Kate and I decided that it would be in my best interest to no longer work from home.  My cabin fever as of late has been pretty depressing and with me not leaving the house the only person I can interact with on a daily basis is Kate.  I reached out to my boss who was very much on board with me no longer working from home as she thought me being in a field office would be a much better working environment.

It has now been over a month in the making but the paperwork is signed, the budget is in and as of today the required equipment has been shipped from corporate.  I am scheduled to begin working from the local field office, which funnily enough is the office I used to work from prior to switching roles, on Monday.  I am very excited to be back in an office, having a professional environment, people to bounce ideas off of and most importantly to not be in the home all day.

Now I just need to go pick up all the pants I had altered from the tailor otherwise I have nothing to wear to work!

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There are some mornings that you think to yourself, “I just shouldn’t have gotten out of bed at all.”  Unfortunately this morning has certainly been one of those.  The clock has finally flashed past noon and I feel it is possibly safe enough to begin chronicling what has been one of the worst mornings for me in a long, long time.

I woke up, as I do most mornings, protesting the light in our bedroom.  I dragged myself out of bed and plopped myself down into my office chair.  In my usual morning haze I managed to unlock my workstation and that’s when things started to go down hill.  First and foremost I noticed an “Error: Network connection has been lost” box floating on top of a reminder that I had an 8:30AM call I just didn’t want to be on.  I hoped the error message was nothing to worry about but as I tried to reconnect to work services I realized I had no internet access at all.  Now, a geek without internet access is like a fish without water even without the looming fact that I need to work; which requires the internet.

Needless to say the internet is a no-go and I make the decision to shower and get dressed right after my 8:30 call and rush into the local field office prior to my next call.  As I am hitting end on my Treo I am hopping into the shower and I get done in record time.  Check the internet one last time with no success and pack up to head into the office.  This is where the story really goes down hill.

As I am loading my work bag and what not into the back seat I realize the drivers door is not closed.  It’s not wide open, but it is certainly ajar.  I open it and water rolls off the arm rest and onto the floor at my feet.  Looking inside the seat is wet and the floor is a puddle.  I tried to clean it the best I could but I needed to get on the road to make it in time for a call.  As I sit down I realize that while I tried to dry the seat, there was still a good deal of water in it.

So here I am with my wet butt and thighs driving down the road staring at the clock and hoping I am going to make it on time.  The traffic is horrible and some idiot let a school bus get in front of us.  I finally make it to where I think I can break off and take a shortcut to find the police blocking off the road, most likely flooded from the rain last night.  I continue on in bottleneck traffic and decide I’ll try another shortcut.  I guess this route, which is usually empty, was broadcast to everybody in the county as it too was bumper to bumper traffic.  Needless to say I took my next call in the car; something I very much dislike doing.

By the time I made it into the office I was able to setup my computer just in time to get onto 2 hours of back to back calls.  What a horrible morning.

However, I do need to point out that my morning was not the worst there is to have.  I’d like to take this time to offer my sympathies to a friend of mine, and a reader of this blog, Scott.  Scott was faced with making the hardest decision a pet owner ever has to make.  This morning he was forced to put one of his beloved cats down.  Yesterday his cat began having some serious issues.  As he posted entries on Twitter and his personal blog my heart tore open.  I couldn’t imagine going through what he has and I fear the day that one of my boys becomes ill.  This morning he had to make the decision we all hope to never make; but know at some poiont we may have to.  Scott, I am truly sorry for your loss and I know words alone wont do anything.

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My Working in the recruiting industry you become accustomed to the high turnover of co-workers.  This is a love you when you’re hot and leave you when you’re not industry and as such when a financial quarter comes to an end you never know who you’re going to find isn’t there anymore.  Today for the first time in a long time I remembered to sign into our internal Microsoft Messenger service and noticed that one of the very few people I actually have on my list now has the infamous “D-” in front of their name, which stands for disabled and is the indicator that the person is no longer with the company.

I’ve worked with this particular lady on well over 100 orders in the past year alone.  We’ve battled through multiple internal and external problems to provide the client with the best possible service while adhereing to our own corporate requirements and requirement for profit.  She was one of the very few who took and valued my advice and as such there was never a problem with her candidates, billing or level of service to the client.  I valued our professional relationship and we had built a decent friendship.

I hope she has found herself a new job and has not been released but I don’t think I’ll ever get an answer to the question.

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CareerBuilder.com recently conducted a survey exploring how hiring managers are making use of social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and the like.  22% of hiring managers responded that they’re using social networking sites to research their prospective employees as compared to 11% in 2006.

According to the survey,

The top areas of concern found on social networking sites include:

• Information about alcohol or drug use (41% of managers said this was a top concern)
• Inappropriate photos or information posted on a candidate’s page (40%)
• Poor communication skills (29%)
• Bad-mouthing of former employers or fellow employees (28%)
• Inaccurate qualifications (27%)
• Unprofessional screen names (22%)
• Notes showing links to criminal behavior (21%)
• Confidential information about past employers (19%)

The article also points out some tips for cleaning your profiles for prospective employers

• Remove pictures, content and links that can send the wrong message to potential employers.
• Update social networking profiles regularly to highlight latest accomplishments.
• Consider blocking comments to avoid questionable posts; avoid joining groups whose names could turn off potential employers.
• Consider setting profile to private so only designated friends can view it.

One in five employers uses social networks in hiring process.

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Those of us in the Human Resources and Recruiting games have to make character assesments of our candidates.  But what do we have to go on?  Their resumes are crafted to speak to their professional accomplishments and attributes which tells us they’ve the skills to do the job we’re looking to fill however it tells us nothing about them as a person.  We conduct phone screening and in person interviews and they’re on their best behavior with the intent to impress us.  Many times we can spot the freaks, the crazies and the lazy losers from these screenings; but some of them are really good actors.

Whenever I’m in doubt I try to Google the person to see what they may have posted on the internet.  I’ve found numerous candidates, their photo collections, blogs etc.  Often these results are harmless and end up being a waste of my time; however there are some cases when they’ve turned out to be a real positive use of time.  Like the unnamed candidate who posted a blog entry about using his brothers urine for a drug test or the crime report for a candidate who was arrested for selling drugs in a High School parking lot.

Today I was playing with StumbleIpon which has “Human Resources” as one of my key search categories and I stumbled upon this page, Spokeo/HR.  This page allows you to enter a candidates name and search numerous social networking sites for their profiles and information.  It searches sites like FaceBook, MySpace, Flickr, LiveJournal, Blogger and many others.  I randomly pulled some of the low-level candidates I had in the mix and searched them.  Found some pretty interesting pictures, some horrific choices in movies and music as well as some horrible political views; however so far nothing that made me say a candidate can’t work.  However in one case I saw way more of a female candidate than I would in an interview.

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… has been keeping me awake at nights.  Tonight we went to bed by 10:15 and I was out of bed in a cold sweat (after two bathroom trips) by 11:15.  Issues at work and self pity caused by career situations have been weighing heavy on me.  My goal for the moment is to continue conversing online until I am so exhausted I can just pass out.  I’m not making much sense in the conversations I’m having but I never do when sleep deprived.

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Usually a good blogger will blog about all exciting, depressing, or even humerous events that occur in their life.  An annoying blogger blogs about every single thing in their lives even when it bores the piss out of everybody.  A bad blogger forgets to blog about major events.  Kate and I are officially bad bloggers.

Kate’s Career
A little bit over two weeks ago Kate received an amazing job offer.  She was not actively job seeking but a job was brought to her attention and it was suggested she apply for it.  She put in her resume and figured she’d see what happened.  Needless to say they wished to see her for an interview.  Just when we thought it was a dead issue they came back and asked her for a second during which they informed her an offer would be forthcoming.   Once she received the offer there was no way she could not accept it.

She’ll be moving significantly higher in her career and stepping into a managing role.  While a managing role is amazing enough, she’ll be the Associate Manager of Marketing Communications.  This is a major title for her and it comes with a very large pay increase.  While we’ll be losing the tuition reimbursment that has been very good for us the pay increase will counteract the loss and at the end of it she’ll be a lot better off.

Dave’s Career
My account has continued to grow in volume of work despite a very low sales number for the month of April.  We began our new contract on March 31st and my wrok weeks have gotten more and more busy each week.  My boss has recognized that I am putting in a significant amount of effort and I think she even realizes that I am grossly underpaid.  She is doing everything she can to get me additional money and despite that being told to me before by numerous other bosses she has actually done something about it.  I received a very generous bonus as a “Merrit Bonus” last week.  The bonus was slightly over 5% of my anual salary.

The Vacation
We have returned from an amazing vacation taken with three other couples.  We flew to San Jaun, Puerto Rico and spent a day there before boarding Royal Caribbean’s Adventure of the Seas for a cruise of the Southern Caribbean.  We had an amazing time and are very eager to book another vacation with this group of people for 2010.  It’s very rare for me to find people I can be with for that length of time without getting angry, annoyed or saying something that would jeapordize the friendship and that did not happen with this group.  I am quite delighted and was very happy with everything that happened on the vacation.  Great times, great people and amazingly great food!

Driving Test
My drivers test is scheduled for Wed, May 28th at 11am.  I am very nervous but confident that I can do everything required to be a good driver.  My concerns lie with things like doing the proper checklist before starting the engine, keeping my hands at 9 and 3 (10 and 2 is no longer acceptable in NJ), and other stupid things like making sure I follow the proper order for routine tasks.  I’ll either blog all excited that I passed or be silent because I did not.

Fun & Games
Today Kate sent her father and I to GameStop to see if they had any used XBox 360s in stock.  Kate knew how much I’ve wanted to get my hands on GTA4 as well as some other games and how I was being a cheapskate and not going out and getting one.  So with my bonus money I have purchased a previously used Xbox 360 Elite with 20 GB HD (yes the Elites come with a 120 but GS sells them without the drives) and a wireless remote.  I got GTA4 to go with it and have been playing it a bit today.  We’re in CT so I am playing in SD mode (Standard Definition) rather than on my 1080p capable 42″; but it’s great!  Loving the game.

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… Just give a simple answer!  I can not even count the times today I have sent a simple request out to the field and received gibberish, long winded responses with no content and or additional questions without a bit of a response to mine.  Some examples:

Q) Will your candidate be accepting this job offer?

A) Is there a fixed markup?

Q) Can you provide three times tomorrow your candidate can go to be finger printed?

A) They’ll go tomorrow.

Q) Are you free to discuss this in detail on the phone?

A) Where?

I’ll just slam my head on the table now.

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Work has been oh so very busy as of late.  On March 31st we entered a new contract with my client.  This new contract allows us to do business in markets we’ve never worked before and furthermore has reduced the total number of competitors from roughly 150 to 15.

Under the old contract in 2008 (January 1st – March 30th) we saw a total of 194 openings of which 37 were canceled.  This gave us 157 jobs to work on.  This kept me busy throughout the first quarter.   Sure I had some points where I wasn’t swamped but more often than not my day was full.

So far since March 31st under this new contract we have already received 95 openings.  14 of which were canceled giving us the ability to work on 81.  These positions are across numerous markets we’ve never done business with before and thus require even more involvement than the orders prior.  I’ve been doing 10 hour days every day since this contract started and don’t think this will end and fear it will get worse.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to working from an office more often than not in the future as I am starting to get cabin fever working from home.  Beyond that I have no escape from work; Kate and I retire to the home office to relax or play on the computer and I find myself at the same desk I spent 10 hours that day.  Furthermore, I find myself answering work emails and checking the voice mail on my phone!  Thankfully I am going on vacation in roughly a month, I can really use the time off and away from the home-office and pressure of working.

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Slow to post, but last week I got my promotion.  It came with a nice pay bump (10.5%).  I now hold the title of Service Operations Manager.

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