Last week was a challenging week, for 2 main reasons. Firstly, my sister Suzanne didn’t get that job which she applied for. She had the interview on Wednesday, but a couple of days later she received a phone call from the employment agency saying she’d been unsuccessful. I was really disappointed, as I thought she had prepared well for the interview and I did think she would get the job.
Secondly, there is a major re-structure going on in my department at work. The main announcement was made on Tuesday morning, in which the head of the department said that the number of staff would be cut by 25 (there are currently 163 people in the department). Now, that didn’t scare me too much, as I thought the odds of being able to stay sounded pretty good. However, the next day we were told of the exact number of job losses per individual team, and it turns out that we are one of the worst affected teams within the department – our staff numbers are being cut from 21 down to just 10. That really scared me.
As part of this re-structure, we all have to fill in an assessment and selection form with details of our main achievements from the last few years, as well as examples of how we have met the competencies within our current jobs. We are each allowed to select 2 job preferences within the new structure. I put my current job (Automation Lead Adviser) as my first choice, as I enjoy the work I do and I’d like to continue to work in a technical role. For my second choice, I selected Reporting Analyst, as I’ve done that role in the past. Then we will each have meetings with our managers to discuss the form, and we will be given grades (A to E) for each of the competencies. They will use the grades and our 2008 end-of-year appraisals to decide who will stay and who will have to leave. We won’t know the results of the selection process until 12th March – we will all be called into a room individually to be told whether or not we have been offered a job in the new structure. I bet I’ll be really nervous on that day!
I’ve already sent the draft version of my assessment and selection form to my manager, and hopefully tomorrow I’ll have a meeting with him to discuss the contents of the form. I’ve also bought a few more technical books, because if I get my first job preference I’ll probably be working with SQL Server more frequently. Some of the others in my team have learnt ASP (Active Server Pages) and the C# programming language in their own time, so I’ve bought books about both of those too!
I think I stand a reasonable chance of being offered a job in the new structure, but I’m still nervous about it. If I can’t stay in my current department, I would have to apply for other internal jobs elsewhere within the company, but there aren’t many vacancies at the moment. The worst case scenario would be that I have to leave the company completely, and I definitely don’t want that to happen! A lot of companies are laying off staff at the moment, so it would be very difficult to find a job with a new company. Even if I do get to stay in my current job, 11 colleagues will have to leave and I will miss them. It’s very difficult for me to judge who will be allowed to stay and who will have to go – all members of the team are good at different things, so it’s hard to say that one person is better than another.
Anyway, that’s enough of the doom and gloom; let’s get on to the happy stuff! It was my 25th birthday on Sunday, so I booked yesterday and today off work (for a long weekend). My main present was a new digital camera. It’s much more powerful than my old camera – it’s a Fujifilm FinePix S8000fd with 18x optical zoom and 8 megapixels. Yesterday evening I had my birthday meal with Mum and Terry at Mambo Jambo’s, which is one of my favourite restaurants. I really enjoyed it – I had Memphis chicken with fries for my main course. For dessert I had a pancake with chocolate and orange sauce, although it was a bit too sweet! I also had a big vanilla milkshake. 
On Thursday and Friday last week, I had my DB2 SQL training course, along with the rest of my team. I really liked it and I feel that I learnt a lot. I did already know some of the things that we were taught, but it was good to fill in some gaps in my knowledge.
On Friday evening I went to a Big Cheese party held in a function room at the local football ground, with some of the people from the IVC club. I really enjoyed it, although it did take quite a while to get going and only about 50 or 60 people turned up. Apparently, 300 tickets had been sold, so it seems that a lot of people must have bought tickets but then decided not to go, which is weird. More than half the tables were empty!
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We all have to go through a selection process. 