I Applied for Another Job

Well I celebrated my year anniversary at Laws R Us this week. I couldn't believe a year had gone by.

At our group meeting on Monday I was awarded the one-year anniversary recognition gift--a nice pen. My manager told me I had to tell the group what my best moment was during my first year. Put on the spot like that I couldn'think of anything interesting or humorous so I just said it was the free fruit. I think now the best thing was probably going home after eight hours and not even thinking about work but I don't know if that would have been an appropriate thing to say in front of all the new employees in our group.

Since I've completed a year in my job, I started thinking about what else I might like to do in the company, expecting that job search to take months. In my department it's often said that management doesn't expect you to stay in any job for more than a couple of years. I began a regular scan of my company's job listings, both for my Widgets friends and for myself.

Amazingly, I quickly found a job that was a promotion and would use my web skills. I asked around and found out that the proper way to apply for another job in the company was to talk to your manager first, then apply online. I was nervous about that--what manager wants employees telling them that they want to take a job somewhere else. But my manager was very professional about it and even offered to find out more about the organization I was going to apply to.

Luckily there wasn't much updating to do on my resume. A quick, enthusiastic cover letter and it was done. Now the waiting.....

Reviews

I spent most of Friday and a little of Thursday working on my year-end review. My organization's year ends now but over the next year the year-end will shift to the spring to be the same as everyone in the larger corporations.

Reviews at Laws R Us are, IMHO, something that should be restricted by the Geneva convention.

First we have to write about the Goals we set for the year. It's pretty easy to write a paragraph that says, Yeah, I did that. (Yata! for Japanese pop fans.)

That's the easy part. Next you have to evaluate yourself against the eight or nine Key Success Factors. KSFs are about HOW you do your job. For example, how do you communicate, solve problems, etc. That's not all. There are six or seven qualities for each KSF that are different for each job level so there's really thirty to forty parts to the KSFs. Apparently other companies use KSFs but Laws emphasizes them in the review process over the Goals.

That means it's really important for a good review to write a lot of sharp stuff about how you satisfied the KSFs. Luckily a good review only has to include writeups on three qualities for each KSF but that's still 24 paragraphs that include a strong example. It's a lot of work.

My manager kept telling me "Don't overthink it! It's easy!" Right. I had to keep going back to his office to ask him about jargon in the KSFs that I still didn't understand. Every time he'd give me that "you're making it too hard" look.

It took most of a day to write the KSFs but I finished and I think it's okay. Unfortunately I still wasn't done.

We do 360 degree reviews, where a small number of people are asked to review you based on your Goals and....the KSFs. I gave my manager a list of people to review me (most of whom I'm confident will say good things) and I received requests to review a dozen people. Some of the reviews I had to do were easy but I realy struggled with some of them, not sure what things to comment on and how important my feedback will be.

Next I wait for my manager to write up his review of me and collect the other comments. He's going to go right to the deadline so it won't be for a few weeks. Then I can get my first raise and, amazingly, retroactive pay all the way back to when I started. That's more than fair.

The other downside to all of this is the less than optimal software we have to use. It's a product of some other division of the company so we're stuck with it. One of the first things you have to learn is how to go around it's limitations.

Is this a better process than others I've gone through at places like Widgets (no reviews or overtemplated ones) or Not Big Blue (manager reading my self review back to me)? I think there's too much writing but the measures are fair.

I think doing reviews is really important since they are the official statement of how you're doing but day-to-day honest communication and feedback has to be there too. My current job is the best I've had as far as communications goes. As they say in the HR manuals, the comments you hear in a review should not be a surprise.

I'm not expecting any surprises.

Career Class

Last month I started watching for the new batch of class announcements. There are always skills classes and classes on the products but I've taken most of the ones I'm interested in. The less-frequent topical classes get announced periodically on the location web site and fill up fast--classes on topics like Negotiating, Influencing People, and Career Planning.

I took Career Planning last week. I didn't know too much about the class when I signed up but within a few days I received a thick envelope with a bunch of glossy workbooks. The class was bought by my company from one of those learning/career curriculum places.

I really liked the prework. First, I had to answer questions about what actions I've taken about my career. Second, I had to fill out a career interests workbook. Third, I had to use stickers to rate my work skills and behaviors as "Rough Edges," "Polished," or "(Needing) Continuous Improvement." I gave copies of the ratings booklet to three people I work with so they could rate me using the same stickers. Getting feedback from others is a big part of courses like this at Laws R Us and I really like getting that information.

The class was two half-days in the afternoon. I think it probably could be two days or maybe a day and half but there was enough time to go over how to understand the information we brought and to see what we could do with it.

There were four tables of people in the classroom, a mix of people from very different departments and some people from the field. The format was typical Laws R Us, the instructor walking through a topic which we then talked about at our tables or in different groups that she created. It seems funny that a class about your career would include group interaction but it worked.

What I really liked about the class was that we started with thinking about our values and how we want our job to be in line with our values. There were a few people that had "Move Up Through Management" as their number one value but almost everyone else had "Be Content at My Job" or "Have Enough Time for Friends and Families."

We graded our workbooks. My score was low on career work--researching, networking, etc. I have to try harder to learn, look, and also to leverage my network.

The self-assessment versus co-worker assessment comparison was really interesting. Generally, my peers rated me higher on my skills than I did. I think there was only one area that I rated myself higher than they did so that's an area I need to look at. We created a plan for following up with our raters. Overall it's good news for my 360 degree job review that is just beginning.

At that point we had all the pieces to create a development plan...and we were out of time. How can I make myself do that when there's no pressure to finish it?