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Feb. 14th, 2010 01:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivkaWhen Michael started at his current company, a transportation engineering firm, he had been unemployed for a long time. He started working there as, essentially, a contract laborer, doing unskilled or barely-skilled work for a low hourly rate, sometimes working very strange shifts and very long days in undesirable conditions. It helped put food on our table.
He got signed on for a longer-term project, still low-paid contract work, conducting a survey of public transit passengers in Baltimore. He spent a lot of time riding buses and trains on distant routes over scary parts of the city. Sometimes he had to be at the bus stop at 5am. When the bus-riding part of the project was over and they were compiling and checking the data, Michael distinguished himself by showing that he could make good data out of bad, applying logic and reasoning to figure out what was meant by the responses to a poorly filled-out survey.
A job opened up as a courier. Still menial labor paid at a low rate, but full time. They offered it to Michael. He did it well. It offered him the opportunity to be known around the company.
Then a job opened in the accounting department. Michael had been wanting to move into a financial position, having developed that interest serving as the treasurer of our church. He interviewed well for the job, but it was hardly surprising (although disappointing) when they gave it to someone who had several years of experience working in a similar position. Michael kept on with his courier job, doing it cheerfully and well.
Eventually the supervisor of the accounting department contacted him again. They kept being slammed with work, and she had received permission to create a new position for someone to help out with a variety of tasks across the department, filling in for someone who was about to go on maternity leave and then also picking up the slack in a number of areas. She thought Michael would be a fine person for the job. He stopped couriering and was given an office of his own. He learned billing and accounting skills on the job.
Over time, Michael has developed a reputation in his department: if a project is a total mess, and something very strange has happened in the intricate details of billing and payment, and you can't figure out what the hell is going on, Michael is the person you want to give it to. He digs back through years of records and straightens everything out. He likes the challenging assignments. Over time, his boss has handed him responsibility for more and more tricky projects.
On Friday she called him in to her office. The partners had announced that no one would be getting raises this year due to the dismal overall financial climate, as he knew, but she wanted Michael to know that she was so impressed with his effort and his skill and his positive attitude about challenging projects that she had gone to the mat for him. There won't be any COLA raises across the board, but she was able to secure Michael a 10% merit raise. In this economy, that's a very big deal.
I am so proud of Michael for getting his foot in the door at this company and working his way into a great position via techniques which are almost Horatio Alger-esque. He never acted like the early, crappy, menial, contract projects were beneath him. He made himself highly visible as a person it would be good to hire and then promote, and it paid off, and now he has a job he enjoys and a job he does extremely well.
He got signed on for a longer-term project, still low-paid contract work, conducting a survey of public transit passengers in Baltimore. He spent a lot of time riding buses and trains on distant routes over scary parts of the city. Sometimes he had to be at the bus stop at 5am. When the bus-riding part of the project was over and they were compiling and checking the data, Michael distinguished himself by showing that he could make good data out of bad, applying logic and reasoning to figure out what was meant by the responses to a poorly filled-out survey.
A job opened up as a courier. Still menial labor paid at a low rate, but full time. They offered it to Michael. He did it well. It offered him the opportunity to be known around the company.
Then a job opened in the accounting department. Michael had been wanting to move into a financial position, having developed that interest serving as the treasurer of our church. He interviewed well for the job, but it was hardly surprising (although disappointing) when they gave it to someone who had several years of experience working in a similar position. Michael kept on with his courier job, doing it cheerfully and well.
Eventually the supervisor of the accounting department contacted him again. They kept being slammed with work, and she had received permission to create a new position for someone to help out with a variety of tasks across the department, filling in for someone who was about to go on maternity leave and then also picking up the slack in a number of areas. She thought Michael would be a fine person for the job. He stopped couriering and was given an office of his own. He learned billing and accounting skills on the job.
Over time, Michael has developed a reputation in his department: if a project is a total mess, and something very strange has happened in the intricate details of billing and payment, and you can't figure out what the hell is going on, Michael is the person you want to give it to. He digs back through years of records and straightens everything out. He likes the challenging assignments. Over time, his boss has handed him responsibility for more and more tricky projects.
On Friday she called him in to her office. The partners had announced that no one would be getting raises this year due to the dismal overall financial climate, as he knew, but she wanted Michael to know that she was so impressed with his effort and his skill and his positive attitude about challenging projects that she had gone to the mat for him. There won't be any COLA raises across the board, but she was able to secure Michael a 10% merit raise. In this economy, that's a very big deal.
I am so proud of Michael for getting his foot in the door at this company and working his way into a great position via techniques which are almost Horatio Alger-esque. He never acted like the early, crappy, menial, contract projects were beneath him. He made himself highly visible as a person it would be good to hire and then promote, and it paid off, and now he has a job he enjoys and a job he does extremely well.
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Date: 2010-02-14 06:39 pm (UTC)Also, three huge cheers for the accounting supervisor, for getting him that raise.
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Date: 2010-02-14 06:45 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2010-02-14 07:55 pm (UTC)I'm so glad that his merits were recognized and awarded even in the current awful state of almost everything.
P.
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Date: 2010-02-14 10:47 pm (UTC)I wish my husband had half as good an attitude.
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Date: 2010-02-14 11:25 pm (UTC)I would really like to change Michael's name and hand this story out to the interns I'm talking to next month about resume building and career success. How would the two of you feel about that?
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Date: 2010-02-15 01:51 am (UTC)I'm fine with you using my story, although please make sure that all potentially-identifying details are removed.
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