(no subject)
You can't get out into the world until you exit a door.
Friday was my last official day of employment at my (now) old job. Outside of the occasional vent, I loved my coworkers, and I loved my job, and it's been, in the words of our severance-provided life coach, a "great run". During my very first week, a person commented to me "This is a company people retire from..." meaning that people stayed in their positions much longer than even they intended to, because the workplace was so great. Even though I started in my position long after the glory years, I quickly saw what everyone liked so much. There was relatively little gossip and no one that stood out as being unreasonable or unfair. Even the occasional and inevitable bitch sessions were laughable to me, having come from many "more challenging" environments. One complaint I heard in the first year was that "We aren't given the week off between Xmas and New Year's!!!" Guess what was changed by the second year? Yup, we were given that week off.
Unfortunately, the one thing we couldn't change about our office was the physical location. As time went on, and more and more collaboration between our office and headquarters was required, it became clear to anyone with half a brain that eventually our office would be transitioned over. The geography of the situation was just too much of an issue. For the past 2-3 years, the only question we asked among ourselves was "when", not "if". In May, the shoe finally dropped, and we were informed of our respective fates. Some people were let go immediately, some were given until the end of the year, and the rest of us were offered the option of choosing whether or not we wanted to move to headquarters. After turning down the relocation offer, those of us who said 'no' were added into the ranks of those who were only going to remain employed through the transition period.
You might imagine that this transition has involved a lot of anger, and there definitely have been some harsh words and hurt feelings throughout the process. The majority of those feelings are completely understandable, if not entirely justified, but one thing I learned going through a layoff in 2001 is that the sooner you can get mentally beyond the thoughts of how you've been personally wronged, the sooner you can get to a new, better place. To my coworkers' credit, no one has been sitting around bitching nonstop, but I did notice a lot of people were wanting to wait until they were gone to figure out their next step. I decided I would tackle that issue right away, and in May and June, I did a lot of soul-searching as well as job searching. Lots of heavy brain activity later, I decided that what I most wanted to do was to officially obtain an MBA, and continue working in marketing. When I found out that my end date was earlier than anticipated, I moved heaven and earth and was able to get accepted into the part-time program at UConn. To this day, I'm a little shocked that I pulled it off. I had three weeks to study for and pass the GMATs--a test that involved concepts I haven't touched for over 20 years, if at all. At the same time I had to pull together letters of recommendation and transcripts for my application, and I still was working full-time and being the best mom I could be to P. But production work taught me how to burn the candle at both ends, and pull it off I did. I officially began classes in August.
I've still been looking for work throughout this period. Ultimately, I'd love to find a position where I'm combining marketing along with my visual design skills. Pretty much everyone I've spoken to gushes that this combination is extremely valuable to companies, and that I will be in demand, but as of right now, it's been my one source of frustration. The web systems that many of the employers here use to process applications are often glitchy or frustratingly limited. For example, on one system I was able to indicate that I was in the process of obtaining a degree by listing a future anticipated graduation date. Then it asked me "What degree have you obtained from this institution. We WILL be checking this so do NOT lie." None of the choices were "degree still in progress". So how do I answer that? If I put MBA, they'll ask UConn if I've officially gotten one, and clearly the answer right now is No. But the application would not let me progress without answering the question. A human would understand immediately what my situation was by looking at my resume, but the computer only can make choices based on the programmed input options, and it's set up to eliminate candidates, not include them. On other systems, they ask for majors, but "Film/TV Production" is not an option, and there's no "Other" category. I'm left trying to decide if I classify my education as "Communications" or as "Art", and whether or not that will be a point that comes back to haunt me. Some systems demand HTML formatting for resumes, others have such limited file size requirements that even my plain text word resume was too large to upload. I'm also torn by my production background. I suspect that potential employers continually assume that I'm just marking time until my next animation job--it definitely has been the number one question at the few interviews I've had so far. Yet, if I leave off that information, nothing else on my resume demonstrates the level of work that I'm *capable* of. I've made a few sacrifices and I've made a few major changes. I would hope that a company reviewing my resume would be able to see that I'm clearly committed to marketing AND that I have an unorthodox background that is a huge benefit since it's taught me how to work well under pressure and produce high quality work. But as of today, I have only had a couple of interviews and mostly a lot of emailed "No thank you, you weren't even considered for an interview" dismissals.
Yet, despite this frustration, I'm in really great spirits. Financially between severance, unemployment and financial aid, I'm in a relatively okay spot, and in addition Old Job has been starting to talk with me about the potential of providing some freelance services down the road. We have benefits through D's job, so that's taken care of, and if the freelance doesn't come pouring in, I actually have a bunch of personal goals that I'd love the time to tackle. It's kind of exciting, because for this semester at least, if I don't have a full-time job, I could easily get quite a bit accomplished. So, in the immortal words of our dear friend Randall, on we go!
Friday was my last official day of employment at my (now) old job. Outside of the occasional vent, I loved my coworkers, and I loved my job, and it's been, in the words of our severance-provided life coach, a "great run". During my very first week, a person commented to me "This is a company people retire from..." meaning that people stayed in their positions much longer than even they intended to, because the workplace was so great. Even though I started in my position long after the glory years, I quickly saw what everyone liked so much. There was relatively little gossip and no one that stood out as being unreasonable or unfair. Even the occasional and inevitable bitch sessions were laughable to me, having come from many "more challenging" environments. One complaint I heard in the first year was that "We aren't given the week off between Xmas and New Year's!!!" Guess what was changed by the second year? Yup, we were given that week off.
Unfortunately, the one thing we couldn't change about our office was the physical location. As time went on, and more and more collaboration between our office and headquarters was required, it became clear to anyone with half a brain that eventually our office would be transitioned over. The geography of the situation was just too much of an issue. For the past 2-3 years, the only question we asked among ourselves was "when", not "if". In May, the shoe finally dropped, and we were informed of our respective fates. Some people were let go immediately, some were given until the end of the year, and the rest of us were offered the option of choosing whether or not we wanted to move to headquarters. After turning down the relocation offer, those of us who said 'no' were added into the ranks of those who were only going to remain employed through the transition period.
You might imagine that this transition has involved a lot of anger, and there definitely have been some harsh words and hurt feelings throughout the process. The majority of those feelings are completely understandable, if not entirely justified, but one thing I learned going through a layoff in 2001 is that the sooner you can get mentally beyond the thoughts of how you've been personally wronged, the sooner you can get to a new, better place. To my coworkers' credit, no one has been sitting around bitching nonstop, but I did notice a lot of people were wanting to wait until they were gone to figure out their next step. I decided I would tackle that issue right away, and in May and June, I did a lot of soul-searching as well as job searching. Lots of heavy brain activity later, I decided that what I most wanted to do was to officially obtain an MBA, and continue working in marketing. When I found out that my end date was earlier than anticipated, I moved heaven and earth and was able to get accepted into the part-time program at UConn. To this day, I'm a little shocked that I pulled it off. I had three weeks to study for and pass the GMATs--a test that involved concepts I haven't touched for over 20 years, if at all. At the same time I had to pull together letters of recommendation and transcripts for my application, and I still was working full-time and being the best mom I could be to P. But production work taught me how to burn the candle at both ends, and pull it off I did. I officially began classes in August.
I've still been looking for work throughout this period. Ultimately, I'd love to find a position where I'm combining marketing along with my visual design skills. Pretty much everyone I've spoken to gushes that this combination is extremely valuable to companies, and that I will be in demand, but as of right now, it's been my one source of frustration. The web systems that many of the employers here use to process applications are often glitchy or frustratingly limited. For example, on one system I was able to indicate that I was in the process of obtaining a degree by listing a future anticipated graduation date. Then it asked me "What degree have you obtained from this institution. We WILL be checking this so do NOT lie." None of the choices were "degree still in progress". So how do I answer that? If I put MBA, they'll ask UConn if I've officially gotten one, and clearly the answer right now is No. But the application would not let me progress without answering the question. A human would understand immediately what my situation was by looking at my resume, but the computer only can make choices based on the programmed input options, and it's set up to eliminate candidates, not include them. On other systems, they ask for majors, but "Film/TV Production" is not an option, and there's no "Other" category. I'm left trying to decide if I classify my education as "Communications" or as "Art", and whether or not that will be a point that comes back to haunt me. Some systems demand HTML formatting for resumes, others have such limited file size requirements that even my plain text word resume was too large to upload. I'm also torn by my production background. I suspect that potential employers continually assume that I'm just marking time until my next animation job--it definitely has been the number one question at the few interviews I've had so far. Yet, if I leave off that information, nothing else on my resume demonstrates the level of work that I'm *capable* of. I've made a few sacrifices and I've made a few major changes. I would hope that a company reviewing my resume would be able to see that I'm clearly committed to marketing AND that I have an unorthodox background that is a huge benefit since it's taught me how to work well under pressure and produce high quality work. But as of today, I have only had a couple of interviews and mostly a lot of emailed "No thank you, you weren't even considered for an interview" dismissals.
Yet, despite this frustration, I'm in really great spirits. Financially between severance, unemployment and financial aid, I'm in a relatively okay spot, and in addition Old Job has been starting to talk with me about the potential of providing some freelance services down the road. We have benefits through D's job, so that's taken care of, and if the freelance doesn't come pouring in, I actually have a bunch of personal goals that I'd love the time to tackle. It's kind of exciting, because for this semester at least, if I don't have a full-time job, I could easily get quite a bit accomplished. So, in the immortal words of our dear friend Randall, on we go!