Next Wednesday I go back to work. Twelve hours a day, 6 AM to 6 PM, four days out of every eight. My first shift is Wednesday through Saturday, then Thursday through Sunday, then Friday through Monday, and so on. Overtime is available, sometimes mandatory. All at an hourly rate that works out to 2/3 of my effective hourly rate in my old salaried job. (I retain my 15 years of seniority and accrued benefits, though, which is really good news.)
This isn't where it ends. I will continue my search for a new, better job. But I have learned a few things in the past five months.
First of all, this area is very deficient when it comes to good, high-paying jobs other than nursing. And when I say "this area" I mean a region within 40 miles of Nanticoke, about the most reasonable commute you can expect to make given our terrain and climate. This is a very depressing realization, as I have made a commitment to stay in this area. There is some industry here, but most facilities are fully-staffed and are not looking for skilled employees. Options seem to be: leave the area, get into nursing, commute over 40 miles to get to a better job, or bring new industries and businesses into this area. Maybe I'll try to rally support for option 4.
Secondly, job hunting sucks. The new paradigm, as I have discussed before, is for employers to simply ignore any applications sent to them. There is no real way of knowing if you have been rejected or if your résumé has been put in a file for later reference. In many cases, you don't even know if it was received, or having been received, if it was read. If it was received by Human Resources, odds are no one who laid eyes on it was capable of understanding anything even mildly technical; but more likely no human actually laid eyes on it, and it was simply scanned by a computer looking for key words and phrases.
The new approach that I've been coached on had similar results. By directly contacting key personnel in manufacturing I should have, in theory, been able to leapfrog over the HR gatekeepers. But in some cases my carefully collected contact information has turned out to be wrong; in others, it has been impossible to contact the people directly, and those that I have contacted have pushed me aside as they would a salesman or a fly-by-night consultant. The one person with whom I had a "successful" contact essentially told me there was no hope of me getting a job with his company, because they outsource all their Statistical Process Control and Operations Management to a third party company. At least I got the name of that third party company from him, and put in an application there, too.
Thirdly, having all the time in the world isn't as useful as you might think. Maybe some people would have made the most of these past five months; I didn't. Sure, I finished most of my large-scale home projects, and did a lot of landscaping work, too, but there are large stretches of time that are essentially unaccounted for. I think those are the days I spent job-hunting full-time, which in retrospect feels like a waste of time.
Fourth, most job-hunting services are also, as far as I can tell, a waste of time. I submitted my résumé to Pennsylvania CareerLink in the beginning of April, and in that time it has been viewed zero times. I attended a ton of classes, both through CareerLink and elsewhere, and have signed up with every online job site I could find. The result? Not a hell of a lot. For the most part I've just gotten job scam e-mails. The one bit of advice I received that has been helpful was something I was told in my first class: "You're going to search the newspapers, search online ads, contact companies, do all these things, but in the end most of you are going to find jobs through a friend." And it's true. It's true for my friend that I was taking the classes with, and in my case, my job is courtesy of my old employer - not quite the same as a friend, but close enough.
So starting next Wednesday, I might not be able to keep up the post-a-day schedule. My workday life will be: up at 3:30 AM, out of the house by 4:45 AM, begin work at 6:00 AM, leave work at 6:00 PM, get home by 7:00 PM, in bed by 9:00 PM. Not much time there for blogging or catching up on blogs (or anything else, really), but I'll see what I can do.
The narcissistic primarily autobiographical blog of the pseudonymous d.b. echo
Well, it's better than nothing. Good luck.
ReplyDeleteIn my last three job searches, I was:
1. Hired by responding to a classified ad by a rapidly growing company.
2. Contacted an editorial director directly (after applying to a Monster ad and being ignored), then getting all the contacts I knew between us (there were two) to clinch the deal.
3. The guy who hired me at Step 1 started his own company, and I called him up one day and got a job. No resume, no cover letter, nothing. But I had stayed in contact with him after he left Company 1.
At this stage in your career, former co-workers, your own industry contacts, friends and family is what matters most.
Or: You need to find a rapidly growing company, and that may mean moving.
Or: You need to make a job, that is, you don't apply for an existing position, you look for ways to improve an existing company's business and present a proposal.
But you did all right here. Sounds like you had some fun, judging by some of these entries. And as you said, you can still continue looking.
It may not seem gratifying, but 2/3 of your old rate is better than 0/3 of your old rate. Good luck going back to work.
ReplyDeleteIncome is good, even it's not as much as you used to have. The schedule is great, I worked something similar when I was younger.
ReplyDelete