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So, I finally got round to buying myself a Flickr account where I can upload all my photos. You can view my photos by clicking here. I previously had a free account, but it would only display 100 photos for quick viewing, and I have more photos than that.

I’ve now added photos from my Lake District holiday in August 2005, and also some pictures of Riverside and Waterloo Park I took a few weeks ago. I haven’t had a chance to put descriptions on them yet, so I suppose I’ll be doing that at the weekend.

About that job interview I mentioned in the last couple of posts: A few days ago I received feedback and copies of my interview notes. It seems that they actually give grades to candidates for each competency – almost like an exam. The grades range from A to E, and to be considered able to do the job, you have to get at least a C in each competency. And it seems I did a lot better than I thought – I got grade Cs for 3 of the competencies, and grade Bs for the other 3. In other words, I did better than was necessary to pass the interview. The interviewer even said that she is “confident I am very capable”.

So why did I not get the job, you may ask. Well, I showed the notes to my managers, and we think it could be something to do with anti-redundancy laws. Even though my current department is going through a restructure (yes – still!), I am not officially defined as being “at risk” of redundancy. If a person is at risk of redundancy, then they are allowed to tick a box on the application form to say so. From then on, that person will be given priority in the recruitment process. So say if 2 people get an interview, one is at risk of redundancy and the other person has a “safe” job, and they both succeed, the position has to be given to the person who is at risk of losing their current job. The only exception to this rule is if the “safe” person is pretty much perfect for the job. If a person’s department is being downsized, the company is legally required to make every effort to re-deploy that person if possible.

There is no way for me to find out for sure, but I would assume that the person who actually got the job was officially at risk of redundancy, and therefore had to be given priority over me. There is a lot of downsizing going on in my company at the moment, so I won’t be surprised if that was the case.

To be honest, if that person was at risk of losing their job, I’m glad they were hired for the position instead of me, as I am still relatively safe in my current job anyway.

It’s my friend Naomi’s sister Sarah’s 18th birthday party on Sunday, so I’ll be going along to that. I’ll be going out to buy her a present on Saturday – probably some earrings.

My sister Suzanne has just started a new job in a clothes store called Outfit. She started last week, but the official opening celebrations are being held this Saturday. Apparently there will be goody bags for people who spend £20 or more, although I have no idea what will be in them!
 

Yesterday at work, my colleague and I delivered a Microsoft Excel training course to the other people in our department. Our manager had asked us to do this as part of a new knowledge-sharing initiative. We had to teach 20 people in total – we had a 3 hour session in the morning, with 10 colleagues, and then in the afternoon we had another 3 hour session with 10 other colleagues! Of course, I was a bit nervous, as although I have helped to deliver training and presentations in the past, this was more formal and in-depth. Last week we spent most of our time writing up the training guide and the exercises.

The morning session consisted mostly of people I know well, so I wasn’t so nervous. But the afternoon session included mainly people who I hardly know at all (in fact many of them I hadn’t even spoken to in the past) and they were more senior, so inevitably I was more nervous. However, as it turned out, the afternoon session went better than the morning one. The morning session over-ran, as it was the first time we’d ever delivered this course so we had no timings to go by. Also, I think I spoke more clearly in the afternoon one, as doing the morning session helped to cement my notes in my mind.

My colleague and I had decided in advance that we would take it in turns to speak – I would do one topic, and he would do the next. This meant that I had time over the weekend to plan and rehearse what I wanted to say for each of my assigned topics. We basically provided a live step-by-step demonstration of how to carry out certain functions and formulae on Excel. We were speaking as we were carrying out the steps on the computer, which were projected on the screen at the front of the room. Then at the end of each individual topic, we asked everyone to carry out the exercises in our training guide, so they could practise how to do it by themselves. We would then wander round the room to provide help to anyone who needed it.

Apart from over-running (we’d tried to cram far too much into a 3-hour session), I think the sessions went well. Doing things like this has helped me to become more confident, and today I received several emails from people congratulating me and my colleague. It may seem strange to you that we were helping to train people who were more senior than ourselves. In fact, some of the attendees were 2 or even 3 levels higher than me (eg consultants and project-managers). But my skillset is completely different to theirs – I studied IT, so I have technical skills whereas their skills are focussed more towards projects and people management. Therefore, no-one at the sessions thought it was weird that we were teaching them. The purpose of the sessions was to teach people how to use IT to do their job in a faster and easier way, and I think everyone there did learn something new.

I definitely think that I have become more confident over the last 18 months. Not so long ago the thought of doing something like this would probably have terrified me so much that I would have felt sick. I try to build my confidence gradually – a year ago, I was asked to provide one-to-one training to a new member of staff, and at the time, I was really scared, but I made it. Nowadays I think nothing of having to provide one-to-one tuition, and I often provide technical help to other people in my team. I am gradually getting used to speaking to larger and larger groups of people.

You remember in my last entry I wrote that I went for an interview for a job as a Service Reporting Analyst in the IT department?  Well, when I arrived home from work this evening, the rejection letter was lying on the doormat.  But at least I am allowed to ask for feedback, so tomorrow I will send an email asking for feedback along with copies of the interview notes.  A lot of people don’t realise this, but if you apply for any job in the UK, and you fail the interview, the company is legally required (under the Data Protection Act) to send you copies of any notes they hold about you, as long as those notes are held on a computer system.  The notes are stored up until 6 months after the interview date, so that’s how long you have to request your feedback.  A lot of people don’t ask for feedback on their interviews, which means they have no way of knowing what they need to improve for the future.

I feel sad about it, but the main reason I applied for this job is because I’m a bit concerned about the re-structure that’s going on in my current department, so that I would have a back-up in case I can’t stay in my current job.  But now I don’t feel like applying for any more jobs, unless I know for definite that I can’t stay in my current department.  I probably will be able to stay anyway.  I worry too much!

On Sunday I went with Mum, Terry and my nieces to Snettisham Park Farm.  It was the first time I’d ever been there and it was really good.  We had a trip on a trailer attached to the back of a tractor, which took us around the whole farm, and we saw lots of deer.  This coming Sunday I have arranged to meet up with my friend Naomi.

Sunday was a good day – I went to buy a new DVD player and a new radio alarm clock. My old DVD player had stopped working ages ago – it would often freeze about 15 minutes into a film. The new one is much better. I also bought 3 new DVDs – “An American Haunting” (which I watched last night, because I like ghost films), “It Could Happen To You” and “Raise Your Voice”.

I really like my new radio alarm clock – it’s a DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting) one, which means I can get several new radio stations which I couldn’t receive before, and the sound quality is better too.

I went for an internal interview yesterday, just as a precaution in case my current department gets downsized. Although I still think that’s unlikely, we won’t know for definite until mid-October. This re-structure has dragged on for nearly 5 months now!

The interview I went for yesterday was for a Service Reporting Analyst in the IT department. In many ways it does sound similar to the job I’m currently doing, in that it would involve extracting data, analysing it on spreadsheets, creating charts and reports etc. Even though it’s for an entry-level job in the IT department, the interview was more challenging than any others I’ve been to in the past. It’s one of the most difficult departments in the company in which to get a job (entry-level in the IT department is equivalent to consultant-level in other departments), but I should hear the outcome of my interview sometime before the end of this week. In the interview itself, they were asking me for specific examples of things I’ve achieved in the past. They were asking me so many questions for each competency that I was worried I was going to run out of examples to talk about. Luckily that never happened, and I was able to answer every question. I was one of four applicants to be interviewed for this particular position. Now I just have to wait and see.