A whole new Jack

In a recent job interview I was asked: Where do you see yourself in five years?

I know it’s a stock HR School question. The right answer is likely posted on the internet somewhere. It is obviously meant to illicit a response that tells the interviewer more about you than you would have indended.

How ambitious are you? Are you here for the short term or the long?

Where does jack see himself in five years?

fit, debt free and a father.

You can wright it down.

People will always tell you to ‘be yourself’

Every boy knows Sun-Tzu said know your enemy, know your self and you cannot lose.

Sinatra would say, I faced them all and I stood tall – I did it my way.

but how many people know their self at all?

This week I got a new job, today I gave my boss notice.

I’m not sure how to articulate this – at my old job I’ve always felt I was being pressured to alter my methods. I don’t really see I-to-I with my boss or supervisor. I think my way is the right one, I didn’t get the sense they agreed.

When I was interviewing for my new position I got the sense that it was my way was the reason they hired me – and offered me significant incentives to join them.

When I went to my old boss and told him about my offer I suddenly got a very different perspective. Normally they escort you out when you give them notice, especially when you go to work for a competitor. Instead my boss said he regretted that he could not match the offer but that ‘for an person of my caliber he had an open door policy’ and if it didn’t work out my job was going to be waiting. Further – I am the first person they have ever asked to stay the full length of my notice-period and he said it was only because he ‘knew I was a person of great integrity’

Here is the lesson I have drawn from this experience:

Be loyal. Keep your word. Speak the plain truth, especially when it isn’t what you think your bosses want to hear. Treat each person with respect. Make the hard decisions. Don’t try to shift blame.

Remember: anyone can be a good samarai to a good master. Only a true samarai can be serve a bad master just as well.

I have made a big decision. A big move. I got a new job.

Steadily the demands of my job have grown ever-more all-encompassing. The hours I work in a day have stretched out to the point where an eight-hour day seems like a half-day. The number of days I put in during a week have pushed into my time with family and robbed me of the things that make life more than drudgery. When I am at work the chaos and frantic pace leaves me feeling like I’m trying to bail out a leaking life-boat with a holed bucket.

Some time ago my company decided there was too much ‘fat’ in the operations department and cut staff and resources. My boss told me that in a management meeting one of the big-management guys had described his plan to ‘cut the B&C players and dump their work on the A-players.’

I suppose I should be pleased they consider me an ‘A-player’ but the fact is the way things have gone I had to wonder ‘what’s in it for me?’ – especially since wages have been stagnant for the last several years and the B&C players who rode out the attempts by the company to make them quit walked out with severance packages.

So, about two-weeks ago when I was called in early on a Monday after just finishing a week with twenty-hours of overtime I decided to take a look around and see if there was somewhere else that might hire ol’jack.

I had a great meeting with another company and they called me in for a second interview at which they offered me a job. Straight days, twenty-five percent increase in pay. Their office is clean, calm. They are well-organized. They were interested in my ideas and liked what I had to say about dealing with people, planning and communication.

So – how about that?