When it rains it pours huh? What to do. Try not to worry about it for one...but I would at least like to have a plan for when it does happen -- that's just called being prepared. My problem.
I interviewed yesterday for assistant to important person, for 10.34 an hour from 7.45-11:00 AM every day (read 3.25 hours) and it is located downtown and for the University. The interview went well and the head honcho said she had more interviews that day and ...well today and would make a decision late today before they started calling references. Bah.
I get home after the interview and find that the High School people called for an interview (which is set up today for 1:00 tomorrow). THIS job pay 13.54 an hour, is a permanent 9 month position (summers off!!!!) and benefits, and just seems more interesting because it is in a high school. I like kids, yeah even teenagers even though I alternatively revile them. ;)
So what I am afraid of, is that the UW might offer me the job tomorrow (I hope to God it is delayed until Friday). I need to give the MMSD district SOME time to consider me? Do I press them at the interview? That is bad taste though, isn't it? The only thing I know I should do is put off the UW people for at least a day citing that I need to think about it. But an I get away with more than day? Maybe two days to think about it?
What should I do? The school job is far superior, but if i don't get it I don't want to burn my bridges.
posted by hadjare @ 12:06 PM
2 Comments:
this is phil; i'm not going to set up another blog account just yet so i'm using the anonymous feature... which i hearby render impotent by announcing my name.
anyhow - my advice is when and if the UW folks get in touch is to tell them that you're going out of town, right now!-sorry, can't talk!- but can you get back to them next week? okay, thanks!
they shouldn't think it's a big deal, especially since it's only a job that takes up like, what, 16 hours a week? it shouldn't burn your bridges and as long as you don't physically bump into the head honcho themselves before friday night [if it's saturday/sunday you can just say you got back early and obviously couldn't get in touch over the weekend], you should be good.
but good luck with the high school job - let us know what happens! and, yeah, i wouldn't press them at the interview... unless everything is going really well and you know how to slip in the fact you're considering other offers more politely than i would. i don't think you'd be pressing them too much to ask when they'll make a decision, though - AND to stress that you'd like to hear immediately, one way or the other. which actually might be a good way to drop the hint you're waiting on other job offers... and doing it that way makes you seem like a good catch, rather than a desperate doofus!
so yeah, follow the advice of the unemployed guy.
Mike here. I too am blowing this anonymous posting to hell by announcing my name but I'll throw in my two bits and a story.
The last time I checked this was a capitalist economy so you are free to take your labor wherever you want, whenever you want. By that I mean if you get offered the UW job and the High School still hasn't gotten back you to take that job. Then if the High School calls back and offers you the job you take that one and quite the first.
Now I know there is this school of thought that once you're offered a job you have some kind of commitment to it and that quitting a job only days or weeks after starting is somehow bad. Well, I say to hell with that for two reasons:
1. You know that if you were working somewhere and they had a bad year they would cut your job in a minute if they had to. That’s just the way it is. They wouldn't care if you started two weeks ago or two years ago, when the bottom line is in play there is often very little sympathy. I know there is this hand-me-down notion from our parent’s generation (or maybe grandparents at this point) that jobs can be for life and that there is some kind of unspoken employer/employee commitment. Well all of that ended when employers decided to lay people off even while still posting profits, when they started revoking pensions employees worked their whole life for through tricky corporate bankruptcies and a wide variety of other crappy things.
2. You deserve to get the highest price for your labor that the market will allow and if that means that the company your working for loses you to another one 1 hour after you start than too bad for that company. I can assure you no one in Human Resources is going to start crying because you left (nothing personal Laura, I know your a great worker I'm just talking about workers in general).
So, a short story to illustrate my point (this from a guy who has twice before quit jobs on the first day of work because he got a better offer somewhere else).
When I was younger my parents ran their own business. When they got divorced they had to sell it and suddenly my mother, who had run the day to day affairs of the business for almost twenty years, found herself on the job market in her 40's with only a high school diploma. Now then, after struggling for months to find anything she finally got offered a job as a real estate agent. She happily accepted the job and prepared to start it.
On Friday at 5pm she got a phone call from a job she had interviewed with weeks and weeks before, at a local Union office. Now, the Realtor job offered no benefits, no guaranteed pay check but they had said yes first and she had agreed. However, looking around at her life she decided to take the other job because it paid better, it was practically guaranteed forever and it came with benefits that covered her whole family.
Despite this seemingly easy choice she still agonized over it and tried frantically to reach the Realtors on a Friday afternoon before accepting the Union job. Unable to reach them she called the Union and accepted even though she already had the other job. All weekend she dreaded calling the Realtor job on Monday feeling that she had somehow violated this 'code' between employers and employees. When she finally talked to them they were disappointed but actually said that they totally understood and wished her well.
She's worked there now for 15 years and will often tell me when I can't figure out what to do that she was very glad she took the job despite her reservations.
I guess my point is don't lose one job because you hope you might get another and never turn down a better job no matter how it comes into your life. Oh, and don't every feel bad for an employer, they'll get over it.
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