Slashdot Mirror
How Do You Job-Hunt If You Work Overtime?
Lord_Dweomer asks: "As a recent college grad, I took a job to pay the bills, but soon realized that it would end up sucking the life out of me. I work a lot of overtime in a high-stress, tight deadline job. Once you get into that kind of downward spiral, how do you find another job?"
"All my free time, during the week, is completely non-existent, and the weekends are needed to take care of chores, and preserve my mental health. Are potential employers typically sensitive to the fact that I may not be able to interview during the week or during standard work hours? Also, will having left here after a year seem like a real black mark on my resume? My reasons for leaving, aside from the overtime (I am non-exempt), would be that I've basically been promoted in work load and responsibilities -- and have even taken on another job role, IN ADDITION to my current one. All of this without a raise in pay, or new title.
I'd quit if I had a choice, but I really need the money, yet I'm unable to look for a new job because of lack of time. How am I supposed to job hunt under these circumstances?"
I'd quit if I had a choice, but I really need the money, yet I'm unable to look for a new job because of lack of time. How am I supposed to job hunt under these circumstances?"
As much as I hate dealing with this festering pool of opportunists, sometimes you just have to contain your revulsion and deal with a headhunter. With the promise of a fat fee, they can be quite motivated to place you and can often get you "in" to places that would just pass your resume by.
There are lots of positions that you could look for online at any time of the day or night. Why not just look for the job after hours and send off your resume by e-mail then? You're going to have to take a day off or something for the interview, but that's even if you're not working overtime.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
I'd set the amount of time needed to write, proofread, edit, proofread, and submit a story to /. being at about 30 minutes. I'm betting hunting for a new job takes significantly more than 30 minutes.
"Your effort to remain what you are is what limits you."
You just graduated from college yet you sound as drained as someone nearing retirement. Snap out of it, get your resume out there, pound pavement: you don't work 24*7.
Or... are you in over your head? It's one thing to get your degree, another to apply the theory to practical use.
Whatever happens, do not quit your job yet. It's easier to get a job while you already have one. A potential employer may consider you a hothead if you tell them you quit your job with nothing else lined up.
Trolling is a art,
Quite often additional job responsibilities are given not because of evil intent of the management, but because employee is eager to take stuff on in hope of a raise or promotion. This is especially true of new employees just out of college. Make things mechanical. Plan how much time your current workload will take, and once there's an attempt to add something on ask what part of the stuff you currently do your manager wants to "load balance" to someone else. If he has no intent to do so, warn him that things will take longer and some things may not be done.
You will end up working a little overtime (just to recoup the time you spend browsing slashdot at work), but things will become controllable. Working more than 10 hours a day and more than 5 days a week is unsustainable. So it only makes sense to do so if you need or want to do it temporarily, to, say, meet a deadline or to get rich in a startup. Pre-deadline crunches shouldn't last more than two weeks, though. If it's more - your management is doing something wrong and you should simply refuse to come in on the weekend or stay late.
I call asshole who's never had it that rough. Some jobs require - absolutely require - that after a few months in you have some spare time on the weekend or else you simply crack up. The OP probably would have had an easier time doing it in the first month or two but, of course, he didn't know he should be looking for a job then.
I've been in this sort of situation before. Frankly, I find that it's hard to go through a good job search if you have a full-time job at all. I find job searches to be worse than any full-time job I've ever had, and having to do it after a long day's work isn't fun. Doing it after working 18 hours straight is pretty demoralizing.
And on top of all the rest, potential employers want everyone to be so goddamn chipper. That's what gets me, is even if your working hard and still looking for a job, you're tired and a bit depressed, which is exactly the wrong state to be in if you want to get hired. They want you to have the most beautiful resume ever, a personally-crafted cover letter, and a big smile on your face when you show up for an interview. Lots of them want you to tell them how they have the best company ever and the job you're interviewing for is your dream job. All this after they went through all the trouble of writing a 2 sentence job post for Monster.com.
Honestly, my theory is that there's a serious problem with the way we find work, in that the skills to find the job, the skills to get the job, and the skills to do the job are often not the same. Sometimes, they're contradictory. And we don't have help, and we treat people like their lazy idiots if they have any trouble with the process.
I mean, yeah, you have to suck it up. If you want a job, you have to do it. But can't we have a little sympathy for someone who works long days, has other things going on in his life (don't we all?), and is frustrated by the job-search process? When he asks for help, can't we offer something more productive than name-calling?
My advice (and others have said similar things) is to put limits on the hours for the current job. When they dump more hours and responsibilities on you, say no. Leave on time. Take vacation/sick/personal time for interviews. Do what you need to do. It won't make your boss happy, but you don't need him to be super-impressed if you're not trying to move up in that company anyway. Wait until you get your new job, then work your ass off to impress the boss. Work your ass off when you work for a good company where hard work will pay off.
*yes, before I got my current job, I interrupted my job search for about a month because I was working 20 hour days sometimes and I didn't have the energy to look.