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  • How long do you wait for the perfect dream job to come along?

    How long do you wait for the perfect dream job to come along?

    I’ve found a new hobby.  And nerdy as it sounds, that hobby is writing cover letters. 

    Job hunting is so much easier when you have a passion for an industry. Helping T do cover letters is super enjoyable because it’s a breeze to communicate that – and those letters are getting responses, because that passion shines through and stands out.

    Still, time has flown; it’s been about a month already with no solid leads. Obviously it’d be great if he could score a dream job doing what he was doing, now that he’s had a taste of it … but with limited experience, that’s a long shot.

    How long, then, do you hold out for the ideal job? Money is money and at some point bringing in an income becomes top priority. (You can always keep looking, and they do say a lot of employers prefer to hire people who already have jobs…) And I think we’re shifting into that mode now.

    One option would be to keep going down the sales path – there’s never any shortage of sales jobs out there, many of which are happy to train people up. If you can sell, you’ve got a pretty versatile skill that’ll never go out of demand, and your earning potential is massive. But he rocked car sales because he loves cars, and it’s doubtful that he’ll find the same level of a) enjoyment and therefore b) success selling insurance or water coolers or whatever.

    The other obvious path is to look for something else in the auto industry. Now that T’s found an area he really likes, it’s a no-brainer. Even if it doesn’t pay a ton, as long as it pays enough, is steady, not too physically taxing, and doesn’t trigger Sunday night blues – that’s pretty good in my books. We’ve been doing this to some extent but it’s probably time to really ramp that up and expand the search.

    This is where I think I need to play cheerleader a little. Sometimes he’s a bit narrow-minded about his skillset and will write off postings because he doesn’t fit all the criteria; I find myself having to persuade him that his experience applies just fine to roles that don’t bear the exact same title or description, and that there’s nothing to lose by applying for jobs that are a little bit of a stretch if you don’t tick every single box. (This is no time to fall prey to impostor syndrome…)

    There’s something really exciting about all the potential, all the opportunity that comes with the job hunt – imagining yourself doing various jobs that sound particularly awesome and what your future might look like. But conversely, it’s also a bit depressing seeing how mundane and poorly paid many jobs out there are – it makes me feel really privileged to be able to do work I enjoy that I am decently compensated for.

    How long would you keep hunting for the dream job? On a scale of 1-10, how perfect is your job?

  • I love my job because…

    Why I love my job

    It’s hard to believe sometimes when you’re entrenched in the digital world, but not everyone hates their job and wants to quit.

    So, inspired by KK, here’s what I love about my job:

    I actually get to do what I love all day – write and edit. If I were freelance I would have to spend the majority of my time marketing. Ugh. 

    (I can’t lie – when full-time freelancers I know post links to their projects, I click out of interest, and some of the work they do makes me wince. I get to write about  inspiring people and companies all day; the thought of doing marketing copy about curtains and joinery makes me die a little inside, even if that stuff commands a higher hourly rate. Of course, when you’re at the top of your game you get a lot more choice – I’m sure superstar designer Jessica Hische has her pick of projects – but that’s not the reality for most.)

    I get to work autonomously. My days are mostly self-directed, which is freaking sweet. I always forget how rare this is when I talk to people who work at other organisations…

    I work with cool people and in a reasonably nice environment. It ain’t Google or Facebook, but it’s not an underground bunker (as a colleague essentially described her former TV workplace).

    I have flexibility. I occasionally work from home and I don’t have anyone breathing down my neck; we’re trusted to get the job done and things like the odd weekday appointment would not be a drama at all. I’m also not totally chained to my computer – I have occasion to get out of the office and mix things up.

    I get a lot of random freebies. I’m not gonna lie, it’s a nice perk. Event invites, free lunches, vouchers, and all kinds of products.

    I don’t suffer a terrible commute, nightmare coworkers or feeling stuck. (A lack of room to move up seems to be a common complaint out there, but in my field you don’t really move up, you just move around.) Really, my only complaint might be a lack of resourcing – but it’s hard to find someone who isn’t stretched these days. Oh, and you know, a little more money would never go amiss 🙂

    I’ve been really fortunate so far despite graduating right into the GFC. Steadily employed, and in jobs that I like, to boot.

    It’s easy to forget this – you do get complacent with anything good in life – but overall, I am stupidly lucky. With T on the job hunt, I’m extra aware of that right now.

  • Women’s Money Week: Overcoming impostor syndrome – how a virtual stranger opened my eyes to my real worth

    How I learned my true professional worth

    One of my fears about taking half of 2013 off to travel was that my fill-in at work would totally outshine me.

    Fortunately it did the opposite – highlighting how much I juggle every day and how well I do it. It wasn’t just the people I work with every day who noticed but people externally who noticed the difference. That really struck home for me when I was chatting to someone – a person I don’t have much personal, frequent contact with but really respect – who went as far as to say our team had been obviously “screwed” in my absence.

    His validation, as an outsider, was the key to altering how I see myself. That marked a real turning point for me.

    I’ve always had a strange thing about self-confidence.  I love what I write, at least until I hand it over, at which point I immediately start to hate it. Until very recently, I couldn’t ever stand to read my own work once published. I’ve always gotten good feedback about my work, but my own self-belief has always been patchy. There has never been a solid foundation underpinning it. Hello impostor syndrome!

    This is only my second full-time job (although I have learned so very, very much over the past couple years) and I’ve basically always been the most junior on the team. I’m  naturally reserved, I’m quiet in meetings not just because of shyness but because I don’t feel I have anything to contribute.

    But I’m firmly mid-20s now. I’m not necessarily always the junior person, or even if I am, I now do increasingly have things to contribute. It’s expected of me – and I shouldn’t hold myself back because of how I feel inside. It’s time to adjust this mental perception I hold about who I am. I’m not 18 and clueless anymore.

    I look older than I am, which I think has helped people take me seriously up till now. And I need to take myself seriously too, and not sell myself short.

    At what point did you realise you had outgrown the ‘junior’ card and couldn’t play it anymore? Have you ever had a random incident change how you perceived yourself and your professional worth?

  • Women’s Money Week: Career progression and climbing the ladder

    This post is part of Women’s Money Week 2014.

    There are companies that reward talent, and there are some where it’s more or less impossible to move up.

    Companies where feedback is given and an active interest taken in career progression, and companies where people wake up one day and realise they’ve been doing the same thing for 5 or 10 years.

    It can also depend on structure. In some places, the number and type of roles is more or less fixed. Creating new positions is unheard of within the hierarchy and the kinds of titles and duties available are strictly limited, unless somebody vacates their spot and a specific post opens up.

    A few years ago, T found himself in one of these. It started off well; he had a good relationship with the boss, who promised opportunities for advancement. (Sponsors, not mentors, are your champions within an organisation – I now realise my boss at my first job was essentially a sponsor for me and was key to my moving up.) Initially, he was being groomed to fill a position that the incumbent was retiring from. However, when it came up eventually, it was made clear they’d rather he remain where he was.

    It was probably a mix of factors: he was too good at what he did, and too valuable to lose there; the fact that he’s a bit rough around the edges, so not necessarily preferred management material; and that the company just wasn’t big on promoting – most workers stayed where they were and other top performers went elsewhere in order to advance.

    In the end, we decided to go travelling for awhile and that was the impetus for him to hang on until we left. If we hadn’t, I imagine he would have started job hunting a lot earlier.

    What, in your opinion, are the characteristics of a company that encourages growth and promotes talent? How do you spot them?

  • What Cards Against Humanity teaches us about our careers

    3 career lessons from Cards Against Humanity

    Last week I played Cards Against Humanity for the first time with friends (oh, the dark hilarity). Surprisingly, the game also reminded me of a few important career lessons…

    Excellence always speaks for itself

    There are some cards that everyone immediately recognises as being head and shoulders above the rest awesome. I won’t list any here, because they’ll probably vary a little depending on the crowd of people, but trust me, you’ll know them when they’re played.

    Just like in real life, truly great work speaks for itself.

    But self-promotion is important

    I’m not sure if this is how we’re actually meant to play, but our first game (and only game so far, though I hope that won’t be true for long!) was marked by a healthy dose of campaigning. I’m talking back-and-forth arguments over certain cards and their merit in the context of that particular round. Now, I’m not saying that players always argued in favour of their own answers, because  – as per point number one – excellence always stands out in the crowd.  But it definitely happened a lot.

    In the workplace, being a rockstar will get you noticed, but it helps to have some PR behind that. Help yourself out and learn to self-promote – subtly, that is.

    And finally, you can’t control absolutely everything

    As amazing as the ‘being a fucking sorcerer’ card is, you can never count your chickens before they hatch. Every round is decided by a different card ‘czar’ and their own biases and preferences might not mesh with your sense of humour. Ultimately, your fate is out of your hands.

    No matter how well you know your boss, client, etc, people can surprise you at any time. Even master manipulator Frank Underwood (a different type of Cards reference there…) sometimes gets blindsided.

    Have you played Cards Against Humanity? How much do you love it?!

  • Surviving a layoff: 2009 vs 2014

     

    Wow. It’s been five years since the dark days of that first layoff. I looked back in my archives to check the dates, and promptly got depressed reading the posts I wrote back then (and embarrassed at my typos etc – I should really fix them up).

    But things are very, very different today than they were back then. Let’s see:

    We have enough to live off

    Today, I’m working full time and can support both of us for now. In 2009, I was a strung-out, neurotic, hot mess of a final-year student barely holding it together as it was, and definitely not earning enough to support two people. I don’t remember what my savings account looked like back then, but I know the balance was a lot lower than it is today.

    We were blindsided

    Well, not totally – the pessimist in me felt like this was all too easy, too good to be true (and kept holding off blogging about his new job, apparently for good reason). However, emotions aside, realistically, this was a shock.  Sales can be cyclical, though, and much like the ups and downs of life on commission, I was aware that stability might be not guaranteed. And logically, the newbies are usually first to go.

    Back in 2009, T’s hours kept getting cut back and the company was clearly struggling;  in hindsight maybe he should have jumped first, but then again…

    The economy is in a totally different place

    Will 2014 be a rockstar year for NZ? I think that’s a little over-optimistic, but things are looking up overall.

    Back in 2009, it was all turning to shit, so even if T had cut loose of his own accord, it would most likely not have done us any good.

    T is in a different place, too

    While he’s changed industries since 2009 and so doesn’t have, say, another 4-5 years of accumulated relevant experience, he DOES have more experience overall – and more confidence. By the time I got home on the day of reckoning (he waited until that evening to tell me rather than upset me halfway through the workday, bless his heart) he’d already applied to multiple jobs and reached out to various people.

    Back in 2009, he had less work experience, fewer contacts, and was facing a tougher economy. It’s definitely a much better time to be job hunting right now.

    How equipped would you be to deal with a layoff (your own/your partner’s) right now?

    A Life in Balance
  • Friday Five: The business of car sales

    the business of car sales

    By: Ryan

    There must be something in the air. First Krystal, now T. Still, we’ve dealt with layoffs before, and we’ll make it through this one. Whether or not he gets another role in car sales, the below (drafted a little while ago) still stands…

    It’s not everyday your partner announces out of the blue that he wants to work in car sales. If I recall correctly, we were on the road somewhere between San Antonio and Roswell at that moment.

    Unlike me, he’s not the introspective type. My gentle attempts to prod him into thinking critically about the kinds of things he might want out of a job over the past couple years had mostly fallen flat. (Alas, the Do What You Love philosophy has mesmerised, paralysed and flummoxed him – I’ve tried to deprogramme him of it, again with limited success.)

    As it turns out, though, searching for jobs that come with company cars throws up a load of sales jobs, including car sales jobs. In this case, materialism overlapped with practicality. That’s what I call a win.

    Sales is about the last thing in the world I’d ever do, and he’s very much a no-bullshit type – an extrovert, yes, but a people person? Not necessarily. So it never really occurred to me as a viable option.

    Yet it seemed so right. He loves cars. He loves to talk. He was not cut out to sit in an office. He picks things up quickly, and what’s frustrated him about all his previous jobs is that performance was not rewarded – and of course sales is entirely achievement-driven.

    Once he got the basics down, he reckoned a little bit of that old enemy, boredom, was popping up. But more importantly, he was still enjoying it and  called it the best job ever.

    Some random reflections on his first job in car sales:

    One bad thing: it’s normalising car finance in his eyes. “Everyone finances their cars!” he exclaimed to me one evening. Car debt is not something that’s ever fazed him; almost everyone he knows has taken out ridiculous loans for their cars, which I really hate, and it’s not something that needs reinforcing in his mind. On the plus side, he now sees what a terrible thing financing is numbers-wise.

    They work surprisingly long hours. 50-60 hours a week, and commission only (though I’m not sure if this is the norm across dealers in general).

    The profit on individual cars varies hugely.  The cars you see listed for rock-bottom prices in ads are basically loss-leaders, off which salespeople make nothing.

    A lot of the salespeople actually get their shirts tailored. Yup. 

    Sunburn is a real issue! They have sunblock provided and T has gotten to the stage where he reapplies it every couple of hours, but is still getting burnt. Between our enormous ozone hole and his precious Scirish skin that quivers in fear as soon as it comes into the presence of any UV rays, he’s screwed. And he refuses to wear the company’s uniform hat because it looks ridiculous and will put customers off. (Nobody wears it, ever.)

    I’ve always been curious about how the auto industry does in NZ. We have so many tiny indie garages everywhere – is there really enough business for all those mechanics? (I guess so, since we all drive such old cars.) And do people REALLY buy enough cars to keep dealers afloat? Judging by the amount of foot traffic that T reckons they get, yes. And while not all prospects convert to sales, the ratio sounds higher than I would’ve expected – some guys will sell five cars in a single day. The top salespeople make well over the six figures. Hot damn.

  • Oh, to be a white man…

    When you’re trying to break into a new industry, getting past the resume-screeners is vital. Without relevant education or experience, your best bet is to impress the pants off your interviewer – but you can’t charm an employer if you can’t even get to the meeting stage.

    Someone I know I was recently job hunting in a new field, and true enough, the key to getting in was getting the in-person meeting. Phone calls led to a face-to-face; I don’t think a resume was ever involved. They clicked, the company culture turned out to be one where he felt right at home, and a contract was signed.

    The culture, from what I hear, is pretty textbook ‘old boys’ club’. So when he relayed an anecdote recently about accidentally overhearing one manager being dismissive of an interviewee based on ethnicity, I wasn’t surprised. Even if that was meant jokingly (let it be noted that there are a lot of minorities employed there) I think it’s still quite telling.

    Last summer I churned out a ton of content for a client, an HR blog that was about to launch. There were posts about recruiting, posts about job hunting, posts about interviewing, posts about negotiation, posts about career progression … SO many posts. And I would say at least a third referenced Zappos at some point – Zappos of the mythical corporate culture, held up as a shining example of the need for culture fit. Zappos, which offers new hires a cash payout to quit if they don’t feel it’s working out.

    While I absolutely think cultural fit is vital to a harmonious workplace, diversity on staff is also crucial to any progressive and innovative company. There has got to be some kind of balance struck there.

    Coming back to the situation at hand: I am glad my acquaintance got that job, though he’s now moved on.  I don’t doubt that he deserved it. (He’s not the only staffer who was hired with no experience; several others also got their start there the same way.)

    I don’t blame him – at least in this instance – for the privilege he enjoys as a white male (particularly as he hails from the lower class and hasn’t had much else come easily to him in life).

    But I’d hate to think that someone might be dismissed out of hand for no good reason – whether for this role, or other identical roles to be filled, in the past, in the future.

    The system is what it is. As Don Cheadle’s character on House of Lies, Marty Kaan, advises a young black consultant: “We’re here to open wallets, not minds.”  But as to whether staying and playing along makes you complicit …

    Have you been privy to prejudice of any sort in the workplace? Ever leveraged your own privilege, or benefited from it somehow?

  • Contemplating a future in which I work from home

    One of the good things about renting is that it’s affordable for us to live in a fairly central location. We’re two minutes’ walk from a bus stop, two minutes’ drive to a mall and supermarket, and about five minutes from both of our families.

    Buying a house would force us further out, which in turn would mean a longer and more expensive public transport commute for me, and/or necessitate buying a second car – especially if we have kids.

    But a job posting that happened across my Twitter stream recently got me thinking. What if I were able to work remotely, full time?

    It’s not something I ever really thought possible. After all, I don’t want to freelance full time. And my industry is not one that really lends itself to working from home when you have a staff job. But as I move further away from it, the opportunity does open itself up…

    This particular listing wasn’t one I would apply for – at least not at this stage, it’s a bit beyond me. I’m happy where I am and plan to stay put for a while longer. But it’s the kind of thing I might well want to do in a couple of years, either for a corporate or a cool startup … and the startup route could well lend itself to working from home (as all the staff at this one do).

    The next logical question would be “would I enjoy working from home?”

    Well…

    • I enjoy the serendipitous interactions with coworkers I get throughout the day – in just-small-enough doses that I fulfil my need for adult human interaction and get to feel like a competent person, but not enough to overload my introvert’s bucket
    • But god damn, I hate the ‘good morning’ / ‘how are you’ / ‘I’m good, how are you’ / ‘Good thanks’ back and forth

     

    • I love the frequent and spontaneous freebies – cake, pie, cheese, books, skincare, and other goodies – that are often randomly available
    • But I truly hate the interruptions that inevitably come with being in an office environment (an open one, not that I’ve ever worked in anything but)

     

    • I appreciate that it forces me to leave the house, as I have quite strong hermit tendencies
    • But commuting is annoying, especially when it rains

    Ditching the office paradigm doesn’t have to be an either/or, of course. People work from cafes, coworking spaces, etc.

    In all honesty, while face time is valuable in its own right, as someone who deals much better in limited doses of interaction, especially online, I think the benefits of working from home would win out for me.

    I’d just need to force myself to step outside at least every other day and put on real clothes as much as possible.

  • Three career tips we can all learn from

    A wee break from travel talk today….

    The prospect of rejoining the real (working) world this month has me mulling over career, personal development, and other such big picture things.

    Funnily enough, I happened to click into this Billfold interview with a digital analyst, which offers a ton of nuggets that all of us could learn from, regardless of industry. Here’s the three most important points I took away from it:

    Know when to say yes … and when to quit

    She says: “I call it punching above your weight class, and it happens when you keep showing up and enough people like what you do that they keep asking you to do it in more and more senior places. For a company, that’s what you want, because you have someone young and excited to do the work…and you don’t have to pay them much … And the truth of the matter is that if you punch above your weight class they’re never going to promote you to what you’re worth. Because they know they can throw you little bits. They will always get more out of you than you are being compensated for. It’s the way of the world. I’m not saying I have a problem with it. But it got me thinking about what I wanted to do.”

    My takeaway: Say yes. Take on more responsibilities, more projects. Rack up as much experience as you can, and when you can no longer get ahead to where you want to be, move on and parlay that experience into a new and better job.

    The 80/20 rule

    She says: “My theory is that 20% of every job is shit. Not to say that you can only be 80% happy, but you will always have status meetings and timesheets and things that are not fun for you. But if, on four out of five days per week you aren’t doing things like that, that’s pretty good. So I tried to tell myself that on good days—when I started looking for a new job, I said to myself, “What did I do today that made me happy? How can I do that?”

    My takeaway: I firmly believe that even ‘dream jobs’ have their mundanities, and thinking anything else is naive. It’s about overall balance; when you’re miserable more often than not, that’s when you need to reconsider.

    You need a champion – not just a mentor

    She says: “Ten months. I got promoted out of cycle, which was really amazing. My boss led it, and the moral of that story is to find someone who will fight for you. It’s the Sheryl Sandberg thing—you don’t just need mentors; you need champions as well. I had a boss who was getting on people’s cases, saying, “I want to hire this person.” “I want to promote this person.” “I want her to work on these projects. I don’t want her to have to work on these other things.” Chances are you’re not going to get that relationship, but look for it, and look for opportunities to turn a relationship into that sort of relationship. You’ll know it when you see it.”

    My takeaway: Advice is one thing; someone who knows your capabilities, believes in your potential, and will go to bat for you is another. And this is why clicking with your boss is more important than I ever thought. I’ll never forget my first boss, who did exactly this for me, unprompted.