I’m a once and future employee of a ginormous university. I was offered a job on August 18. I accepted it on August 19, and was given a small sheaf of forms to fill out. My starting date was contingent on HR clearing it, but my new boss and I hoped it would be Wednesday, August 24. Classes resume August 31, and they wanted someone in the office by then. He told me to contact the admin associate in the office to find out my start date.
On Tuesday, I got a message from someone in the dean’s office about my application. I went in Thursday to discover they needed me to fill out a tax form that they neglected to include in my original packet.
Since then-nothing. I’ve e-mailed the admin associate, but she keeps saying that she hasn’t heard anything.
I’m getting progressively more pissed off. At this point, this job is costing me money, because I had to clear two part-time jobs off my schedule in order to make room for what was supposed to be a full-time job by now. My car has been inspected, I’ve dropped off stuff at Goodwill, and I’ve bought a new cell phone battery, so I’m running out of errands that can usefully fill my free time.
What should I do from here? Contact the director of the office (my new boss) and tell him I’m getting concerned about the lack of information? Contact the admin associate and ask for the name of the HR rep they work with? Contact HR directly and figure out from there what the delay is? Something else entirely?
Your boss is probably counting on his administrative associate to handle this, so I would start there and depending what you hear, ask for the name of the HR person. Give the AA a chance to find out (half a day should be enough for something like this), and then press harder for an HR contact. But I have a feeling that HR will respond directly to a departmental person they are used to dealing with.
Show up there tomorrow, dressed for work, and ask the boss if there’s any other paperwork to be completed at that point, and if not, where will your office/cubicle be?.
E-mailing or calling the admin might not be terribly helpful at this point because if she still “doesn’t know anything” then you’re back where you started. Approach the decision-maker point-blank.
Having said that - since it was contingent on HR “clearing” you, is there anything at all you can think of that might have tripped you up on that front?
If you just aren’t up to showing up out of the blue to talk to boss man, call him directly to inquire as to your start date. Better yet, if you’ve got his e-mail address, send him an e-mail as well to confirm your start date. If they have suddenly changed their minds and are rescinding the offer, you want to get in writing what their reasons are.
Keep us posted, and good luck.
I e-mailed the admin associate that I was getting concerned, and wanted to know if there was an HR person I could contact directly, to either learn when I could start or find out if there were any additional roadblocks.
They called later and said I was cleared to start Thursday. I went in to talk to my new boss about typical starting-off stuff, since he’ll be out Thursday and Friday.
That’s the trouble, in a huge university, even the boss has to wait for HR and isn’t really the decision-maker. Although you’re right that a call from him would carry more weight.