In This thread last July I bemoaned the elimination of my job. I have just now finally gotten another. It’s not in my previous field; I will be starting over – again – this time learning the international shipping business. I will be making use of some of my technical skills like excel and the like, but otherwise will be a rank amateur. In line with that fact, I will be making less than half what I made before, and back to one week vacation per year. Again.
However, after 7 months I am just tired of the application/interview/rejection cycle, dying my hair to look less than my age, and being told alternately that I am overqualified or underqualified for everything. In a few cases, I believe I came really, really close. In one case I went through 3 layers of interviews. But – nothing.
This month I took on some temporary work through an agency, answering phones. I had been on the job about a half a day when the owner of this small company asked me, “So… What other skills do you have?” “I can do anything,” I said, “except retail sales or heavy lifting.” I turns out they had just let go their customer service person because he did not really have the industry skills he’d claimed to have. They were in the ads-and-interview process trying to find someone. So over the next 2 weeks I was given more and more other stuff to do, to see how I dealt with. Obviously, they were sufficiently pleased to hire me on a 90-day trial basis, after which we will both decide if I should continue and if so, what additional salary I might get. The plan is for the owner to teach me enough of what he knows that he can get out of the office occasionally and hand off his tasks to me.
So – I am hopeful and optimistic, and thought I’d share this. This will be the second or third time I’ve started over from the bottom, but the last time worked out pretty well, so maybe this will, too.
Thanks, folks. I am a bit anxious because I settled for such a low salary, comparatively, and really didn’t haggle at all over the offer. But, heck, I often thought I was overpaid anyway. Really.
Sounds like you’ll have an opportunity to haggle after 90 days, right? That might be a better time to do it as you’ll know your boss better and have a better idea of what might be reasonable.
Yes, after 3 months we will talk again about money. I also notice that there is an empty office; a window office and a fancy title would at least give me something to brag about! I am not very good at haggling. I wish I could get my husband to do the money talk for me! Last night he had all kinds of “You should have told them…” suggestions, none of which I would have been able to do.
But it will be interesting work, near to home, and as far as I can tell nice people to work with. And free coffee.
I can also, I suppose, consider it an inspiration to others that you’re never too old to start over. It’s a better alternative than social security!
Huzzah! I’ve done the nearly a year without employment thing, it sucks. Congrats on your new job and I hope there are plenty of opportunities there to get you back to and beyond your former status level.
My brother’s current contract indicated what his starting salary would be, two specific dates when it would be reviewed, and objectives to be fulfilled by those dates. He’s very happy because the general manager has been keeping his end of the bargain.
Now, my bro has the advantage of having a legal reference for salary: in Spain there is something called a “convenio” which applies to a whole sector and which defines, among other things, salary ranges for different positions and/or educational levels. He started with a salary equivalent to what the person he replaced had, but the reason for the change was that said person’s job had been expanding over time and gotten too big for her; the current job description needs someone with bro’s qualifications. So his negotiation was “I don’t have a problem with starting at her salary level, but I’d like to eventually get to the level that would correspond to the qualifications required by the job.”
He wasn’t hard-nosed or sneaky about it at all, cards-on-the-table the whole way; he got a good deal, the company got a good deal, both sides are keeping their ends of the bargain. I hate “negotiation games”, myself.
Maybe you can do a bit of research about what other people in your kind of job get paid in your area of the country, just to be able to provide a basseline. And don’t forget “secondary” compensation - maybe the company can’t pay more than XYZ but can live without your for two weeks.
I’m very happy for you and wish you the best of luck.
Thanks again for the kind words. Being old, I am actually not too concerned about moving up in the world in the usual sense. I want to make as much money as possible in an interesting job that is not too far from home. Well 2 out of 3 ain’t bad. I do hope, of course, that the salary increases later.
What I’ll be doing, for the most part, is stuff that has little or no relationship to my former positions in the IT world. Except, however, that I believe I can organize tasks, think logically, and learn quickly. Also, I seem to know more about Excel than anyone else in the office! Last week the boss had a spreadsheet, and he needed to extract certain specific information from it; I think he figured it would be something of a manual process. I just copied the columns I needed into another spreadsheet, sorted it, and put in some conditional formatting of color backgrounds to make it easier to read. Voila. “Oh, nice,” says the comptroller. I wish I just knew how to make it put more than one line in a box." “Easy,” says I. “Highlight the cells, go to format, alignment, and check the ‘wrap text’ box.” Oooh. The president of the place is impressed by Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V to cut and paste.
Yes, it is a very small vacation. Of course, I have been on “vacation” for about 8 months now, so I guess I can hold out. I’m thinking that later this year, if things are working out, I can discuss the vacation issue. One problem will be that this company is relatively new, and does not have a lot of money to spare for things like paid vacation. But, we’ll see!
