pmsumner

After travelling down to London on Sunday evening (painless) and staying in a hotel near Heathrow overnight, I found myself sat around the corner from the company's offices an hour early. And this was after having spent time finding a new shirt after having spilt coffee down mine while rushing earlier that morning... gah!

It gave me a chance to think, relax, and read through some notes I'd made. On the dot of 10am I turned up at their office, and was introduced to the Technical/Operations Director.

We chatted for around 2hrs - about the role, the company, their history (well worth doing because I'd discovered some potentially nasty stories about the company which he talked about without me prompting and with candour) and what they were looking for. I felt it went really well, and asked the question the recruitment agency had asked me to ask - "Would you have any reservations about hiring me right now?"

A useful question to ask, btw. Gives you a chance to respond to anything that they may have got the wrong idea about, gives you a chance to think about anything they say if they want to speak to you again and gives some immediate feedback.

He mentioned the move that would be required on my part (which I reassured them would not be a problem by talking about our lack of ties here), the career path I'd talked about earlier (VERY small UK operation - only 4 employees, so no immediate career path available - though I made clear money and job titles were not my reasons for leaving my current employer) and a lack of field experience (which I have no real counter for other than "Well, I have done some....", which is frankly a bit lame - perhaps I could have exaggerated the truth a little, but meh. Hindsight==20/20).

The agency contacted me this morning to say that he'd decided not to take me any further because of my lack of field experience. The agency bod said that the interviewer was confident I'd fit in to the office, be able to do the work technically, and if it weren't for that area, they would be more than happy to take me on.

In some ways I am very happy, because I had been told repeatedly that this was an office based job, with occasional travel involved. If they're placing that level of requirement on field experience, it's obviously not.

In other ways I am sad - I liked the company, the products, the location. It would have been a fantastic pay rise, and I felt more comfortable in that interview than I have done in any similar situation in years - even internal interviews at my current employer.

I got an interview for the position I mentioned earlier.

Monday, 10am, Sunbury-on-Thames. Eep. *panics slightly*

As you probably know if you've been reading my automatically posted Tweets, the past week has been an interesting one in work-terms.  Friday morning at 10-ish the whole floor was pulled into the break room and told that the company would be shedding ~35 jobs in the support, sales, IT and customer service departments worldwide.  We were told to go sit down and wait.

About 30 minutes later our team was pulled aside by our boss and told that we weren't being "shed", and we talked about it for a while.  Turns out that we had lost:
- Half the customer service team (3 people)
- One of the field engineers
- The customer service manager
- Half the sales force (4 or 5, we're still not sure)
- The manager of our "Fusion" program, which is in place to reward high-spending customers.
- One of the IT dept (only 3 of them anyhow!)

So it's been weird.  None of us can make sense of the people who have gone, considering the direction the company has been taking lately in terms of sales (more direct sales as opposed to selling through distribution) and the effort & money that has gone into the fusion program only to seemingly abandon it now.

The doomed have been in and out the office a few times and it's hugely uncomfortable.  I try not to feel guilty about it (being sat here when they're sat at home) but it's difficult at times.  We're all discussing what the bosses are doing, what the ultimate aim is, and hopefully when the "consultation period" is up and the people are no longer employees we'll get some answers.

However, in more positive news I have an interview.  It's for a Desktop Support Analyst position at Carphone Warehouse Networks (formerly Opal Networks) in Irlam.  It's the wrong physical location to be perfect, but I don't have any trust in this company any more.  Once they've done one round of redundancies, I am going to wager that the chances of another wave being round the corner are quite high.  So, job applications are going to be sent out seriously now, rather than just here and there when I see something that grabs my attention.