How can I demonstrate that I'm a good employee, despite my weaknesses, and overcome what's being said about me at my last job? How can I demonstrate/prove that my "people" skills are better than my former supervisors are giving in references?
I'm currently in a bind. A huge bind. Prior to moving to a smaller town to be with my fiancee, I spent six years working in a corporate setting as a technical writer, before becoming engaged and then being laid off.
The problem is that my former job, reference-wise, has become a lead weight in terms of finding another job after the move.
From the outset, it wasn't a good job situation. There were territorial/ownership issues, because the IT department's Help Desk refused to participate in a review process for user manuals, and didn't really have a software development process to follow, so screen changes were often arbitrary.
Later, after developing an online help site for a company website with the help of our education services unit, and no input from the Help Desk staff, although they would have gladly been included if asked, I discovered that they were telling field agents out of spite to ignore the content because it wasn't "their"content.
I tried to keep matters professional, but unfortunately, it got personal as well. I also discovered that some of the same Help Desk coworkers were spreading rumors about me in building (for example, one prevalent rumor was that I was gay).
During those six years, I was bounced between 6 different bosses. The first was a hands-off boss who was temporary; the next two were project managers who were good at managing projects, but not good line managers in terms of team building.
The third supervisor, I even had to discuss with HR over an evaluation that violated company evaluation practices. I suspect that she knew about the rumor-milling, but she refused to address it, and instead, hoped to force me to quit as a way of dealing with the issue.
I did the best I could do to get along, and do my job as best as possible, and I did consider bailing from what was an unhealthy work situation, but then a good boss came along, and this one was highly-placed enough to shield me from some of the shennagians I'd been dealing with, so things improved a lot. During that time, I got a couple of years of good reviews from him and some better work opportunities.
However, that boss only lasted two and a half years before he was forced out of the company and replaced by yet another boss, who was a former VP at a larger company in town. It was clear from the outset that she was playing favorites from her old work team.
In the meantime, I and one other person had been tasked out to two program managers to transition into a business analyst/project controller role, which I did pretty well. However, our company was unwilling to redefine a job role for that position, and with budget cuts looming, our bosses decided it would be easier to simply cut our jobs and start from scratch.
Flash forward to 8 months later. I've moved to be with my fiancee. However, the place I've moved to is a smaller town, with very few professional jobs to speak of; my fiancee is a tenured college professor, who isn't in a position to move.
Despite aggressively applying for jobs and dropping off resumes, so far, I've only had two interviews and no success finding a job, and I've suspected part of the problem has been the last job, which I finally proved today.
Right before Christmas, I interviewed very well with a local school district as a technology support person, and they liked me a lot. This was right up to the point that they called my work references: according to the superintendent, I was rated very highly for my technical skills, but my last supervisor at the last job expressed concerns about my "people skills", and I was turned down for the job on that basis.
There are several reasons for my communication problems: I did have to undergo speech therapy when I was younger, and as an adult, I was dealing with several issues in the workplace which were affecting my speaking ability:
1. Allergies - in-building/regional allergies that impacted my ability to breathe, let alone speak, even with allergy meds. Ever since I moved, I have had almost no allergy problems.
2. Learning Differences - I have long suspected (but have not been tested for) the possibility that I have some learning differences, in particular some encoding/processing issues (short-term-long-term memory), which affect both my speaking ability and my processing ability.
Even with those impediments, I admit that my people and communication skills are good, but not great. My fiancee, who also has experience with learning differences, says that my people skills are fine, and she can't understand where these comments are coming from.
At the moment, however, I'm starting to feel like I've been rendered unhirable, which is putting a strain on my engagement and very frustrating given that I'm very intelligent, (have 2 Masters degrees), dedicated, adaptable, hard-working, and prior to this, was employed for 10 years straight following college.
How can I demonstrate that I'm a good employee, despite my weaknesses? Specifically, how can I overcome what's being said about me at my last job, and demonstrate that my people skills are better than my former supervisors are saying? How can I convince a prospective employer to give me a chance?
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If I was in your situation I would give the prospective employeer only the number for your past HR person, not your boss. They would be better about being more discreet with answers.
posted by stormygrey at 1:08 PM on January 5, 2007