never seen) would not get that.  So you can be terminated with no notice, but typically the company then pays you a replacement for your salary for several months.  Junior employees get a shorter severance period, perhaps only two months.

It’s usually casual, low-skill jobs that use at-will employment to terminate employees abruptly with no financial cushion, usually for absenteeism or persistent tardiness or showing up drunk/high/hungover, etc — the employer just wants rid of the problem employee quickly, and they probably haven’t been there very long; it reduces the risk to an employer in hiring new people so it actually increases the job opportunities for low-skill workers (provided they are the reliable).  But there’s no legal or contractual protection from an employer using it capriciously.  Very few people have employment contracts that guarantee anything more than at-will. 

So if employers give mid to senior salaried employees the protection of severance packages, you can see why employer might think two weeks notice is asymmetrically brief.  But most employees never know that a severance package is available because very few actually get fired.  It’s usually employees who leave, not employers who push them out. 

[Starkess]

I'd always been under the impression that the cover letter was mostly about the specific job, taking the chance to describe how you as a candidate are a good fit for that position and maybe to explain/shore up any specific weak spots in your resume (of course in that magical way that doesn't draw attention to them or make you seem like you can't do the job). Of course I've not had much luck in cold-applying to jobs so who knows. 

[Starkess]

If they didn't ask for or provide a clear way to upload one, then they probably won't hold a lack of a cover letter against you I'd think. More of just a missed opportunity for you to say something besides the rather constrained info on a resume. But I've also heard about people barely even reading cover letters, so who knows if they're even advantageous at all.

[HexMachina]

I’ve always done the cover letter with reference to the job spec. Pulling out key skills they list and using that to show how I would be a valuable addition to the team or whatever.

(I realise my track record with job applications hardly gives much weight to my advice but in my defence I usually breeze through the initial stages...)

[baxus]

On 12/29/2018 at 12:31 AM, Tywin et al. said:

@S JohnSpeaking of page count, when does your resume become too long? My template resume is close to two pages, but I normally pare it down to a page if possible when applying for a gig. 

I stick to one page, and that's with 7 years of relevant experience and this being fifth company I've worked for during that time.

Just a brief description of my duties and a link to download the projects I'd worked on (if still relevant).

On 12/29/2018 at 12:48 PM, Isis said:

Two weeks notice? For a salaried post? Wowsers. For anyone, any position, at my School it's a month. For my grade it's three months notice as hiring a replacement would take at least that long (although training would take much longer). Congrats on the pay rise etc. 

That sucks, Theda. Especially not being told directly. 

A Eurocommie in me just has to ask. What's a "salaried post"?

As I said, in my neck of the woods, 15 days is the minimum required by law and 30 days is the norm. Some contracts may state longer notice period but those can be overturned pretty easily if either side wants to.

On 12/29/2018 at 2:12 PM, Deedles said:

ive to start thinking seriously about my career. I’ve topped out where I am, so it’s either go part time and focus on the family, or move in the company, which is likely to involve people management. 

Man, I'm starting to hate people management. It's not that I'm in management or anything but as a senior member of the team I have more and more meetings and things like that and it's time consuming and often even annoying. I get that it's part of the job but no one ever said I had to love ALL of my job.  

[Isis]

On 12/29/2018 at 4:51 PM, S John said:

Yes employment in the US tends to be ‘at-will’, meaning either party can terminate employment at any time for any reason except illegal ones like age, sex, disability, or racial discrimination.  I could be wrong about this because I’m speaking just from personal experience, but I think it is the norm here.  Every job I’ve ever had has been this way.  

Yeah. I kind of forgot that employment is so different over there. I wasn't saying that you, personally, were being a bad person or anything like that. I was just expressing surprise that it was possible to leave a post with so little in the way of change-over/overlap, especially a senior post. 

22 hours ago, baxus said:

A Eurocommie in me just has to ask. What's a "salaried post"?

Hi from Europe.  A salaried post is one where the employee receives an annual salary, paid in 12 monthly increments - compared to a job where someone is paid an hourly rate. 

[Inigima]

12 hours ago, Isis said:

Yeah. I kind of forgot that employment is so different over there. I wasn't saying that you, personally, were being a bad person or anything like that. I was just expressing surprise that it was possible to leave a post with so little in the way of change-over/overlap, especially a senior post. 

Hi from Europe.  A salaried post is one where the employee receives an annual salary, paid in 12 monthly increments - compared to a job where someone is paid an hourly rate. 

Are they always monthly there? Here there are plenty of salaried positions paid biweekly or weekly.

[Isis]

3 hours ago, Inigima said:

Are they always monthly there? Here there are plenty of salaried positions paid biweekly or weekly.

The standard practice in the UK is for someone on an agreed annual salary to be paid once a month on the same date. I've met a couple of people (in my whole life) who are paid fortnightly. People who are paid an hourly rate, e.g. bar work, will get paid on a weekly basis - often they are working slightly different hours each week. 

[Mudguard]

On 1/1/2019 at 6:22 PM, Triskele said:

Thanks, some other online perusing does suggest that it leans that way.  Now I feel like a fool for applying to a few jobs with resume only though I still think it's strange that the page on the job board makes no mention of a cover letter anywhere and the only available upload slot is described as a slot for your resume.  I now wonder if that's by design a la "let's toss the ones that don't realize they should obviously include a cover letter and might be from a person who appears as a chimp online."  I hope that's not the case with this one I applied to right before the break that was quite intriguing and seemed like one where I really would have had some good stuff to say in terms of "here's why I'm a good candidate for this trial."  Might have been a particularly painful missed opportunity.  

If they only let you upload a resume, then they don't want a cover letter.  Don't worry about it, especially if it's already obvious that you are a good fit based on your resume.  If you are applying to a big company or even a not so big company, it's very likely that they have to screen many applicants, and therefore they just don't have the time to read dozens, hundreds or thousands of cover letters.  Lot's of companies nowadays don't want a cover letter. 

If there is something important that you want to convey that makes you a great fit for the job that doesn't quite fit in the standard resume sections (i.e., education and work experience), you can probably squeeze it in by including an additional section in your resume, something like "Other Relevant Experience".

 

[S John]

On 1/3/2019 at 8:22 AM, Isis said:

Yeah. I kind of forgot that employment is so different over there. I wasn't saying that you, personally, were being a bad person or anything like that. I was just expressing surprise that it was possible to leave a post with so little in the way of change-over/overlap, especially a senior post. 

No worries, I didn’t think you were.  And I totally agree it’s not much time no matter what the system is.  They’ll be OK though I have spent the last few days documenting like a mad man.  Next week I’ll train a couple people on some technical stuff.  I think they’ll get by.

This week I finally had a phone convo with my absent direct boss who I suspected was avoiding me out of anger.  I was wrong about that, he was totally cool about it and strangely confided in me that he too was thinking about leaving despite the deal he got for the PhD thing.  

Shit... if y’all think they were mad at me about leaving.. just wait.  I’ll be a saint in comparison.  I never asked them for a thing.  This guy got a special dispensation to leave FOR A YEAR - which also indirectly cost them my services - and is seriously thinking about not holding up his end of the bargain.  Bridge will be in ashes.  And also, if I had known that this guy was leaving 6 months ago I probably wouldn’t have tried so hard to get another job in the first place!  I was absolutely next in line for his job which is the manager of the entire program.  Would probably have gotten a raise to an acceptable level as well.  

Irritating to say the least, but what he says and what he does could certainly be two different things and I can’t afford to pass up opportunities based on what he might or might not do.  He could be saying that but not actively looking to find something else.  A couple months is not much time for a job search for a senior person in a really specific industry.  Who knows.  

Honestly I’m not really sure I even want his job anymore anyway, even though it’s a good job.  I’d be locked in (within the organization) at 34, for the rest of my career.  Going higher than that in the organization requires administration doing and PhD getting that I really don’t see myself doing and I know how stingy they are with money and raises.  Will I just fall behind again in 5 years?  A few years of it would be great on the resume though.  

In any case, it’s another little sliver of insurance if the new gig doesn’t turn out as hoped.  My current employer knows I’m staying in town and there is nobody more prepared for that role than me, if it comes open.  Certainly nobody in the local area.

[Iskaral Pust]

On 1/3/2019 at 9:05 PM, Triskele said:

Has anyone ever had a situation where they feared that they'd made a serious error but that there was both nothing that could be done about it to fix it in the short term and that one wouldn't find out whether or not it was indeed a serious error until something that came several months down the road?  

I've been in that spot on just one of many projects, and it's been driving me a bit batty.  I've been interested in job seeking for other reasons but confess that this has also been a factor:  like, fearing the fallout of this thing that might or might not happen in a few months.  

I ended up reaching out to a more experienced colleague who I thought could gauge the situation who told me that they thought I was being way overly paranoid and that this thing I was worried about was very unlikely to be the disaster I was fearing.  It's quite a thing to reflect on how much my psychology changed today on account of just this.  Still going to be checking the job boards for sure, but I'm of the ledge, so to speak.  

Not exactly the same thing but I had a period earlier in 2018 when I felt so embroiled in inter-office politics that I took a couple of interviews with other firms.  I had got to a stage when I felt like a couple of colleagues were going out of their way to sabotage me and they would continue to undermine any of my projects.

Over the course of a couple of months doing these interviews, I also built up some emotional distance from that frustration and sense of persecution.  I eventually realized that common or garden assholes can look very similar to intentional antagonists.  Managing generalized pain in the ass people is less fraught than dealing with people specifically trying to sabotage you and your team.  

Once I lowered my sense of being under direct, personalized attack, I found I was less stressed about the situation and resolved to stay.  I had let my perception get too negative and it was pushing me out the door.  Once I improved my perception, I was less ready to leave.

They are still raging assholes and can all too easily trigger my amygdala, but I’m trying to tune them out  

 

[Isis]

I've got a question about a thing that happened at work. It's not really anything to do with my job but I'm interested in some opinions.

My employer (a post-grad school) has various twitter accounts. I follow some of them because they are of professional interest/relevance to me. This morning I saw one of the accounts had posted a photo from a newly developed lab (it's a huge multi-user thing, impacts on lots of people and it only 'opened' last week, so it's definitely news/of interest). The photo was of a storage unit just inside the doors where people who work in the lab are meant to keep their lab coats (it was an aesthetically pleasing photo).

The problem was that the storage unit has the full names of the staff members who work in there (one on each slot) and you could read all of the labels in the photo. The first name I spotted was someone who I work with whom I know does not have their photo on the School website anywhere because they do some work of a sensitive nature and it could be dangerous for their identity to be made public as they could be targeted by certain groups. NB This person was pretty surprised when I showed them the photo - so no permission was granted to use the photo.

However, to me, that isn't really the point (the specific nature of the work anyone does). People's full names shouldn't be plastered all over social media without their permission - by their employer - regardless of what they work on.

So I sent an email to the press office and told them I didn't think it was right for them to display sensitive information on social media without permission. I checked again shortly after sending the email and the photo had been deleted. But I've still had no reply to my email. 

I'm debating whether to take it further now - because I think the response is inadequate (and rude!) i.e. they should have replied to me, and also I don't feel satisfied yet that they see what the problem was or that they won't do some other inappropriate thing.

Am I making a big deal out of nothing?