Don't take career advice from GQ.........seriously.......
Was I being unprofessional. Job interview and follow through.
- Thread starter bmathe02
- Start date
There is some excellent advice in this thread, but I think it comes back to the pay. At two days a week for 15 weeks, a $750 stipend is equal to $2.50 an hour. That does not seem like he values you or your work very much. The guy lowballed you and ending losing you to a firm that has no problem paying you what you are worth. His tough luck. I do agree with Ian that you should have taken on more hours, though.
Feel free to disagree with me about how internships are learning opportunities and the pay is not important, but in my experience, the pay has varied directly with the amount that I have learned at internships. I find it amazing that it is still legal to exploit students with these unpaid and stipend internships.
Feel free to disagree with me about how internships are learning opportunities and the pay is not important, but in my experience, the pay has varied directly with the amount that I have learned at internships. I find it amazing that it is still legal to exploit students with these unpaid and stipend internships.
I say drop that firm like a ton of hot bricks. Like mretzloff said, they weren't paying you Sh*t. Sounds like they would keep you in a low paid position to keep getting grunt work out of you too.
I was lucky. The degree I got (Graphic Communications) required us to do 2 internships. They do not let us take unpaid internships, and most pay in the $14-20/hr range depending on if they provide housing too. We work full time for a semester or summer. I think the old way of interns getting paid nothing or very little because of the "experience" they are getting us utter crap. Its just a way to get free/cheap office helpers in the name of being "noble".
They did nothing for you. You owe them nothing. If they wanted you, they would have done everything to keep you. This is a different world than the one our parents grew up in. Yea, moving jobs every 3-4 years is probably a bad idea, but at the same time getting a job straight out of college (or high school) and staying there for 50 years is becoming much less common. If there is no immediate opportunity in your company to move vertically, use your experiences and skills to move horizontally into a better position at a different company.
I was lucky. The degree I got (Graphic Communications) required us to do 2 internships. They do not let us take unpaid internships, and most pay in the $14-20/hr range depending on if they provide housing too. We work full time for a semester or summer. I think the old way of interns getting paid nothing or very little because of the "experience" they are getting us utter crap. Its just a way to get free/cheap office helpers in the name of being "noble".
They did nothing for you. You owe them nothing. If they wanted you, they would have done everything to keep you. This is a different world than the one our parents grew up in. Yea, moving jobs every 3-4 years is probably a bad idea, but at the same time getting a job straight out of college (or high school) and staying there for 50 years is becoming much less common. If there is no immediate opportunity in your company to move vertically, use your experiences and skills to move horizontally into a better position at a different company.
Last edited:
- Thread starter
- #25
he wants you to tell him that you are going for job interviews?!?! and then proceeds to explain how foolish you have been by considering leaving him... he is the one that is unprofessional.
- Thread starter
- #27
Great advice guys especially doc.
Just to add to the saga. I come in to the office this morning I do my usual hand wave gesture but today he principal did not wave back or say morning. That to me is a bit passive aggressive. Anyway one of the senior associates who works the construction managements side of the firm as well as both design house and constructions house money dealings asked if I was coming in on Friday or taking off to go to church. At that time I mentioned I am leaving at so and so. She was genuinely sad because she was going to recommend me to the principal for a position here. I told her I was offered already but I am leaving regardless. We talk about what I will be making and she told me to take it. She said you would make 10 an hr 3 days a week. In the 8 month to year range 11-12 at 5 days. I won't be able to negotiate until the 3 year mark when I would be so involved with various projs I would be too hard to replace. Every employee was an intern there which i find strange from a business perspective. No employes have benefits as well. So if your willing to sell yourself short for 3 years you will learn a lot.
Just to add to the saga. I come in to the office this morning I do my usual hand wave gesture but today he principal did not wave back or say morning. That to me is a bit passive aggressive. Anyway one of the senior associates who works the construction managements side of the firm as well as both design house and constructions house money dealings asked if I was coming in on Friday or taking off to go to church. At that time I mentioned I am leaving at so and so. She was genuinely sad because she was going to recommend me to the principal for a position here. I told her I was offered already but I am leaving regardless. We talk about what I will be making and she told me to take it. She said you would make 10 an hr 3 days a week. In the 8 month to year range 11-12 at 5 days. I won't be able to negotiate until the 3 year mark when I would be so involved with various projs I would be too hard to replace. Every employee was an intern there which i find strange from a business perspective. No employes have benefits as well. So if your willing to sell yourself short for 3 years you will learn a lot.
- Thread starter
- #28
Interesting you bring this up. I had to go to a site and document and went with another employee. Its funny because the girl who is the same age as me and came in as an intern in the previous batch. (He does this every season to correlate with school semesters.) is currently in the 3 days a week 10 hr period but was offered to come full time (8 months in after internship). She did not give an answer yet because she is doing exactly what I did and that is interview with others. You can't necessarily make interviews happen if you work 10 hrs and only have a 20 min lunch. I told my story on how I was "suppose" to tell the principal I am going on interviews and she thought it was insane just because your asking to be replaced sooner than you'd like. We talked and discovered we only averaged 2 interviews a month and that's a being generous because some of those we were under qualified. So essentially you don't know when you will get a a job offer but to show your hand like that is asking for trouble. She is waiting on a follow up after an interview from mon. I wish all those interviewing good luck.
The days of people holding jobs at companies for 30+ years are well over. Once employer loyalty left the workforce, employee loyalty wasn't far behind it. I'm never one to burn bridges, but you gotta look out for number 1 - giving an employer a heads up that you're leaving never seems to make a ton of sense, it just makes you that much more expendable.
The boss' passive-aggressive "I'm not going to wave at you anymore" seems a bit silly and one more reason you are probably well off being somewhere else.
On the other hand ... and not to say that you should go back, but ... I know it's easy to focus on dollars when you are fresh out of school and into the workforce, but experience in those first few years is worth a lot more.
My advice to anyone starting out would be to find a workplace where you will get good supervision, guidance and mentorship from experienced and knowledgeable professionals, and as long as they pay you enough to barely survive (hopefully more, but now is not the time to make that the deciding factor) ... learn everything you can. Once you have a year or two of that real-world experience under your belt to compliment your schooling, then you are a lot more attractive to potential employers, who see you as someone who doesn't need constant mentoring & oversight anymore but who can be left to his own devices most of the time without screwing up.
Back to the OP ... I suspect your current/former position would have been a better fit if the boss wasn't so ... well, you know. He doesn't seem to handle things well, and maybe doesn't have the best plan for attracting and retaining the best and brightest young workers.
This. I don't know where GQ comes up with some of this crap, but changing jobs every few years MAY be a track to a higher salary, but it certainly is a track to a reputation for disloyalty.
There are people in my industry who have been with the same company for 20 years, and I'll tell you, they are FAR more respected than those who have worked for 3 different (and competing) companies in the last 10 years.
It's tough to take a man seriously when he's trying to sell a product but spent the last 6 years telling people how poorly it performed compared to the two products he previously sold.
garyg
B&B membership has its percs
I didn't think GQ still existed? It was silly 40 years ago. My only advice would be to learn how to spell and use proper grammar, and not to reveal to the web that you took a year on the bum. You want to be as professional as you want to be treated.
I haven't read the other replies, but IMO you were not the one being unprofessional. The principal was.
Often managers take it badly when there is disagreement, and they are unable to enforce their authority since you are planning to leave and they have no power over you any more.
BTW one thing I have learned is that if you put yourself out for a company they may seem grateful, but when push comes to shove they will not repay any favours, they will put their interests over yours. So be professional, put yourself out to be a good employee, but never assume your selflessness will be rewarded. Remember this when the work/life balance is horribly skewed against you.
You are not your job.
Often managers take it badly when there is disagreement, and they are unable to enforce their authority since you are planning to leave and they have no power over you any more.
BTW one thing I have learned is that if you put yourself out for a company they may seem grateful, but when push comes to shove they will not repay any favours, they will put their interests over yours. So be professional, put yourself out to be a good employee, but never assume your selflessness will be rewarded. Remember this when the work/life balance is horribly skewed against you.
You are not your job.
Was the GQ advice to take a new job every 4 years, or to move to a new company every 4 years? There's a big difference between the two, and I'd argue that after 5 years doing the same job you've stalled out and would benefit from a change.
+ eleventy seven.
I choose the people that work for me, (7 in the last year) and one key thing I look at on resumes is if there is a pattern of job hopping - changing jobs after a few years.
If there is, the resume goes in the trash can without a second thought.
+1 That's my opinion on it too.
- Thread starter
- #37
It depends on the age of the applicant.
One of our most dedicated techs came in with a resume that looked like that of many young men in their mid-20s. 2 years here, 2 years there, 2 years there, all three being different jobs/industries.
It takes a while for a person to "find themself".... at 30, I had 6 companies and 5 different industries on my resume.
What I look for in a "job hopper" is that each change came with a steady climb in responsibility. If someone is doing the same thing for 3 different companies (regardless of pay/benefits), then they go in the round file.
In the case of the OP, I feel that he made the right decision. He is an intern, looking for a paid job.
Not every internship leads to a paid position at the company that provides the internship, and in this case, the principal is giving grief over leaving instead of working for him for what is below minimum wage in some counties?
I would not consider leaving an internship for an actual job to be "hopping"... that is finding an opportunity to better yourself.
I wonder if that's a generational thing: I am of the same opinion (in my early fifties now) and I was always told if I saw a CV with regular changes, bin it. Then particularly here in Singapore, it's totally acceptable and even expected. When I was first recruiting for someone here, I followed my old wisdom of binning all the CVs I received with what appeared to me to be job hoppers. When I had finished doing that, I realised I had no CVs left to look at, and had to revise my thinking pronto.
The only advice I would offer the OP is look out for yourself and your own future - no other b*gger will.
This +1.
Similar threads
