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April 7th, 2006
 | 06:30 am - Unemployment: Day 4: Long and short of it
I believe I mentioned some weeks ago that if I got this job, it was all down to Lanna's work. I'd like to reiterate that point now.
So I got the call right as I was walking into the Career Counseling office. Of course, I was so off balance after the call, I didn't realize I'd walked right, straight past it and took me another 5 minutes to figure out why the only suite I could find was an entirely abandoned.
Anyhow, eventually I noticed the other office suite, the one right next to the doors I came in and walked in, only about 10-15 minutes late. (Which bothered me a lot. My career counselor didn't seem too phased by it.)
Now the program that Widget1 put me on was the economy plan. This was made possible by the beauties of "Harmonization," about which the less said the better. Suffice it to say that at one point I was somewhat bitter about the perceived inadequacies of the plan. She did not tell me the differences between the plans, but I will tell you, because I love you. The primary differences are that on my plan, career counseling consists of a one-day seminar on various aspects of job hunting, and a 1-hour personalized counseling session subsequently. The other plans allow you to take shorter classes on various aspects of job searching, according to your need and get personalized assistance as you need it, by appointment for the term of the service. The idea of sitting in an all day seminar was repugnant on the face, but I was determined to approach it with an open mind (well, relatively) and to take whatever I could away from it. Information is information, and the more of it I have, the better prepared I am for what comes. And even if I don't use everything, there's bound to be at least one new idea that I can walk away with. And I further reasoned that if all else fails, there's always what I mentioned in my March 29th post on the subject, my career counselor is beader.
But like Red Sox pitching, which only looks glutted from a distance, things have a way of working themselves out. Yesterday when I'd spoken to my career counselor (and this time I will name names) Stephanie Daniel, she'd told me it would be a small group. I envisioned two or three people, maybe some group activities like interviewing each other, and looking over each other's resumes, etc.
When I actually arrived (late, did I mention late?), I found the other person had cancelled and it was just me. Stephanie and I easily fell back into the rapport we'd established already and when she asked me how things were, I blurted out my exciting job news. Stephanie is nothing if not adaptable, so she tweaked the program to focus on the following subject areas:
Identifying key strengths and weaknesses.
Putting together an action plan for strengthening the weaknesses.
Entrenching key strengths and personal value add into the resume: Anyone can write, Marci, but what can you do? It's hard to think of things in that way. I assume everyone can do the things I can do, and it's hard to reconcile that with the truth, which is, um, no they can't. I hang out with extraordinary people with extraordinary abilities and the fact that we can do these things, is by no means indicative of the rest of the world.
The first 30 days on the new job - pitfalls to avoid, types of information to look for about the corporate culture and about the management styles. It was dead useful.
On one of our breaks, I ran into QAManager. He seems to be doing well. He can in for one of those targeted seminars I mentioned earlier, and then one of the inadequacies of the plan struck me. You have to know what you're not good at to take advantage of the seminars. That's not always something people have. And I'm not saying he shouldn't have been there for this one, but this seminar was on something that's actually one of his key strengths. Now he might be the scholarly type like me who decides that all information is good information and was there to just brush up his skills, but in the hands of a lesser person, they might think: "My X is great and my Y isn't so I'll take the class on Y," when in fact the Y is fine, and the X needs work.
And we discussed beading and various creative outlets. I've invited her to pop by Liz's on Sunday sometime.
And speaking of Liz, last night was Destination World in Lowell, so Liz got stuck working an extended late shift. She said I, or anyone else, really, was free to drop by, so I did. There were a number of people working on bracelets, and she said there had been even more. We gabbed, I sorted pins, made a bracelet and worked on something for my mother. Then she dropped me off at the Brewery where I met up with Hoppie and his work cronies. I'm still not 100% recovered from that.
And in conclusion, I would like to remind my viewers that I'm going to be in Florida for a week or and probably won't be updating while I'm gone. Wish me luck.
Current Mood:  confused
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| From: |  lain_mac |
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| Date: | April 7th, 2006 06:30 pm (UTC) |
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| | Feels good, don't it! | (Link) |
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Having survived 3 layoffs personally and more than I care to count with the hubby, people often say the stupidest things when you're laid off. My number one not favorite one is:
"You're on vacation!"
Wrong bucky! Vacation is when you have a job to come back to.
You were unemployed. NOW you're on vacation. Enjoy your well earned vacation. Call me when you get back. Hopefully, I'll have turned off all the internet search alerts and other bush beatings I set up for you, so my mail volume will be down by half. Otherwise, I might be tempted to rejoin the "getting paid for" work force.
So overall you were unemployed for....um 20 minutes? :-) |
