The place between

I am about to stride forth into my new position -- one my clients are expressing relief and happiness I have. And at the same time, I am looking ceaselessly for employment elsewhere within the company, so I can salvage my resume at least a bit. It would be hard to credibly explain to a future employer why my resume shows a step back in my department. Nobody is going to swallow the "my position was eliminated" line, no matter the truth of it. The best route for me is to find something else as quickly as possible, so I won't have to show this position on my resume. The hitch is that I am very attached to my remaining colleague, I'm competitive about making further gains in what has been a very challenging service area (gains nobody thought anyone from my department could pull off, and which I'm starting to get credit for). And there's no guarantee any new position I land will be any less stressful than the one I already have. I wish I had a spare pile of money around so I could just equip a space and start churning out artisan chocolates and just chuck this whole corporate life. If the economy were a bit better, I'd consider it. But it's no time to be depending on a 1-person start-up to pay for itself, pay off a huge business loan, and also keep filling the savings account. I feel stuck in a place between vantage points, a valley full of brush to hack through before I can get to a hilltop, rest a moment, and see whether or not I've made good progress.

Who supervises these people?

Having not received a formal offer of employment in the mail, I finally wrote the recruiter and asked if one was forthcoming. She did not respond. I found out that a colleague had also asked, and had been told, bluntly, "No." When we asked our VP (who's interim director until she hires my department a new fearless leader) about this, she got right on the phone and instructed Recruiting to send us our offer letters. Apparently, Recruiting thought what we were going through was a transfer. No... a transfer is when an employee is moved from one existing job into another existing job. In our case, our jobs were eliminated and we went through a recruiting process and a very few of us managed to snag different (purportedly, at least) jobs. My offer came via telephone, and I had two days to accept or decline via email. Anyway, so today I got an offer letter, by email. Not as an attachment on letterhead, but as an email (and it had the wrong effective date of my new position). So I responded and asked if the email was an electronic copy of the letter being sent to my mailing address. And the recruiter responded "No, just print and sign. :)" Perhaps I'm making too fine a dice of this whole process, but I'd really like some formal, signed evidence of my offer. On company letterhead. With the correct start date, and without the emoticon. I wouldn't be such a stickler, except that HR has been making insensitive and just plain idiotic mistakes ever since this process started (they sent out job description packages that were full of errors; later they called me with an offer but couldn't name the position they were offering me), and I just want them to do something right for a damned change.

Catching up

Yikes! It's been too long since I last posted. Here's what happened: I went to the interview. The skirt fit! I rocked that interview like Mick Jagger rocks "Shattered." Got a second interview. And did not get selected for the job I had targeted. Nobody who applied for that position from my department got it (and we all got the exact same talking points about why, which would be irritating if I wasn't so tired). I did, however, get a job offer for a different consulting position in my current department, which I accepted because I am not too proud to settle. It came with a chunky raise, which does not ease the pain of losing my beloved manager, losing my cherished team, and knowing my workload will increase to the point of career damage. It nearly makes me wish I'd just taken the severance package. But, I'm in it full-tilt for now, knowing that along my path, other opportunities are bound to blossom.