am i deluded?

[ararejul]

I recently finished  reading this article - http://nymag.com/news/features/my-generation-2011-10/ - and started to question many things about life, the universe, and the answer to everything.

A lot of the article discusses something that I am currently dealing with; so, a quick back story before I begin.  In high school I was not the most popular,

Comments

[cicatrixtwigs]

Oh you are not alone.

I’ve been out of uni since September 2006. I got a good degree, although it was in an art subject not a science. It took me a long time to stop being apologetic about that.

I applied for a lot of jobs in my field, then internships and programmes, and the only one that sent me a response was one that told me as I wasn’t a part of a minority group, I couldn’t apply.

As soon as I left uni I started applying for any local job. I was turned down a role at a library, but got offered my second job in a clothes store.

That was the most hellish job I’ve ever had. I was part time but I was so exhausted and so wracked with back pain after 4 hours solid of folding every day that I didn’t have it in me to do anything else, let alone look for jobs. And the reason I was always folding? Because I was the only one who would get it done. If other people didn’t do their work, I was expected to do it for them because I was a more capable member of staff. They could slack off, but because it was in our contract, none of us could leave until the shop floor was clear. It was better for me just to do it.

Luckily I only had to do that for 4 months before my brother got me a referral to an admin job for a big corporate company. They told me I had to change my hair (which was pillar box red at the time), but they seemed eager for my skills. Good times!

That was in ways the best and the worst job I’ve had. There was lots of chance to improve my skills and the management (not just my boss, but my bosses, bosses, boss) believed in me. I got given a key account within months and quickly got sourced to a specialised team. I had a lot of problems with one girl who just seemed to have a problem with me. To this day, the only explanation I have is that I had a degree and she had it in her head that she had to take me down a peg because of it. Eventually she quit, thank god.

But the main problem? The economy.

They had to lay off a bunch of people from another department. Rather than do this, they redeployed the staff throughout the business. It meant we ended up with people taking up senior roles (they were all grade 7’s - our department was primarily 8-9’s and the 7’s were our holy grail) who couldn’t do the work, didn’t care about the work, and kind of hated the company because they’ve been kicked out of the department they’d worked in their whole life. Promotions were swept off the table for the rest of us, because the quota of level 7’s was now filled by people who weren’t moving from the job anytime soon - they were clinging on to a job, but had no intention of doing enough to get promoted out of the role. There was suddenly a ceiling and it made a lot of people bitter.

I was lucky that I had support and knew I didn’t want to stay in that department forever. My management team supported me interviewing for roles further south so I could move in with my partner. I interviewed for a like-for-like grade which would have paid me more money, only to be told “You’d be bored out of your mind doing this job.”

Luckily I made a good impression, and a few months later I was called offering me a different job, a higher grade job. Brilliant! It was a modest pay rise, but I got to move.

Looking back, the time I spent living at home I should have been better. I spent too much of my money. I squandered too much of my time. But I didn’t know what I wanted. Still, I should have put my head down and at least got a work sponsored qualification, and brought less comics and frappuchinos. Gone to less gigs. But oh well! Done now.

The job I moved into was a nightmare. It took them about 2 months to find the time to start training me. I spent the majority of my time stressed, and having a fresh 2 hour commute every day was killing me.

[cicatrixtwigs]

After a year when I was really at the end of a tether following a performance review where my manager told me she couldn’t actually do her job without me (which I knew, I did all her work allocation for the entire team and kept everything ticking over) I got a downgraded end of year rating - and therefore lower pay rise and bonus - because I’d made mistakes in training (not on real work) on processes I didn’t know how to do. I still argue that was incredibly unfair. Training is supposed to be a safe, risk free environment. Anyway, I digress.

Shortly after… I went through a redundancy exercise myself. I was up against my whole department for either a like-for-like grade admin job, or a promotion to a project support job - a job that would finally let me use my degree!

I made some big mistakes there. I was apparently argued over by both jobs. They both wanted me and I had a lot of leverage. But I was so desperate to have a job and not be unemployed that I took the first package shown to me. I should have haggled. I should have asked for a lot more money, but I didn’t. I was too scared of being unemployed. That said - the job was a great opportunity and I seized it with both hands. I did really well, got great feedback.

But… new business dried up. There was no work for me to do. Then we were brought by another company who made their own new business department the chiefs, and we got stored away for use on back office retention projects. So here I sit, 2 years later.

I’m still not earning the average graduate starting wage after 2 promotions, annual salary increases and 5 years work. I’ve consistently had excellent feedback and performance reviews. I’m currently (unpaid) acting up to a grade higher than my current one, and as we’ve now been told our office is closing at the end of 2012, I’m never going to get that promotion.

And when I look at the job market? The only jobs I seem to get offered interviews for are ones that as soon as I have interviewed, I get told I’ll be “bored out of your mind” - yet the advice of recruiters is to dumb down my accomplishments to make me look like a more realistic hire. I’m always going to get angry at the comment “you’ll be bored” - if I’ll be bored doing your higher grade and higher salaried job, don’t you think that’s better than me being bored in my lower grade, lower pay job? Doing be ridiculous. The only time that should be relevant when it’s a direct mapping - grade and salary like for like, or so even it makes no odds.

The advice of my current manager? That I need to lie about my salary so they don’t see how poorly I am paid and assume I’m not doing the work I’m actually capable of. My low salary makes it look like I’m lying about the work I actually do, because someone doing the work I do should be on at least 10k more than I am.

So I’m stuck. Stuck in a loop of being overqualified for stepping stone jobs, but I look like I’m lying about my experience in the jobs I AM qualified for.

And all around me I see people my age who have been through multiple redundancies. I know 2 people who are using their degrees for what they originally intended - a pharmacist and a psychologist. That’s it. That’s out of everyone I went to uni and school with. Everyone I’ve met. I know multiple people who get the career break they needed, only to be made redundant within months and spend the next few years unable to get work.

I’m really scared of becoming one of them, and therefore I’m easy to take advantage of in the job market. And I know I’m not alone on that. Our generating has the unemployed at our heels snapping up any job, and companies taking advantage of staff with less time under their belts because that’s better for them when they have to pay redundancy packages.

[cicatrixtwigs]

All the career fairs I attended. All the sessions I went to at school. No one EVER told me the keys for a career. I was never given any idea on how to negotiate a salary. Never given any idea on how to position myself as a brand. Never taught how to portray my accomplishments in a positive light. I’ve always been good at interviews, but I didn’t really pull any of this together until the last year, until I hit this career wall so solidly.

I know so many couples reliant on the income of one person, meaning that person can’t take risks in their own career. I worry sometimes that Gus would like to take more risks - he could earn a lot more money if he took on contracts rather than permanent jobs. But with me working in financial services and my career being in jeopardy every 2 years, he can’t if we want to stay living together and pay our bills. I think he’s okay with this, he likes being the man of the house as much as it rankles me being a militant equalitist (not a real thing, whatever). But it’s not how I want to live my life. I want to work hard and get rewarded for it. I want to pay my taxes and contribute to society. I want to reach my potential.

But it’s a constant battle. And it really sucks.