Jobs and Stuff

[rhythmaning]

It occurred to me that I had been quiet about my job recently, whilst happily dispensing advice to others about their jobs; so it felt about time I wrote an update as to where things currently stand.

In case you missed it (and it was kind of hidden away if you didn’t know me too well), I took voluntary redundancy a couple of months ago, which means that on Wednesday, I shall leave my job for the last time… Well, I have to pop back two and a half weeks later to hand in my pass, my phone and stuff like that, but basically, I am away from Wednesday.

When I first accepted the offer of redundancy – which, though slightly surreal at the time (you can read it here – sorry, it’s friends-locked), took me virtually no time to decide to accept when some very basic questions were answered; I had been half-heartedly looking for another job, anyway, and here they were paying me to go away – well, I reckoned I needed to find another job pronto, and set about trying to find one that I enjoyed, in an organisation I believed in and whose values matched mine. That shouldn’t take me long, then…

I went through some career counselling – which was very useful, since it helped me clarify what I was after and what the options were. This was quite an intense process – I am not so good at sitting down and navel gazing. Well, not if it involves me actually doing anything, too.

What I was told is that there are several ways to get a job: you can apply direct to companies speculatively (not a high success rate); you can answer adverts (a bit better, since you know they are after someone; but also, highly competitive, since everyone can answer the same ads that you can); and you can network, talking to a lot of people who may become advocates – and may know someone who knows someone who is looking for someone just like you. Apparently, two thirds of jobs go by word of mouth – the figures don’t sound right to me, but still – a lot of jobs go by word of mouth, without ever being advertised.

So I started talking to people I know – networking. I found this quite hard work – despite the fact that I was talking to people I knew. It doesn’t come easy, putting yourself out there. Everyone has been helpful – no one has said they didn’t want to meet me, and I have had some really interesting conversations; everyone has had advice and ideas.

During this time – more or less for the last two months – I haven’t been required to do a great deal of work at work; I had to finish off the projects I was working on, and I have had a couple of other small pieces of work to complete, but basically my time was my own. I find it interesting that I have still chosen to go into the office on most days – unless I had a reason to be elsewhere, I would go to work, despite the fact that once I was there I have been focusing on my job search; I clearly need the order that this brings, the routine of going to work.

But I have also really enjoyed the freedom, the lack of pressure, and my choices have moved down the spectrum from full time employment to parttime or contract work to maybe even per diem consultancy.

There is of course a contradiction here: several of the people I have spoken with who do this kind of work – who make their money this way – have said how busy they are, how tired they are, how they can’t take a break because they have to meet their clients’ needs. So maybe contract work would give me the freedom I have got used to (with no real impact on my standard of living – the rates people seem to be able to command are more or less double my salary – the quid pro quo being that you have only one month’s notice, no pension and bugger all employment rights. Though I may be wrong about that last one – I’ll have to check!).

What I do find interesting is that I have moved from one position – that I needed a full time, permanent job – to another, a more flexible, portfolio worker position.

I also don’t really feel any pressure to go out and get contracts – I want to take a break, though I shall check out a couple of more agencies (someone who uses contractors a lot in my current firm – a different department – recommended some agencies).

This also says some interesting things about how I view my working life – my career perhaps. frankie_ecap was digging at this in some questions she posed in a meme a couple of months ago - you can read it here.

I have had a curious career – I was headed down an academic route in the mid 1980s, when Thatcher was strangling the universities; and boredom (I was doing very similar work in my short term post-doc contract as I had done in my PhD), lack of money, lack of opportunities and a whole load of negative role models – people I really didn’t want to become – made me decide to change direction.

On the back of a stint temping in the City – this was the time of the Big Bang – I decided to through my hat into the ring with Mammon and become an accountant. This wasn’t such a big shift – I had done lots of stats and stuff in my PhD, and was pretty numerate. I did pretty well, too – I sailed through the exams (more or less…), I enjoyed auditing (I am deeply curious, and I like understanding how things – systems, companies, people – work); I even find tax moderately amusing.

Once I had qualified, I knew I didn’t want to stay in practice – people in practice became client managers rather than accountants, and that wasn’t really my bag. When I moved on, I turned down a couple of jobs and went with the one that sounded “sexy” – it had a lot of travel – and paid most.

I quickly learnt that

• travel is overrated, makes you knackered and should be avoided if at all possible


• money doesn’t always help

The firm was badly run – I was there for four years, and during that time I had six different line managers; the head office, where I worked was moved to Brussels on a whim (well, to help the MD’s tax bill) and moved back to London a year later when he was moved sideways. (I actually did very well out of my move to Brussels – it spanned tax years and worked out excellently.) Brussels was a curious place – I wouldn’t advise living there (Antwerp is much more vital, and is commuting distance) – but it did make me realise how fed up with London I had become; so when I was shipped back to the UK, I decided to move back to Edinburgh, where I had done my PhD.

In Edinburgh, I worked on a big change management programme; it had been my intention to do that for a couple of years to get experience and then move back into the finance function. Instead, I was asked to work on a programme associated with the change we had implemented; and it seemed interesting, so I did. It was brilliant: a small self-managed team of four or five, making stuff up as we went along. We were working with people at all levels in the organisation, and having a direct effect on staff in the front line. It made me work in a completely different way, using skills I didn’t even know I had; and I found it really, really exciting.

Occasionally, I would think I ought to resurrect Plan B and move back into accountancy; but though I went for a few jobs over perhaps four years, I didn’t get any of them – which I always believed was frankly because I didn’t really want them: I was having too much fun. And frankly, I felt really lucky – it was interesting, exciting and I was working with a great bunch of people.

The team was merged with another, and we found ourselves working in Human Resources (it did kind of make sense. Kind of – though none of us really felt or feel like HR people). The team was split up – though six years on, we still get together – and our skills used in different ways. I was used to programme manage various training programmes; and so I ended up in Learning.

Generally, I have been lucky: I like working on projects – the issues are different, the people are different, and I like managing my own time and work. I have worked with some great people – I spent most of last year working with frankie_ecap and secretly_evil, which was a wonderful, challenging experience – just working with people like that was exciting.

But it is true that for the last few years, my career has drifted: I have lacked direction, and found the balance for that in other things – enrichment from my marriage, intellectual challenge from a parttime MBA (this means I now have a mean Scrabble hand of letters after my name!), physical challenge from other outside interests.

Generally, I have been able to interesting work; but it really wasn’t clear where I was going in the organisation, so when I was offered redundancy, it seemed to make a lot of sense to take it, to grasp it.

Which is where we came in. I leave in what is now two days – it is Monday, I go on Wednesday (though the guy who made all the arrangements seems to have forgotten this – “I’ll see you on Thursday,” he said. I don’t think so). I am not certain what I will do, and much to my surprise it doesn’t worry me. I am sure it will be interesting!

Comments

[nicnac.livejournal.com]

Enjoy your freedom! It all sounds wonderfully positive, and I have no doubt at all that you'll find something to do that you enjoy.

[itchyfidget.livejournal.com]

Apologies for hijacking rhythmaning's journal, but was it you who I was having a conversation about hats with, a while back? I found that grey bucket hat I thought I'd got rid of - do you want it? :)

[nicnac.livejournal.com]

Yep that was me. That would be great, if you're sure you want to part with it. Could you mail me on nicnac at gmail dot com to discuss?