What do you do when you can’t seem to go anywhere?
You know, when you think you made one step forward, only to find out you have taken two steps back.
Do you sit back and reflex on what went wrong?
Do you try again using a different technic?
Do you give up immediately telling yourself you’ll never be able to do it?
It’s all in your state of mind and how bad you want it things to happen.
These past weeks, I though I was going somewhere with my job search and being able to help one of the flippers in town. But instead it went in a different unexpected directions.
Job applications and interviews
In my latest post title Follow-up
I was called in for an interview regarding a Building Inspector position with the province. As mentioned in my blog, I felt so confident and positive that when I got out of the my interview I immediately thought I had the job.
Well, I didn’t get the position.
I could’ve been upset that I didn’t get it. I did get a little disappointed.
I didn’t think to much of it. In a few hours, I was back on using my 6 steps in Looking for work.
Two steps back.
Maybe there’s something better out there waiting for me. Or maybe, I’m not meant for a job at all.
Which brings me to my so called work with Shawn.
Chasing my tail
When I first met Shawn, he made me do an online Behavioral Assessment. I encourage anyone to do these as they are quit accurate and can help understand your work ethic and behavior around other co-workers.
Shawn send me my result in a PDF format and he was kind enough to take time with me and go through it.
I came out as an Altruist. An Altruist is congenial and cooperative with an ecient, precise work ethic.
Ironically Shawn’s test came out as a Captain. So he said.
As an Altruist, I work well with others and actually needs to be given tasks.
Shawn came out as a Captain (so he said). According to google, he’s a “natural leader who both inspire and challenge their teams and raise the bar for their organizations.”
These two types of personality normally work very well together, right?!
After seeing a few of his projects, Shawn would never called me to do work. Instead I had to call him daily and casually ask him if he wanted me to do any work. Most of the time he didn’t. So I would plan on other things during my day.
In my 20 years of my career, I worked on creating plans with 3D modeling and coordinated teams on project. Project managers would often call us up in order to get an estimating quotes out of these model. Piece of cake by the way. So when Shawn asked me to find him an easy program to do drawings, and another to do estimating, it just didn’t make an sense to me. All 3D modeling creates 2d plans and estimating schedule in a snap of a button.
Trying to explain to Shawn the beauty of having a 3D model program to do all of his demands, he schedule a zoom call for me to show him how it works the following Thursday.
Thursday came and my presentation was all ready to go. Disappointed, he never send me a zoom invitation on the due time. He never reschedule. He never called back.
I waited on his Captain’s behavior to call me.
He never did.
Two steps back. Again.
A week goes by till I had to call him. Again. This call was going to be different.
One last call
I decided to give Shawn a call after over a week.
I asked about our zoom call that didn’t happened.
“well, you never called back to reschedule”
He’s the one that decided on the time and day. So was it really my responsibility to reschedule?
Then we discuss on how I wasn’t executing on any of he’s project.
Kind of hard to do when I didn’t have keys, financial numbers, or a final deadline to create schedule.
He somehow thinks none of it was he’s responsibility to give me.
If he’s a captain of he’s ship, it ain’t gonna sail very far by himself.
We agree there was a miss communication, that it wasn’t gonna work out. I left the door opened and still offered him help with the 3d modeling and estimates he requested.
He never called back on that second opportunity.
I honestly could give out more on our 34 minute conversation, but I’ll just leave it there
Two steps back
Did I learn something? Yes I did.
Communication is key, and I could’ve insisted more with Shawn regarding giving me some tasks or something.