Kelric wrote:They should just hire me and figure out what they want me to do afterward.
You aren't concerned that you'd prove to be a mailroom prodigy and deemed to valuable to be moved elsewhere?
As long as they're paying me! Almost any job I've been looking at that I've heard back on is a decrease from where I was at John Hancock. I aggressively pursued roles and salary increases during my first four years there and upped my salary by about $11k in that time. Over the last three years I've been more complacent in that regard as I settled into marriage and parenthood, even though I took on more work responsibilities.
Right now it seems I'm either overqualified and historically overpaid for what I'm applying for, or way under-qualified and slightly underpaid.
I do have a query for the Hivemind: Let's say that I get a job offer later this month and they want me to start on November 6th. My daughter is scheduled to be born via C-section on November 28th (the Tuesday after Thanksgiving). The company I'm getting a lot of interest back from provides 3 weeks of parental leave but does not specify in their public information whether you have to vest into that time or not. (And this pisses me off to no end, as John Hancock was going to give me 3 MONTHS of leave! As my spouse suffered from serious postpartum depression after our first daughter when I only had 3 weeks off due to using all of my vacation and personal time then, I was really looking forward to the time with the family this time around.) If HR calls and offers me the position I feel that I have to disclose the impending birth as I will need some sort of time off arrangement. How should I approach this?
That stuff is always negotiable. I would be frank about your situation and let them know what you are looking for. I don't think your request is unreasonable and if they want you I wouldn't think it'd be a major hurdle.
Well, yes, I need to say my daughter is going to be born. I'm taking some time no matter what, but as to how much and when and how it impacts everything else....
Zaxxon wrote:That stuff is always negotiable. I would be frank about your situation and let them know what you are looking for. I don't think your request is unreasonable and if they want you I wouldn't think it'd be a major hurdle.
I'd take it one step further and make accepting the job contingent on either getting the time off or a later start date. Your family comes first and if the company won't accept that then you don't want to work there. If they won't play ball, keep looking. There are more jobs than qualified people out there.
My wife quit her previous job because maternity leave didn't kick in until after a year -- which would have been just about 3 months after the baby was born. Without that incentive, she saw little point working beyond the point where it was comfortable for her to do so (at around 7 months) and quit.
It's not a good situation to be in though. As a manager, I think I'd be pissed if someone didn't tell me before they were hired and suddenly I have to scramble to cover for an extended absence. However, I also have to admit that when weighing the pros and cons of candidates, knowing one was going to take a leave a month after starting would be a significant check mark in the "cons" column. It may or may not be a deal breaker though, it would still depend on the overall strengths and weaknesses of candidates under consideration.
Zaxxon wrote:That stuff is always negotiable. I would be frank about your situation and let them know what you are looking for. I don't think your request is unreasonable and if they want you I wouldn't think it'd be a major hurdle.
I'd take it one step further and make accepting the job contingent on either getting the time off or a later start date. Your family comes first and if the company won't accept that then you don't want to work there. If they won't play ball, keep looking. There are more jobs than qualified people out there.
To be clear, this is what I meant. Jeff's later point about it being a con when weighing candidates is true, but I would want to be up-front about my plans. And if they want you, they should be willing to work with you on a reasonable request.
Well the discussion today was about a role opening up in January. She did say that I was competing against a new field of candidates even though she was bringing me in specifically, so I guess we'll see. I'm hoping they want to get it locked down sooner rather than later as an offer on 11/1 to start 1/2 is better for me than an offer on 12/15. My severance runs through early December so I can float a few weeks without a paycheck, but it is getting close to getting nervous time.....
Since the job isn't available until next year I didn't even mention the personal stuff. No point, really.
Kelric wrote: ↑Tue Oct 17, 2017 11:59 pm
My severance runs through early December so I can float a few weeks without a paycheck, but it is getting close to getting nervous time.....
MA has some of the most generous unemployment bennies in the nation, and they aren't reduced by severance packages. Impressions gave me 6 months' pay when they laid me off and I was able to collect unemployment at the same time. During those six months I pocketed more money than I've ever made in my life.
Granted, the rules might have changed in the 15 years since then, but you should look into getting that ball rolling. Worst case (best case) scenario is you invoke benefits that you won't actually need to collect. Use them if you can, because you paid for them. Unemployment is insurance, not welfare.
Kelric wrote: ↑Wed Oct 18, 2017 11:29 am
I was planning on filing after my severance ran out. Wasn't aware that they may be able to overlap. Guess I'll look into that further.
Don't wait - there is a delay before you can start collecting (or at least there is in my state).
Kelric wrote: ↑Wed Oct 18, 2017 11:29 am
I was planning on filing after my severance ran out. Wasn't aware that they may be able to overlap. Guess I'll look into that further.
Don't wait - there is a delay before you can start collecting (or at least there is in my state).
Yeah, worst- (best-) case scenario is you start a job before your bennies kick in and you have to cancel them. You should get that pipeline flowing ASAP because the state moves slowly. You and your employers have been paying into the DUA for as long as you've been working, so don't feel slimy about cashing in.
I got an e-mail this evening apparently from the HR director of a Texas-based company that creates all-in-one software for insurance agencies. The company is definitely legit and some research on her seems legit as well, but while my LinkedIn profile is set to allow recruiters to find me this e-mail is completely out of the blue and just says: "I wanted to see what your availability is for a 20 minute phone interview? Also, what are your salary requirements? Regards," and then has her signature on there. The e-mail title says it is for a business intelligence analyst role, but I have definitely not applied to anything in Texas. I suppose some keywords from my history lend themselves to a BI position, but getting a cold call is a first and is surprising for me. Thoughts?
Returning a phone call is low effort, probably the lowest effort thing you can do. If it opens up a remote work opportunity or a company offering to relocate you to a zero-income tax state, what does it hurt to hear her out? You can always tell her that you’re not interested in what she has to offer.
I agree that it's worth a phone call. You're unemployed; what else have you got to do with your time?
Since they are obviously more interested in you than you are in them, be assertive: Ask right up front if this requires relocating, how much it pays, if it has full benefits, etc. Make sure it meets your demands before you switch into the supplicant role. And figure out what your demands are before you have that conversation.
Is she an in-house HR person, or a recruiter who is just using this job as an opening to sound you out?
Kraken wrote: ↑Wed Oct 25, 2017 10:01 pmYou're unemployed; what else have you got to do with your time?
I have a 120 year old house, a 2 year old daughter, a taste for good beer, and an extensive Lego collection that needs sorting.
After a lifetime of having conventional jobs, it surprised me how busy I am without one. I only work for money maybe 15 hours a week now, yet my days are as full as someone who works 40. The rest of my time is spent doing stuff that matters and stuff that I enjoy. When I finally get there, retirement is going to suit me just fine. 1,994 days, 22 hours, and 13 minutes to go.
I was semi-retired/unemployed by choice in my early 20s (back when most of you enjoyed making fun of me for it) and while that time was mostly taken up with gaming and trying to get laid, I can definitely see how my time would be spent in an actual retirement in the future (barring Trumpocalypse). Reading, fixing house things, parenting/grand-parenting, beer, gardening. Work doesn't give me purpose, it just pays the bills.
Unless you're a potential employer - then I love working! It completely balances my personal life! Work/life balance! Long live capitalism!
So the call from the TX company was a dud - either the guy with my name in Texas who applied for the job put the wrong e-mail in, or Google sent it to me instead of him (which happens, as I have my(DOT)name@gmail(DOT)com and I get a lot of myname@gmail(DOT)com e-mails), or the HR director sent it to my.name instead of myname. Oddly enough, I have a similar background and skillset but he's about twenty years further along the career path than me.
I also learned that the layoffs at my old company are starting up again, which is unusual for them. A work friend's entire risk management team was cut at the end of last week with no warning - people were still submitting reports to them as of Friday afternoon. I'm always curious as to how companies try to deal with the fallout when whole areas disappear at once. In my case they just took the work the 6-8 of us were doing and either stopped it altogether or shifted responsibilities elsewhere in our teams, but this is an entire department being vaporized.
I thought gmail addresses didn’t look at the dots prior to the @ symbol. So Kelric.varchilde@g... and k.e.l.r.i.c.v.a.r.c.h.i.l.d.e@g... were equivalent.
Best luck with the job hunt.
"Better to talk to people than communicate via tweet." — Elontra
I don't know. I grabbed this e-mail address the first day Gmail was openly available. I get a lot of stuff for myname@, but I seem to properly receive everything for my.name@ that is meant to come to me.
Edit - The internet says you're right, Meal. So that leads me to wonder - do I technically have myname@ as well, and all of these other guys just think that they do? Or do they exist as two separate addresses that lead to one spot?
The Meal wrote: ↑Tue Oct 31, 2017 8:07 am
I thought gmail addresses didn’t look at the dots prior to the @ symbol. So Kelric.varchilde@g... and k.e.l.r.i.c.v.a.r.c.h.i.l.d.e@g... were equivalent.
Kelric wrote: ↑Tue Oct 31, 2017 9:45 am
I don't know. I grabbed this e-mail address the first day Gmail was openly available. I get a lot of stuff for myname@, but I seem to properly receive everything for my.name@ that is meant to come to me.
Edit - The internet says you're right, Meal. So that leads me to wonder - do I technically have myname@ as well, and all of these other guys just think that they do? Or do they exist as two separate addresses that lead to one spot?
There is only one address. Gmail ignores the dots. So kelric.v parses through as kelricv. As does kelr.icv, etc.
This goes when emailing or creating an account. If you registered kelric.v, you actually registered kelricv.
" Hey OP, listen to my advice alright." -Tha General "No scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer." -Stigler's Law of Eponymy, discovered by Robert K. Merton MYT
The Meal wrote: ↑Tue Oct 31, 2017 8:07 am
I thought gmail addresses didn’t look at the dots prior to the @ symbol. So Kelric.varchilde@g... and k.e.l.r.i.c.v.a.r.c.h.i.l.d.e@g... were equivalent.
DOTS MATTER: Microsoft Outlook, Yahoo Mail, Apple iCloud
DOTS DON’T MATTER: Gmail, Facebook
DOTS STRICTLY PROHIBITED: Twitter
It’s worth noting that several services, including some of the dot adherents, do offer other special characters for those intent on adding semantically null symbols (or even whole words) to their handles. For instance, Gmail will ignore a plus sign and anything that follows, so that Homer Simpson could use homerjsimpson+spam@gmail.com to filter out unwanted senders.
Kelric wrote: ↑Tue Oct 31, 2017 9:45 am
I don't know. I grabbed this e-mail address the first day Gmail was openly available. I get a lot of stuff for myname@, but I seem to properly receive everything for my.name@ that is meant to come to me.
Edit - The internet says you're right, Meal. So that leads me to wonder - do I technically have myname@ as well, and all of these other guys just think that they do? Or do they exist as two separate addresses that lead to one spot?
There is only one address. Gmail ignores the dots. So kelric.v parses through as kelricv. As does kelr.icv, etc.
This goes when emailing or creating an account. If you registered kelric.v, you actually registered kelricv.
So all of those other guys are probably putting in kelricv despite probably being kelricv1 or kelv. Interesting.
Kelric wrote: ↑Tue Oct 17, 2017 11:59 pm
Well the discussion today was about a role opening up in January. She did say that I was competing against a new field of candidates even though she was bringing me in specifically, so I guess we'll see. I'm hoping they want to get it locked down sooner rather than later as an offer on 11/1 to start 1/2 is better for me than an offer on 12/15. My severance runs through early December so I can float a few weeks without a paycheck, but it is getting close to getting nervous time.....
Since the job isn't available until next year I didn't even mention the personal stuff. No point, really.
Still haven't heard anything, but the job is still listed as open on my HR profile (but has been off the website for a week or so). Since it has been a month since the interview, should I reach out to HR or just sit back and wait?
Still nothing, and no interviews anywhere for about six weeks. Tweaked my resume during that period and still didn't get any bites. Doesn't matter if I am way overqualified for the position, if it is similar to my previous role but in a different field, or something that would be a sensible next step up - nobody is talking to me. It has been several weeks since my last phone interview as well. I've almost burned through my savings and now we're a family of 4 instead of 3, so the last little bit will go quicker. Unemployment covers the mortgage, the car insurance, and utilities but that is it. No food, no medical bills, no car repairs (need at least $6k of work plus new tires), gas, daycare, or all of the little things being a homeowner entails. I think I can stretch us to March, but after that I'll be tapping into my retirement. My wife has started looking for jobs but with a 3.5 week old baby that'd be tough for us: she'd need to earn enough to pay for both kids in daycare and for her student loans which would come due as she wouldn't be a student on leave anymore. Then you get into insurance - at the moment her and the girls are on MassHealth but if her new role offered health insurance she would have to take it. We'd most likely be PAYING money for her to go to work.
If nothing comes up by mid-January for me I'll start making the retail / food service rounds, which will most likely mean needing two jobs. Sigh.
Would you be able to uproot and move back to greater Boston if the money was good? I know it would be hugely disruptive, but the job market here is really tight thanks to Trump's economic brilliance.
Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Sat Dec 23, 2017 12:42 am
Federal student loans can be deferred during periods of unemployment and low wages. If they're private student loans, I got nothing.
And if you do this the rape you on the interest rate. My wife and I had to defer her loans for a year due to both of us being unemployed or under employed in sequence and the entire next year we paid as usual, NONE of the principle was paid down, it was all interest.
If I had to do it over I'd quite paying entirely and fake our own deaths.
Kraken wrote: ↑Sat Dec 23, 2017 3:10 am
Would you be able to uproot and move back to greater Boston if the money was good? I know it would be hugely disruptive, but the job market here is really tight thanks to Trump's economic brilliance.
In theory, yes. We've got the house here that could either get sold or rented (but we just redid the kitchen!). We could live down the Cape for free and I could commute 90 minutes each way, or we get a 2/3 bedroom apartment somewhere. The problem with the apartment is that rent will basically be a mortgage payment all over again. We would not be able to afford a house back in eastern MA for a LONG time unless my salary was around $70k, which I don't see happening.
Hopefully the new year will turn up new leads. Few places have the interest in hiring until January.
With the new child safely arrived, that impediment to finding work is no longer an issue. If it comes up, you can spin it as a blessing in disguise to get the family all squared away so you can face new challenges.
"If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts." - Albert Einstein "I don't stand by anything." - Trump “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.” - John Stuart Mill, Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St Andrews, 2/1/1867 “It is the impractical things in this tumultuous hell-scape of a world that matter most. A book, a name, chicken soup. They help us remember that, even in our darkest hour, life is still to be savored.” - Poe, Altered Carbon
Kraken wrote: ↑Sat Dec 23, 2017 3:10 am
Would you be able to uproot and move back to greater Boston if the money was good? I know it would be hugely disruptive, but the job market here is really tight thanks to Trump's economic brilliance.
In theory, yes. We've got the house here that could either get sold or rented (but we just redid the kitchen!). We could live down the Cape for free and I could commute 90 minutes each way, or we get a 2/3 bedroom apartment somewhere. The problem with the apartment is that rent will basically be a mortgage payment all over again. We would not be able to afford a house back in eastern MA for a LONG time unless my salary was around $70k, which I don't see happening.
You can live in my unfinished cellar for $100 per month, but no kids allowed and you can't come upstairs except to scoop the litter box once a day. On the plus side, private bulkhead entrance and walk to the T!
"If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts." - Albert Einstein "I don't stand by anything." - Trump “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.” - John Stuart Mill, Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St Andrews, 2/1/1867 “It is the impractical things in this tumultuous hell-scape of a world that matter most. A book, a name, chicken soup. They help us remember that, even in our darkest hour, life is still to be savored.” - Poe, Altered Carbon
Still nothing. Two more interviews at the beginning of the year but turned down for both roles. I'm barely getting callbacks from the largest employer in the area despite having an insurance/financial operations skill set that lines up perfectly with what they do, and I've applied for a wide range of positions there over these last five months. Another employer had an opening in Long Term Care Insurance, which is what I've done for the last seven years, and they didn't even reach out for a phone interview.
I've had to cash out my pension (which is fine - I could get like $28 a month after retirement or $10k now) and am a few months away from tapping into my retirement accounts. Sigh.
Is there a way to network with employees from these companies to have them put your resume in front of the hiring manager? Toastmasters is a good way to network with people.
"The world is suffering more today from the good people who want to mind other men's business than it is from the bad people who are willing to let everybody look after their own individual affairs." - Clarence Darrow
Moliere wrote: ↑Tue Feb 13, 2018 11:41 am
Is there a way to network with employees from these companies to have them put your resume in front of the hiring manager? Toastmasters is a good way to network with people.
