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Hello all, Marty T Hawkins here with Warehouse and Operations as a Career where we talk about what we do, what we are passionate about which is the many Warehousing, Transportation and Operations Careers available to us. We have a lot of fun with the Podcast and try our best to get to all your questions and thoughts about the jobs and the task we as associates perform each day. As I’ve mentioned before now, please don’t hold us too to high of expectations regarding our audio or production capabilities. We’re just Op’s guy’s sharing our experiences in the industry and wanting to hear about yours. All of our guests volunteer their time and really enjoy sharing their experiences and expertise with our WAOC group! I really enjoy our Facebook and Twitter feeds too, look us up @whseandops and we like the Warehouse Equipment Operators Community Group on Facebook as well! If you are enjoying the shows each week shoot us an email to host@warehouseandoperationsasacareer.com, it’s great seeing all the communications each week!
I’ve sensed a lot of, I don’t know, I’ll call it frustration lately when I’m out and about so today lets talk about that a little. Earlier this week I was hanging around a Recruiting office and met a young lady that was seeking employment, a really frustrated applicant that turned out to be at her wits end searching for work. She came in and greeted everyone, she seemed to be in a great mood. It was around mid-morning and she was able to be seen immediately by a recruiter and got set up to fill out an on-line application. On-line applications seem to be everywhere now, don’t you long for the good old days when paper was king? Computers can be finicky for me and it seems there’s so many more lines on an electronic application than there was on the paper long form one’s!
Anyway she completed it and was seen immediately by a hiring agent where a position was discussed, something she’d be perfect for by the way, a really good opportunity I think. The recruiter was setting up her drug screen and explaining the process for her 2nd interview, more of a formality really in her case. That’s about when things kind of came unraveled for her. You know job hunting is tough and it’s stressful. It sounded like she had already been on an interview earlier that morning, possibly several the day before and I think hearing that there’d be a second interview was just more than she could hear at that moment. She became frustrated, almost emotional, and just left stating she needed work today! Look, it’s hard. The hiring process can take time. As we’ve discussed a couple of times here on WAOC, in many instances we can make it a little easier by keeping our heads, know and understand what we’re wanting or what we’re looking for. I think it’s important that we do a little research on prospective employers, we can make a list, even a long list of places with the jobs, hours and schedules and the opportunities that we’re looking for. Even when exploring temporary agencies or staffing companies we need to know what their offerings are. It’s pretty easy to find out what companies their sourcing for and making sure it’ll be a fit for us and our families. It’s tough, we may have been out of work for a while and need a job that starts right now, today, but that could hurt us more than it helps us. I suggest, whenever possibly, and I know life gets in our way more often than not, but whenever we can that we attack our job searches and inquiry’s as responsibly as possible. Attack it the way we’re going to perform at the tasks we’re hired for! I think this position could have been perfect for her and she’d have been a great fit for the company. It was just the wrong day, or maybe the wrong hour for her, she just wasn’t ready and maybe a bit worn out, job searching is tough but we can prepare for it and make it pay off in our favor!
Her story brings to mind a call I received early last month. A gentleman was a little unhappy where he was working. No immediate or daily issues there he just wanted to know if I knew of any other jobs hiring in his area. Now he’s a pretty talented order selector and finding another job in his particular market wasn’t going to be necessarily difficult for him and I encouraged him to stick it out for a couple of weeks, put out his feelers out, make a couple of inquiries or get some app’s filled out and be sure to give a notice to his present employer when he found something he thought he’d be happier doing. Well with his unhappiness already on his mind he’d decided not to go in that evening nor call his employer and let them know he wouldn’t be coming back. Ladies and gentlemen, try and avoid handling situations in that manner, it’s just not what prospective employers want to hear when those reference checks are made. Now I’m not talking about an unsafe or hostile environment, by all means we can’t keep ourselves in those situations but it’s so important that we keep our workplace reputation as intact as we do our personal reputations. It’s been almost 30 days later now, and he’s finding that a full time position to be a little harder to land than he’d thought. He’s working in a temp to perm position right now but boy does he wish he’d done things a little differently. I think he’ll be fine but it’d have been a lot better to of worked off of a plan instead of just throwing in the towel like he did.
Frustration is our enemy isn’t it? Almost everyone needs to work, I think it’s good for us to always stay busy, we’re humans and kind of need some structure. But we have outside lives too, family issues can strain us, our kids present challenges to us daily too, oh and we have bills, bills is another stressor too. I generally find people don’t walk, or can’t walk away from those things, we handle them and work them out, we figure it out right? I believe we should handle our work life in much the same way, our jobs aren’t the most important things in our lives but without one those other stressors aren’t going to get any better. I can’t imagine having no job or income is going to help correct any other issue we have.
As a Manager, I try and realize humans are people and people need a little help occasionally. For us as employees remember the advantages of going and speaking with, communicating, that’s a good word, it’s important that we speak with our management team about our frustration, no manner how small or large they are. I’ve always found miscommunication or no communication is the only communication that can’t fix any issue!
I wanted to mention that last Saturday we had a local Meetup at a meeting room in Dallas Texas. We had a blast talking about Op’s and helping a few people create or just clean up their resumes. Check out Warehouse and Operations Careers at Meetup.com if you’re in the Dallas metroplex, I think their planning on having one each month, maybe if enough of us check it out we can get together every other week or so. If for nothing else the free resume and career coaching help being offered is a lot of fun!
I’m going to try and run down Joe for next week, one of our got all the answers Op’s guys and let him tell us about how Narrow Aisles came to be and the differences in forward steer and reverse steer units regarding our standup forklifts! Shoot me an email to host@warehouseandoperationsasacareer.com if you’d like to share any thoughts or experiences or which kind of unit you prefer even! If you remember on our Taste of Oak Cliff episode Joe was telling us about a Distribution Training Center he’s helping put together, maybe we can pry a bit more information about that out of him as well.
So Thanks for listening in this week and please share our show with any Op’s friends that may find some value with our WAOC group! Until next week please try and be less frustrated at the workplace and life both and keep Safety as our 1st priority each shift! We all have others counting on us!