Been at my current job 5 months, and looking for a new one

"Textured Soy Protein" (texturedsoyprotein) 10/21/2014 at 22:33 • Filed to: None

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I work as a career services director at a tech school. Before this, I was a recruiter and recruiting manager in staffing agencies and corporate HR departments. I took this job because I was sold on the idea of helping students break into a new career field. But I'm looking for a new job already, because of paperwork and bureaucracy.

What they didn't tell me about at all during the hiring process, is that this job is a paperwork and bureaucratic nightmare. I actually took a pay cut, because the idea of helping people break into a new career, after a bunch of frankly cynical hiring of experienced people, was appealing. The max salary was about $10k less than I had made before.

The problem is the school is so overly paranoid about protecting itself from potential lawsuits, that its lawyers have come up with multiple overlapping processes for how everything should be documented, and it's a giant steaming waste of time. For example, what should be a relatively simple task of documenting that a student or graduate is working in their field of study, looks like this:

1. Have student complete a form detailing their employment including supervisor, wages, etc.

2. Type cover letter to send form to supervisor to verify the student's employment.

3. Print out cover letter, and list of courses for student's degree program.

4. Scan cover letter, employment form, and course list into PDF.

5. Set MS Outlook to request delivery and read receipts on emails.

6. Send email to supervisor with PDF attached, and cover letter pasted into body of email.

7. Print out sent email, and delivery/read receipts for sent email.

8. Have my supervisor review all of these forms generated so far and sign off on them.

9. Enter information on employment form into crappy database.

10. Print out screenshot showing employment info entered into crappy database.

11. Press save button to actually save info into crappy database.

12. Write on printed-out screenshot of crappy database that I have entered the information into the crappy database.

13. Two-hole punch the massive stack of paper all of this process has created, and put it into the student's career services folder, all in the correct order as specified in a gigantic policy manual.

14. If employer actually returns verification request, print that out, update the crappy database to show the employer returned the verification, print another screenshot, write on that screenshot, and file it in the student's career services folder.

Now here's the thing: most of the time, a person's supervisor won't respond to employment verification requests, because companies do employment verification by HR, or an outside verification company. If you want to actually verify employment, ask how that company verifies employment, and use their process. But I don't even have the option to do that.

So effectively, the process, and all that busywork, isn't set up to achieve the goal of actually verifying student/grad employment. It's set up to achieve the goal of producing lots of documentation that we tried to verify the student's employment.

And that's just one little thing.

It's infuriating, and I spend more time chasing bullshit paperwork, than I do chasing jobs for students, or teaching them how to write resumes, how to search for jobs, and how to interview. Which is what I should be doing.

So, even though it's only 5 months in, I said fuck it, I need to get out. I applied to 4 jobs tonight, and I'm going to keep applying until I can escape from this paperwork tornado.

Nibby > Textured Soy Protein 10/21/2014 at 22:38

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Make sure whatever job you get pays you enough money so you can afford a new six figure vehicle.

Nerd-Vol > Textured Soy Protein 10/21/2014 at 22:39

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Could you become a private head hunter?

Textured Soy Protein > Nerd-Vol 10/21/2014 at 22:43

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Been there, done that, not really looking to go back. I was a recruiting manager at a staffing agency for 5 years, and I had started out there as a recruiter. I'm not particularly excited at the prospect of going back to a commission job. I'm more focused on corporate recruiting or HR management positions.

Textured Soy Protein > Nibby 10/21/2014 at 22:44

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I'd settle for something that undoes the pay cut I took for this job. I mean, I still do alright, but yeah, more money would be better.

Nibby > Textured Soy Protein 10/21/2014 at 22:47

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Good luck with the search!

Frank Grimes > Textured Soy Protein 10/21/2014 at 22:51

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Sucks man. That seems like such a soul sucking nightmare all the paperwork and stupid inane process of doing it that keeps you from actually helping people doing the part of the job that would give meaning and satisfaction to doing it. I am currently seeking for work as well and its such a pain.

Textured Soy Protein > Frank Grimes 10/21/2014 at 22:56

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Yup, looking for work sucks. Since my whole career has been in staffing, I know all too well about how much companies suck at hiring people. It makes the job search process less frustrating, even though it still takes longer than it should.

That said, I'm more just disappointed because the job I had directly before this one was a contract position, and I was looking forward to having a job where I could stick around for a while. I have great job stability here, because actually my numbers are the only department that looks good right now. But there's just too much nonsense for me to put up with.

I'm not going to quit without finding something else first of course, but it's annoying that this isn't working out how I would've liked and I have to hit the job market again so soon.

shop-teacher > Textured Soy Protein 10/21/2014 at 22:58

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That sounds like a soul crushing cluster-fuck. Good luck in your search.

ttyymmnn > Textured Soy Protein 10/21/2014 at 22:59

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What about the TPS Reports? Did you get the memo?

Frank Grimes > Textured Soy Protein 10/21/2014 at 23:01

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and the fact it seems they misrepresented the job. It always seems so one sided. The place I apply for doesn't care anything about me they will say do whatever to get someone to fill the position demand this and that this experience or that qulification and think they have a right to charge as little as possible because after all. Its me the schmuck who needs a job.

Textured Soy Protein > Frank Grimes 10/21/2014 at 23:12

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I don't know if I would go so far as to say they misrepresented the job. Because I am there to help students get jobs, and I do that. It's just that they didn't go into detail about the massive amounts of paperwork.

One question I've learned to ask when interviewing for staffing and HR jobs is what kind of performance metrics they have. Because in staffing and HR, there's really never much paperwork, but you have varying degrees of stats that get tracked, and they can range from no big deal to overly-micromanage-y. They can also vary from being tracked automatically by the databases and applications you work in, to doing a bunch of creating Excel sheets and tallying up things manually.

This school did say they have a fairly heavy amount of metrics, but a lot of them are automatically generated by the databases we work in. But they didn't really give a clear picture of how much of a mess those databases are, and how much of a bureaucratic mess things are in general.

On my first day, I showed up to get training from my counterpart at another campus, and they jumped right into "here's how to do this paperwork, and that paperwork, and this paperwork, and that paperwork," and I was like, "uhh wtf this is a lot of paperwork." It has only continued to get worse from there.

area man > Textured Soy Protein 10/22/2014 at 09:48

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How did you get into the staffing/HR field?

MontegoMan562 is a Capri RS Owner > Textured Soy Protein 10/22/2014 at 10:23

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Sometimes the best intentions don't pay off.

I'll recommend getting into recruiting for a field you like.

for me, i'd be awesome as an advertising recruiter...because I love advertising (and have worked in tons of different advertising roles, so I know what's needed in the jobs). But if you wanted me to be a recruiter for something like banking? BLEH I'm out.

Textured Soy Protein > area man 10/22/2014 at 11:28

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I took a break from college to start working. I had a couple unremarkable jobs, and a friend got hired as a recruiter at a staffing company that hires people at the ground floor and trains them up, and has a big referral bonus if you refer someone in and they get hired and stick around for a while. So that friend referred me in to get the bonus, and I ended up sticking there for 6 years and getting promoted twice.

Textured Soy Protein > MontegoMan562 is a Capri RS Owner 10/22/2014 at 11:39

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All of my previous recruiting experience has been in assorted technical fields. Which I like. And I'm still doing, just more acting as a placement agency getting students into entry-level tech jobs. I like that part. I just hate the paperwork nonsense more than I like the getting people jobs part.