Comments by "looseycanon" (@looseycanon) on "A Life After Layoff" channel.

  1. A friend of mine was interviewing for a position of a tram driver, after his latest position proved... disappointment. He had gone through psychotests, including an IQ test. When the interviewer came with results, she told him: "It would be a waste of your intelligence for this position" and rejected him. Friend was furious.
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  2. Yeah, that first one hit close to home. Bachelor's degree in the field, worked about two years as accountant. First job, less than minimum hourly wage, cut hours, so he could do that legally... And took subsidy from the government, cause I've had hard time getting into the field. Thank god, I didn't have student loans.
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  3. My friend, you said it yourself. Employer loyalty is dead and it's the employers, who killed it. We have to be always on the hunt anyway, because the only way to get proper promotions, is to hop jobs. So let us hunt and let us blacklist every company that ever laid us off, particularly if without notice.
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  4. Careful about that eye contact thing! As autistic person, I too struggle with keeping it. I also know, from truly impressive amount of smalltalk with HR people from my failed hiring attempts, that employers know about it being a symptom. This has two ramifications: 1) companies are showing the door to absolutely brilliant analysts, that see errors where others will overlook them 2) they invite lawsuit, should an autistic person feels, it was autism, that disqualified them.
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  5. Employees will win this one. Demographics speak for them selves. Not to mention, that some companies have been remote first since the beginning and some have shifted that way, meaning there are more companies now, that are willing to accept remote work. It's only a matter of time and it will change with changing of generations. Millenials are used to working on computers and know, that those can work from anywhere, meaning, even as managers, they will be more accepting of remote work. As Boomers die out, office will cease to be as important.
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  6. Yeah, I feel the guy. Earned degree in accounting from a good school. Ended up going from interview to interview for two years, all the time hearing, "You don't have enough experience" or "You wouldn't fit culturally in" (all woman office), or "Very sorry, we've found someone, who fit's in better." (posted the same position the next week on the same job board). I swear, until legislation is put in place, that concrete, exhaustive and true reasons are mandatory to give, with allegation of contrary being considered true until proven otherwise, nothing will change.
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  7. Job market, that is horribly broken. I myself responded to over 3000 job postings and I know, that the job board I'm using has their CV creation tool certified, so that the HR systems accept them no problem. I am thoroughly convinced, that about 90% of those CVs never made it to a human, because the system was always checking for working experience, which I had 0 at the time. And automated rejection after rejection after rejection, all worded the same from different companies, but with the same spelling mistake... Talen acquisition process is so thoroughly broken by the "need" to cut costs, it costs companie the money, because they need to train new workers anyway and to make it even worse, they waste money on the employee hunting process on repeat, because they either don't hire anyone, or hire a guner, who mastered, how to do interviews, but not fundamentals of the job they were interviewing for... Not even the stuff taught in uni!
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  8. We Czechs have a saying: "Carps won't release all the water from their pond.". C-suite has the power to make decisions. They won't make sucha decision, which would cost them money.
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  9. Man, thank god, we have our own retirement funds here in Czechia. Some companies do offer a copay into the fund, but it's yours and yours alone, meaning you only need to change, who's your employer with the bank, when you change employers. That money is actually yours, once it lands in the account. None of this 401k fraud.
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  10. I really feel, that forcing people to stay at a job, when there is a disaster warning issued should be a federal crime with penalties severe indeed for both the manager and the owner. I'm not talking just some fines. I'm talking life in prison and loss of all possessions.
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  11. Yeah, I keep policy myself, when it comes to posting. That being said, if company takes an issue with what you're posting, especially if you don't mention that company by name or give sufficient detail for third party to dig into background things (say describe processes or other actually sensitive stuff), it really speaks volumes about that company. In a tragic kind of way, doxing yourself like this can help you weed out employers, who don't respect boundaries, eg. one of the types of low quality employers. It will make your professional life harder, but I believe, that those, who will hire you will be better employers.
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  12. Yeah, I always thought, that employers need to look in to costs of living in their area and realize, that people won't work for them, if they can't afford a small creature comfort once in a while or even worse, just living. A lot of employers like this in my country, who then cry, that people aren't loyal.
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  13. Tell it to them simply, once your trial period is over. "We've talked about it, during on boarding, nine months after end of my trial period, there will be evaluation. If you attempt to move or in any way delay or cancel the meeting, or I will not receive raise I will be happy with, we'll consider it you giving me two weeks notice." and as a little extra incentive, publish your resume on job boards. Companies killed employer loyalty, treat them with outright hostility.
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  14. A few years back, I have been in a very bad place, job seeking wise. I had a bit of business in a city known well for automotive industry. I was desperate, so I called HR, told them, that I am in the city and would be willing to talk to them about some jobs. I literally stood infront of their offices and the recruiter told me, to reply to a particular position on one well known portal, that they use it for pipe-lining! Yep, directly from the recruiter I wanted a job from.
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  15. Careful with these toxic employers, mate. You'll turn into Joshua Fluke eventually!
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  16. Ah forget about side hustles. Companies demand disclosure, non-competes, which basically bar you from working in your own as well as related industries are super common and companies demand all 40 weekly hours be given to them, while not providing sufficient income. No, you need to job hop from one job to another. You only have so much time in a week to work anyway!
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  17. maybe go over your compensation package. Young people have student debt, they have to repay, so if you don't factor that in in the offer, you're setting yourself for abandonment.
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  18. Yeah, employee monitoring would have been the thing for me, which would have me break laws, to get out of the contract... I've seen this coming for a while, being interested in IT, specifically networking and watched a lot of Joshua Fluke videos... This, along with watching unhealthy amount of networking guides about Ubiquiti gear made me build my home network up to near (with one of my employers even surpassing) corporate level. All employer issued HW is on it's own subnet and, once I'll get a place of my own, will be in a separate office, completely separated from the rest of the network. My employer will not snoop around my private network, even if it were the freaking CIA!
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  19.  @ZTRCTGuy  That still doesn't address the fact, that companies are leaving talent on the table and are risking a lawsuit.
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  20. Nah, you need to find something, that can sustain you even in retirement age, but not as a worker. Folks do consulting, maybe try flipping some goods or make something yourself... It will be income, but it won't be as a worker. We'll have to become entrepreneurs to survive.
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  21.  @QwertyS3  Maybe true, but there are no viable alternatives. Cause eventually, even using friends will not get you jobs, because then cliquishness will become an issue... Hell, we already have Reddit full of stories, that could give corps reason to stop hiring friends of their employees. You still have greater control as an entrepreneur over yourself than as an employee. Plus, who can guarantee, that policy changes, that would stop this toxic behavior, actually get passed and enforced? It would be great, but as things stand, I don't really see it happening.
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  22.  @ALifeAfterLayoff  Allow me to share my experience, because I firmly believe, fault is on "your" HR side of things. I've been looking for a job for two years in Czechia, we had at the time around 3% unemployment rate. When I finally found a job, I had over 1600 CVs sent out. My average number of interviews over those two years was about 0,8 to 1 per week. I stopped altering my CV and... there was no change in the frequency of interviews. Then covid hit. We had the toughest lockdown in Europe and... again, no change. So, I kept going on, hoping, I would get lucky somewhere. Our government announced, that in a week the lockdown would be terminated and in the next ten days after the announcement, I averaged 1,7 interviews per day, with 3 in one day being the most (with a healthy amount of travel time to boot that day). It was only in these ten days that I scored a job. So answer me this. How did I have so few interviews in two years of unprecedented economic growth, hunger for labor and literal employer whining, that they can't fill the positions throughout the economy, and then scored nearly twenty in span of ten days (including the one that earned me a job) in the middle of a freaking (and still ongoing) pandemic, which we'd expect to be the firing season, all the while making 0 changes to my CV? The way I see it, HR either doesn't understand basic principles of the market, eg. you can only buy, what is in there, or is failing to explain this to management. I say this, because throughout those two years, I didn't see any changes in employer's demands. I didn't see any change then and I don't see it now. All the time, entry positions, requiring two or more years of relevant working experience on top of at least a bachelor's degree and at least two (sometimes more) languages throughout the economy.
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  23. Frankly this is partially on the employers. I had been going from one closed doors to slammed ones left and right for two years twice... Always listening to the same lame excuses about working experience and/or not speaking language X. After hundreds of CVs ending up ghosted and dozens of interviews, where interviewer complimented me for how realistic I was, getting rejected... I would have blown up on someone too. At the time, I was beyond frustrated. I was turning communist for a while... Really, employers need to start looking ahead. Hire more people, if not for that one position, but for another, for which they'll train the new hiree. Stop looking at the next quarter, start looking at the next year. Babyboomers are leaving the labour market and those, who come to replace them are Millenials. the largest generation replaced by the smallest. I don't care, what AI get's invented. There won't be enough bodies to get stuff done and that's just the mass of people. There will be even fewer trained people on top of that!
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  24. You won't like the answer, but you have to create them. You can start with looking at other departments, find a way to reduce the need for people there and find those folk, who have IT as a hobby. Those would be your first recruits. Then you'll have to aggressively start hiring graduates and generally people with no working experience or knowledge and train them on your dime for as long as necessary. You know, the way it was done before "humans as a resource" approach. Your superiors won't like it one bit, because this will absolutely eat your profit, but at this point, especially in this field, that is the only way forward.
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  25. This really is simple. "Okay, employer, you want me to come back to the office. I have invested in my home setup in VESA mounts, good office chair and desk, towards which you didn't contribute a single dollar, but which I use for your business. Thanks to home office I could take care of my kids and didn't have to put so many miles on my car, which I need, because you are unwilling to take into consideration, that public transport from my town/village runs once an hour, and don't want to give me flexi hours either, not to mention time lost commuting to work, all of which didn't costs me money, but now will in order to work for you... About that raise you promised me last year..."
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  26. This is not so black and white, unfortunately. In Czechia, your home has to be declared as your place of work, which come's with it's own regulation in terms of work safety (that's literally in the law. The employer must provide a safe working environment). This doesn't cover just serious stuff like "a piece of machinery fell on me, now I' don't have a leg.", but also "I write on a crappy keyboard, now I need new carpal tunnels!". Therefore, most employers prefer to provide openspace or offices in commercial buildings instead. So it ain't as simple as you might think. I wish it were... As an accountant, I too could do 80% of what I daily do at home, only coming to work to deal with payment orders twice a week.
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  27. I left a toxic boss some time ago and became jobless. The economy was booming, so I thought, that I should find a job quickly. Result? Two years of joblessness. I've sent over thirty CVs a month and went to about one to two interviews a month. Then covid hit. What I find alarming, is that my rate of interviews never changed. I want from economy where employers were whining about not being able to fill roles in to one, where even decent sized employers were worried about their existence. And even though I didn't lower the number of sent CVs, my success ratio didn't change either. Then, in the middle of the epidemic, I had two weeks, where I averaged 1,6 interviews per day. I scored my current job then. All this in a country with unemployment under 4%. I feel, that HR is to blame for a lot of potential being left on the floor. Especially in the "nothing to put in" department. Young students with little to no working experience. Companies these days are using computers to screen out candidates, which don't fit, but as a result, they loose out. For instance, I'm an accountant. I also play around with networking gear. It's gone to the point, where I am the first line of tech support at our department, all the while processing invoices, and I have an enterprise grade network at home. Someone like me is likely to learn, how to deploy and maintain accounting systems both from tax and from technical perspectives. Whenever I called a company for feedback, I found out, that HR never saw my resume. Why? Because references to IT in interests section of my CV filtered me out at software level. You guys need to make your respective managements realize, that lowering expenses is not cheap, because you're loosing out on the flexible people, who can stick with you for decades, all be it in different roles, than you hired them for to begin with. And we know that is the actually cheaper option, because such employees don't achieve higher wages and you don't have to spend on recruiting and onboarding so much. There are synergies to be gained from such people. I myself don't have so much potential for this, because my skill sets don't combine so easily, but imagine someone with IT interest or background looking for a job in logistics or someone with background in the field of law looking for a job in accounting. Such candidates will be thrown out by software 8 out of 10 cases, while they are the ones, who can contribute the most to your companies. So stop wasting money on software and hire more manpower to process the huge amount of CVs that come your way. Sure, you'll have more expensive HR, but the other departments will get cheaper and more productive.
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  28. Well, if these threats were proven in front of court... they could get negligent homicide...
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  29. Mate, same field, similar company mindset. My first proper accounting job after school, meaning very unsure about accounts, no connection between what I had learned at school and actual invoices... Yeah, fun. I told the head of accounting, that I'll need guidance, in the interview, very much before I got hired. I never received any support, apart from the software we use. No training on the internal system, didn't receive account list to this day or anything regarding fixed assets... meanwhile, I'm on my third accounting role in the company. As a result, I am the one who's being approached by folks. Was an invoice paid on time? Yeah, I look that up and tell, even though I don't do payments anymore. A colleague forgot to attach payment details? No problem, here they are. Generated from the system. Oh AR didn't send over invoices? No problem. Anything about overhead invoices? Yeah, that used to be my position, so I can explain a thing or two, I might not be an expert, but, for some reason, I always managed to either point to the answer or to someone with it... Cause, you know, I've had to work out, what was what in my early days. Now, I got sick these few months back... meltdown from my bosses idiotic behavior, tooth ache (the teeth had to be extracted), covid, left one evening with a fever... Yeah those were interesting three months... and guess what. Our CFO berated me over how little I were at work, even though I've had doctor's notes, and in the same breath praised me over how helpful I was to everyone around me. Then, he tried to force a pay cut on me (very illegal, where I live), because I was not at a position, which demanded the salary I started with... The CFO even tried to throw my studies in my face... Yeah studies, I gave up on, because I was needed at the company for closing and didn't go for my exams. Meanwhile, I offered, that if I ever got sick, I'd work from home, right after I were hired. All I needed was a computer, but guess what. "No home office for you, drone.", was the CFO's answer. So I got my self a new job, so I'll be giving my notice shortly. Too bad it ain't accounting per se, but I can't stay at this company. I don't feel appreciated one bit. When I started my job, I was fine waking up early to get to the job. I was looking forward to learning from actual practice. Nowdays? I hate going to work. And the craziest thing about all this? So my company basically forced me out, yet when I started working there, HR was practically balling their eyes out, over how they can't retain talent. I wonder why is that.
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  30.  @eq2092  Yeah, don't have 10 years of working experience after 1 year of leaving full time studies...
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  31. That is simple. By job hopping and finding a company, which won't do that. I am leaving my company over this.
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  32. I disagree with you a bit, finding out, why it happened benefits you in two ways. One, if it were an actual problem and not an HR crotch, then you have to fix it to get more hireable. Two firings don't come completely out of the blue. Recognising a similar pattern can give you heads up to intensify your job hunting and be ahead of the curve.
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  33.  @seanmysel5823  But you need to know, it's just an opinion and it's unfounded. Because if that opinion is for instance, that "finance analyst can't use advanced functions in Excel.", then that is a genuine problem for you to fix, if you want to get hired as a finance analyst.
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  34.  @pipsplay  Which is why you need to make them understand, you don't tolerate shenanigans
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  35.  @ALifeAfterLayoff  Not to mention brach of contract. Companies like to put non-compeets with language, that would make your accounting job disappear, if you became a part time welder somewhere else...
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  36. Interesting. Here's how probation work's in Czechia. During up to first three months, six for senior leadership, either side can just walk, as if in at will employment. If not in this period, minimum notice is two months, but both sides can agree on a longer notice period in the contract, as long as it's equal. Eg. employer can't force employee to give them greater notice, than they have to give the employee. There are exceptions, though. If employee truly horribly breaks his duties (usually comes high/drunk, beats coworker...), these have to be agreed upon in advance as more serious derelictions of duty, or if the employee was sentenced for at least six months for a crime against the employer, or if his conduct was not connected to his work was sentenced for at least a year. If the employee proves legally incapable of carrying out his duties and the employer stated in writing in the last twelve months, that the employee must take action to fix this incapability and the employee doesn't act (licensing requirements stemming from law, for instance, to advise people on debt, you need a license from our central bank), or if while on sick leave the employee gets caught outside of permitted hours outside the dwelling the employee stated he would stay at during illness. An employee can immediately end his contract, if he can no longer carry out his duties due to health reasons and the employer didn't move the employee to a new position within 15 days of being made aware of the fact. This has to be done by a doctor's assessment. Or if the employer didn't dully pay in full all compensation due to the employee within 15 days of due date.
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  37.  @callmekirkland8  I disagree, I got my job months after stopping writing cover letters. I will admit, that I'm from Europe and finance, so it might be either cultural, field specific or both, but when I stopped writing cover letters, I didn't notice change in potential employer responses.
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  38. Yeah, I'd rather see a 4+1 work week, where 4 days would be worked and 1 day would be spent on development, and let the employee decide, whether that 1 day will be through employer provided courses, weekend courses at a university or acquiring a certification or license. Think there could be better results that way.
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  39. Yeah, when I started ať my current job, I literally received condolences, because my direct boss And one od my coworkers were supposedly pain in the ass... Imagine, how I felt on my First day
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  40. This is something I could not explain to my dad ever. That not just employers sometimes advertise on multiple sites, but also that sites are actually interconnected in some cases and are carbon copies of eachother! When job hunting, I'm job hunting on the largest portal around and, surprise surprise, all those other portals have job opportunities that are copy paste adverts of the same companies, sometimes with some specs added or retracted, but the same ads all the same... But dad was all, "And what about this site?", or "Look, they're advertizing over on that site!" and I'm like... "yes, they are. They have my CV for a week now... Found their advert on the site I use."... Or the lady at the labour office, "But you're only responding on one site! Try all those others!", to which I pulled out printed email, where one employer asked me, to stop responding on all the sites, because they received my CV eight times in one week... And of course, didn't hire me then. Two sets of two years of job hunting. Then, my tenure at my former employer ended, I wrote off another, cause the job was absolutely not for me (I'm not cold calling). I went dry for a month, then, a recruitment agency called, pushed me through to my current employer and a month after that, I'm starting my probationary period. It almost feels, like you're trying to get a mortgage out of a bank. Not for you as a person, but for you through an intermediary? "How low do you need your interest rates, sir?"
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  41.  @truemore75  Well, you have no other options here, though... Well, apart of going global and establishing a branch in like India or Czechia... And I really wouldn't bet on AI or electric cars... Lot of snake oil in tech these days.
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  42.  @lazypioneer91  Nope, that wouldn't fit the legislation, because work can only be carried out at workplace.
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  43.  @lazypioneer91  It's not that messed up and since law in EU is harmonized, I'd expect something similar to be in all the EU member states and the UK, given how recently they left. That law actually causes employers to care about employee's health. They would gladly put the cheapest and worst chairs in the office, if they could get away with it. If this didn't apply, they cloud get away with that by shifting to full remote positions, where ever possible and since all of Europe is shifting towards services, opportunities for this are only growing. That law was written in an era, when work was done at a factory and to some extent in an office (very few people were doing office jobs), not on the Internet, but that doesn't mean, it doesn't cover aspect of work from home, which the employers would gladly begin to abuse to lower their headcount costs.
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  44. @Josiah Galicia That's not everything. As a cat owner, I can tell, that my productivity as an accountant would suffer a bit... Cats simply come, start studying the invoices and suddenly, I can't input them, cause kitty got exhausted and is now purring and sleeping and you dare not disturb a sleeping cat.
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  45. 2 or 3 months aint that much silence... I had a potencial employer, a major corporation, respond with an update, that the selection process is still ongoing, after 6
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  46.  @eq2092  I literally have studies supporting my point. Ask yourself another question. Why is it, that guys right after school have double the unemployment figures than average? If employers cry, about not being able to fill a positions, shouldn't they lean in and hire guy, who doesn't fit that well and train him? Shouldn't employers offer more than minimum wage? If there indeed was shortage of workers, you'd expect that to happen. They didn't even through pre-covid years. Look at houw employers behave and then judge.
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  47. AI avatars... Way to remove human from HR.. Guess, we all need to stop being employees and go fund our own budinesses...
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  48.  @seanmysel5823  which is what I did... because I saw the writing on the wall, because I spent the time looking into this.
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  49. There is easy fix. Never network. If you won't receive bumps in salary or promotions, that you want, just leave the company for a new one. Don't go to HR, what positions are open. Don't go above and beyond. Just keep an eye out and make your own promotions through lateral movement in the job market.
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  50. I say, be authentic, never lie in an interview, but do keep a blacklist of companies, that ever lied to you and never EVER interview with them again, if they'll lie (already have two entries) and if you ever hear someone think up loud about joining the company, warn them not to and tell them what happened to you and exactly how. Do what you can and is legal, to deny such companies employees, because nothing else will secure change, given the fact that legislature, which should answer to you, is in the pocket of employers. And remember, employers have forgotten, what it means growing their workforce. I live in Czechia, even through covid and well before and after, we have had unemployment at that level and companies compeeting in crying over not being able to hire, that they need more flexible job market... Yet, our wages didn't keep up with inflation even before covid. We have some of the most profitable companies year-on-year, yet vast majority of them offer minimum wage even for as specialized positions as accountants, CNC programmers, IT admins, certified welders... Not one of them offered apprenticeships in their respective fields, let alone paid ones! And basically no company offers minimum economic wage (cost of living+maintaining the job) in the area they operate in.. And now they want the ability to lay off people without stating reason! They all behave like a cartel, only authorities are scared stating that!
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  51.  @Meritumas  But it severely limits their ability to spy on you. This way, you at least control the environment. No putting spyware into my NAS, TV or anything ethernet connected
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  52.  @newagain9964  Sadly, window of opportunity for that is closing. It's becoming "industry standard".
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  53. Things need to change the other way around. Let me tell you, this refuse at all cost bullshit was here even before Covid! So, you're wrong on that one. No, what needs to happen, is, unemployment benefits need to be set at actual individual costs of living for each person, must be automatically granted to anyone not working and, at the end of the year, corporations need to be made to pay, for what had been paid in the year prior. Basically the game must change from "chose whom you want." to "You can chose to hire them, you can chose not to. Either way, you'll pay for them!". At which point, the companies will restart hiring, because that way, they'll get at least something out of it.
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  54. I actually understand a bit the position of finance... I am an accountant. I handle huge amounts of money on a daily basis. Money, that is not mine and that I am responsible for, if something bad happens. Now I have a bit of interest in computer networking and can tell you. Home networks are not safe. There's a whole lot of poorly configured devices on these networks as well as IoT devices with poor security and the networks are not partitioned, meaning any one of these could be used to attack the work issued laptop. If I were in CFO position, that would be a major argument for me, to want to not have my people work at home. Not that I don't trust them, I don't trust their network at home. To illustrate, I interviewed some time ago with a company, that was hacked a few years earlier. In spite of IT working around the clock, their accounting system was still not fully recovered from the attack and they had to do workarounds. The problem here from IT standpoint is, that if you're in remote-first environment, there's a much wider angle of attack on your infrastructure, meaning you're under greater threat. This is what the CEO or CFO will hear from the CIO, hence the resistance to work from home in these high-stakes positions. Work at home can work for some fields, but not in all. IT and anything having to do with PCs is a good example. Why? Because the people working there are aware of this and act accordingly at least most of the time, hence lower threat and they can work from home safely. A call center operator? There are ways to add layers of security to what he/she is doing (and I'm not talking just about VPN) and there is no direct way, these people could handle the company money, hence same risk, but less danger and thus they can work at home, making ti possible for these people to work from home. But finance? These people handle the money directly in at least some positions. in smaller firms maybe even in most if not all positions. These people are not computer savvy to the point of securing their network (because it's a completely different field from what they use computers for), hence massive danger of losing money due to a hack. Now what is the answer here? Well, there are four. 1. There's the hybrid model, where employees have two works stations, one being a laptop at home, one being a computer in the office, where the laptop is hard locked from the more sensitive agenda. Meaning that the accountant, for instance, can input invoices in to the system from home, but pay them in the office. 2. There's department structuring, where tasks, which can be safely done remotely are given to some employees to work from home and then there are few people, who have to come to the office, handling the more sensitive stuff. Again an accounting example. There are AP, AR specialists, who work from home, inputting/issuing invoices, and then there are treasurers, who are in the office and pay them. 3. buying the employees the equipment and training them, to use it properly. I have bought myself a router and switches, which can do VLANs and I have a specific network, firewalled completely from my core/home and IoT networks, so that I can work from home safely. Anyone, who's willing to put about four hours in to some learning can do that. 4. Combination of the above.
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  55.  @muadhnate  the problem ain't the ať company gear, it's the at home consumer grade stuff! Think the cheapest routers on the market. As for legacy stuff, not sure, if porting would work. Building And exposing a proxy and firewalling the legacy servers could be cheaper and with fewer risk of bricking key functionality in the process.
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  56.  @vinterskugge907  Not at all, the main problem with 5 days is not really the time spent in the office, it's the fact, that we're doing BS jobs. This would return some autonomy to workers and let them get actually marketable skills, which could get them from bad employers...
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  57. Funny, we've seen studies, that pointed to improved productivity while at home.. So science can't be trusted either. Thanks corporate
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  58. There is never a good or bad time to look for a new job. Maybe, just maybe you can take a breather fourth to twelveth month of your new employment. There are always opportunities out there to sieze. Take my case, for instance. I ended uni and started looking for a job in my field, with a degree in accounting. At the time, economy was booming, employers were crying their eyes out, that they can't find anybody to fill roles, unemployment was sitting at 3%. Two years of looking for a job, well over 1000 CVs sent out, very interviews, none of them returned an offer. I then took a less than minimum wage job with an idiot of an employer, just to get my experience up, then had a panic attack caused by said employer and off for another year of aggressive job seach, sending out CVs with no luck... then covid hit and, third minister of healthcare in (we had four total just during covid), I scored my first decent job... I found a job in my field for more than minimum wage, in the middle of a lockdown! When I could have been fined, for crossing county borders without proof of good cause. Even in bad times, there are people, who need job done and are willing to pay for it. It would be crazy, not to look. Maybe don't advertise on job boards, but do send CVs out and take calls from recruiters.
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  59.  @ALifeAfterLayoff  That is rather hard to do these days. Have been through quite a lot and saw enough red flags to populate all of Beijing... I'm just worried, that this abyss of toxic employers start to look into you, as you're stealing a peek at them.
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  60.  @middleagebrotips3454  to some degree, there are services, that allow companies to upload and download invoices as basically raw data and if both companies are tied into the system, even immediately enter the data in, just like a human would.
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  61. As someone with well over 1000 responses and only a handful of actual interveiws behind me, I can tell you this. If a company admits in a moment of weakness, they do this, blacklist them. I had reached out to this major car manufacturer, that I'd like to apply what I've learned and look at the practical side of accounting, working for them, they told me, to apply to this catch all position, that they have set up specifically for this. Back then I did this, but as soon as I got a new job, I have blacklisted this company for myself. One of the best employers around mind you, because they don't treat their potential colleagues with respect and dignity. If I were in shoes of that hiring manager and get a call from someone, stating, they're infront of my office, crossed two hundred kilometers for that job opportunity, I'd feel compelled to at very least sit down with that person for a short 10 minute introductory session and I'd actually look around all kinds of departments, whether they could use the guy, because that is the decent thing to do. point them to an application, where I'd full well know, they'd get ghosted.
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  62. Non competes need not banning, they need reworking. Where I live, non compete clause only applies, where the worker quits and the worker has to be compensated for the inability to work in similar conditions, the penalty being the loss of the compensation. To illustrate, say you work as an accountant in accounting company, then you can't go doing accounting in another accounting company for two years per non compete agreement or start a business of your own doing accounting. For those two years, you receive salary as if you were employed by that employer and it doesn't bar you from doing accounting for say a manufacturing company, because in that space, you're not competing with your former employer. In that case, if you found job quickly enough after resigning, you'd effectively have double salary. If you moved to another accounting company, the only thing, that your former employer could get out of you, is the rest of the money they should have paid you for that agreement. But man the idea of being tied by a non compete after you get let go or fired is absolutely ridiculous! I mean, such agreement, if left alone, would be illegal on the grounds of lack of consideration!
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  63. Yeah, no kidding, operate at a level not based in reality... I worked for this company a while back. They introduced automation for payment allocations and, I think, they never properly tested the thing. Many, many, many Pounds later, I'm staring down a list many many remnants of incorrect allocations, because somewhere down the chain, somewhen, there were some errors, and nobody thought, that it might be a good idea, to have same reference number and invoice number in intries, so that reference number could survive in the records, so that the other company could doublecheck their records, whether they paid in full... We eventually managed to find out, which invoices had these remnants on them and when done, myself, my dear team mates and client's representative had a sit down with the CFO. And the CFO was like, "How could have this happened?", so I explained, very respectfully (I assumed, it was his idea, to do it like this) and recommended what to do to the system for any future situations... but in my head I was like "Dude, a human NEVER would have made such a mistake!" So to sum up. I assume, because company wanted to "save money on payroll", they axed large part of their accounting team before I was hired, and in the end, they had to form a six member team to investigate, what was going on, which took months! The CFO's general attitude seemed to me, "who needs account auditing and proper reconciliation process anyway?". The best part? Given the turnaround on this account alone, they could have hired a single accountant, let him/her do the reconciliations (even in the this volume, it was work for an hour or so), let him/her twidle thumbs for the rest of the day, and the'd still pay less than our team racked up in those few months it took to sort this mess out... And we had multiple accounts to chew through! But the CFO asked... "How could this have happened?".
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  64. I actually think the passport question is legit. You don't need to be national of a country to have that countrie's passport. For instance, if I were to lose my Czech passport, I could go to a consulate or embasy of any EU state and ask for temporary travel document that, that is a special type of passport with shortened validity, to be able to complete my journey and return home. Or I could have invested in a country and gained golden visa or even full passport as non-citizen. Assuming this were in the US, I could hold a green card, in which case my passport issuer (though this is a borderline case) might be legitimate question. A representative of a US company in the EU holding a EU passport would have legitimate advantage over someone, who hold's US passport. Since you can end up with a travel document that does not match your nationality, I'd say this is at least defendable question.
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  65. Here is the simple way of dealing with this kind of BS. Tell them, that in one year, when you are going to have this conversation again, or if you won't be having this conversation again within a year, they can consider that day the day of your notice and follow through on it, by starting job hunting say a quarter ahead of the meeting. You might lose the job over this, but staying with such an employer is worse in nearly all aspects. Bonus points, if you'll leave the company under such a circumstances, that it gets posted on R/prorevenge and R/antiwork
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  66. Yeah, I saw one tech. I read in Chip magazine about that technology about a year before the ad. That tech was out for about three years at the that time. They wanted five and offered about 3/4 of field median sallary for the position... Completely disconnected with reality, this company.
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  67. I have a few things to say here... 1) Being contract worker ain't that bad. That is actually employers playing with fire, cause being a contractor is one step from giving up on the job market altogether and starting a business of your own and at that moment, the employers have lost. Cause entrepreneur can go multinational if need be. He/she can't be so easily controlled. And if there is little difference in monetary security between jobs and entrepreneurship, then going the route, that gives more options is the way people will take. 2) There is long term problem I think everywhere on Earth (except the Netherlands, they typically cover commuting expenses), that the commute is not considered work, yet, it is time spent by the employee on work. So you and your fellow HR professionals need to get political and push for commute to be considered on duty time. The moment, corporations will have to pay for all the time employee spends on tasks related to work, is the moment, when the employers shut up about working from the office. 3) We need employees to get more vengeful, when this happens. We need more "whistleblowers" out there, so that upon layoffs, the FTC, IRS, OHSA and other interesting accronyms get working these companies. Bonus points if the CEO then has to explain them selves to both FBI and the CIA.
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  68. But you should have hired him. You should have helped and trained him and you should learn, to pay extremely well even in training. Why? Because perfect candidates are unicorns and going forward, you could say, they won't exist on the open market anymore. The population is aging all over the developed world, people are retiring and we have some of the smallest generations coming up to replace those retirees, meaning there will always be unsatisfied demand for people. HR needs to start telling other departments "you need to train people into the positions you want them filling 5 years from now" and tell the C-suite "you need to forget cutting headcount even exists, or this company is gonna crash and burn. Talent has become way too precious, to justify losing it over short term gains".
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  69.  @MgelikaXevi  It's better to have no postings, than being turned away for BS reasons. We don't need employers, that don't play fair in economy.
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  70.  @eq2092  Nope. Always got praises, how clear it was, that I wanted to work. How down to earth my requirements are... You might want to read a bit closer... particularly around the part, where they posted the same position the very next week... as in literally over the weekend of refusing me.
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  71.  @justinwhite2725  Im in a similar position, although I hate my employer. Just today, my trousers got torn. There wasnt a usable sewing kit ať work, so I told my boss And my collegue, that ill buy some new ones, cause policy on acceptable clothes. I got berrated over my attendence by my bosses boss. Meanwhile ive been pulling 9 and longer workdays on a 40 Hour workweek.
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  72.  @382u3uuej  Pretty sure, it's not just bias. You see, what you talk about is true to some extent, but there is a problem in your logic. If we accept this bias as true, why are companies not actively developing employee retention strategies? Why is it, that wages don't keep up with inflation and the best you can expect, even in companies posting record profits, is some 3% to 4% year on year nominal raise and no improvement to benefits? You'd expect, that if an employee can do more qualified job, the company would increase their salary more than just inflation and provide more enticing benefits, because that employee can do the lower job more efficiently (because of faster training) and/or advance within the company to appropriate position, when company growth demands it. Yet, we see yearly culling of headcount and twenty to thirty years of stagnant wages. If it's more expensive in the long run, to always hunt for new employees, why is it, that shifting companies every two or so years brings so much more income to the emplyoee? Shouldn't company remove this incentive by increasing it's wage growth above the inflation level or better yet, incorporate langugage into their contracts, that guarantees inflation raises every year and merit raises only being considered above that? After all, emplyoees don't work for nominal wage, they work for the real one, hence, if company isn't willing to increase wage sufficiently, they'll be forced out by costs of living. If it indeed is so much cheaper, to keep old employees, why don't we see retention effort beyond public relation stunts? Why do we see pipeline postings, that never have actual position to be filled behind them all the time? Why do we see so many sales positions marketed as something else, like consulting or even highly technical work like computer networking? Why do companies use this bait-and-switch? Why is it, that company creates a recreation room, as Bender would say it, with Blackjack and hookers, and then hold it against the employee for utilizing those facilities even once? If you're employed only to do the work, why invest in those facilities? Hence, why I think, you are wrong. And why you should look at employers with more critical eyes.
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