New to the professional world, how can I expect be evaluated?

June 1, 2013 11:09 PM

I'm relatively new to the working world and I've found that I still have a lot to learn about how things "work" and have found this community to be very helpful in the past. I've only been evaluated once before by the company I posted about before. At the time I didn't realize how ridiculous and unfair/unethical their treatment of employees/clients were so I don't have a good gauge for how my current evaluation will go. I was up for my 90 day evaluation about 30 days ago for my current job and it hasn't happened yet. From my intermediate boss, I hear that its a question of how to adjust my pay that is still being discussed. What could this mean? Is it bad? This is confounded by several special circumstances (below).

Additional information about me/the job:

1. Its my 2nd non-entry level job in an applied health services related field (e.g., social work, MFT, Speech therapist).

I'm working full time and I feel that things have been going well. I have a lot of autonomy considering the issues below but haven't been given a ton of performance feedback so far.

I was recruited for this job by a recruitment agency while I was still at my last job. I believe I'm at the average to slightly above average pay level for someone with my credentials and experience (1 year).

2. I am a full time (2nd year) PhD student at a "Research 1" university in a related field.

3. I am also a researcher on a multimillion $ NSF funded project.

4. Finally, I'm also an independent contractor doing similar work to #1.

5. My bosses know about #2 and #3 (though not what the project entails).

6. Other points/speculations: I believe I may have originally been recruited for my boss's job but taken on at my current position due to the commitments above.

ANY insight would be helpful.

posted by queenba to Work & Money (12 answers total)

From this and your previous question, it seems that you are spread very, very thin, and you are doing independent contracting that you haven't disclosed to your employer and which may actually compete with your employer. At the same time, your employer is misrepresenting your role to the outside world, in ways that benefit them and put you at risk. My impression is that neither you nor your employer is acting very professionally, which means that any typical 'professional world' expectations are irrelevant.
posted by jon1270 at 4:26 AM on June 2, 2013 [2 favorites]

If you have big bucks NSF level funding, then why are you still putting your career at risk with these people? Aren't you already getting paid? Why doesn't that afford you the freedom to get a new job, at least. Your previous post paints an ugly picture of your liability with your current employer, and I hope you address that thought somehow.
posted by oceanjesse at 6:21 AM on June 2, 2013

I don't really think the professional world is like school. You don't get A's, B's, and C's. You hear about it if you fuck up; otherwise, you rarely get "a ton of performance feedback."
posted by J. Wilson at 6:53 AM on June 2, 2013 [2 favorites]

Read the question--the OP is no longer at the job described in the previous question.
posted by enn at 7:07 AM on June 2, 2013

You hear about it if you fuck up; otherwise, you rarely get "a ton of performance feedback."

That. Feedback about my work (positive feedback, that is) comes in the form of emails or conference calls where someone higher in the food chain says something like "rtha had a suggestion about XYZ, which sounds pretty workable; what do people think?"

Otherwise, I'm expected to do the bits of my job I can do without assistance or input, and to ask for those when I need them. "Negative" feedback I get usually comes in the form of "Hey, remember next time to do [thing] in this process, and let people know that you did [thing]."

This level of feedback has been pretty consistent in my working adult life. Different fields may be different.
posted by rtha at 8:57 AM on June 2, 2013

Response by poster: Thanks for the responses so far. I'm not overly concerned about intermediate feedback, I'm just saying that I don't have a good sense of how I'll be evaluated at my review and why it's taking so long to discuss the pay issues. What do you all think?
posted by queenba at 9:18 AM on June 2, 2013

This varies by organization / department, but it's not weird to have performance evals quite late - have you talked to other folks at your level about how their evaluations worked? Is there a manager in another department you have rapport with that you could ask about evals? It could be nothing, but it's impossible to tell based on what you told us.

2nding that it seems like you're spread quite thin and the independent contracting sounds like an issue - you've told your full-time gig about the other jobs, but not that? Limiting your focus is going to help you be better at whatever you decide to keep doing (including being in touch with the internal culture at your work so you know what's going on in situations like this).
posted by momus_window at 9:42 AM on June 2, 2013

Response by poster: Another thing I should mention, the independent contracting is more of a time commitment issue. Through the contracting, I serve a population that mutually exclusive from the population my company serves.
posted by queenba at 9:48 AM on June 2, 2013

The way it usually works is that you put together a plan for the year, and then when the year is up, you have an annual evaluation to see how well you performed using the initial goal-document as your baseline. Particularly when you are given a large amount of autonomy, you are not going to get "regular" feedback. However, this varies by organization. The model I described is consistent with government organizations or other large institutions.

I don't see what your Ph.D. program or independent contracting situation has to do with anything. I would assume that someone in just the 2nd year of a Ph.D. program who was accepting a full time job planned to quit the Ph.D. program in favor of the job. Is this for a short story?
posted by deanc at 1:40 PM on June 2, 2013

Response by poster: Yes, its for a story and not my real life
posted by queenba at 2:22 PM on June 2, 2013

Mod note: I am assuming queenba is being sarcastic, but in any case "are you making this all up?" isn't the greatest way to approach a question.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 3:52 PM on June 2, 2013 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Hi all, thanks for the attempts to answer this question. Turns out they were just busy. And I got a 10% raise. Thanks anyway!
posted by queenba at 2:32 PM on June 9, 2013