OK, so I have a job (for now), and I like my job, and while I'd be happy continuing to do my job, it appears that I've done my job a little too well, and that might cause it to go away. For those not familiar with my situation, I'm a consultant/contractor. I work for a company called Pentad Solutions, but I work at a company called, well, Microsoft. My job for the past 6.5 months has been to authenticate requests for account data of deceased account holders by their loved ones and/or estates and, once authenticated, ship them a DVD of said deceased loved one's account data. It's an easy job and so long as I keep my self distanced from the tragedy of the deaths of the account holders in question, it doesn't get me down. I used to do call center work (and I used to manage call centers) so I'm really good at distancing myself from a situation.
There are, unfortunately, a few issues with this job, and with my contracting company. Last Thursday there was a semi-annual all-hands meeting for Pentad where they announced the yearly financials and some "great news" that they had for all of us. The company itself is doing great. Their profits are up amazingly over this period last year and they've expanded the workforce of the company by 42%. In fact, they're doing so great financially that they've decided to merge with another company that's only existed for a month, run by a guy who's never run his own business! This is awesome news! I can't imagine any possible negative results from turning a very successful consulting company over to someone who's never run one before, and who has only run his own company for a month; especially since his company specializes in an entirely different area of business. Ok, that's bullshit. I can imagine a lot of things that could go wrong, and very few things that could go right, and I have almost no confidence that we will remain in employment and existence this time next year. In fact, since my contract with Microsoft was through Pentad, and since Pentad itself doesn't exist any more, I'm not even entirely certain that at the end of the week I'll still have a job.
Then there are the issues with the job itself. You see, it's not actually very hard to do. And, it doesn't actually take very long to process each case. In fact, the average total work time for each case is only about 30 minutes, and we're averaging about 67 cases a month right now, which means that my average monthly workload comes out to 33.5 hours. Before today, this wouldn't have been an issue. After a two month period of filling my 40 hour weeks with reporting for my (since laid off) boss and jumping on any project that came near me; the department which previously did my job FINALLY transitioned their case load to me. At the time, that caseload stretched back 2+ years and included 300+ cases. Yesterday I finished all of the cases where we're not waiting for next of kin/executors to send additional documentation, plus all of the cases that had come in between transition day and when I got caught up. My inbox is completely clear, and I have no cases that I can actively work until I get more documentation from requesters. This means I have nothing to do. And since I have a new boss, who doesn't have a bunch of projects and reporting for me to do, it means I might as well not even be here.
And then, there's another issue. It seems the European Union Commission has some privacy concerns regarding our authentication requirements and policy as it concerns to deceased individuals who used to be citizens of their union. LCA (the people who came up with those practices, here at Microsoft) are investigating these concerns and determining our way forward, but they would like to take this opportunity (and every other opportunity they can get their hands on) to remind us (meaning me) that this is a voluntary program. We're not required to provide this data to family members. And one of the things they're considering is not continuing to do so, or at least not continuing to do so for members of the EU. EU cases are about half my case load, so without them my workload would be down even further.
And then there's the other, other issue. See, the guy who now (as of today) runs the company I work for (which is no longer Pentad but hasn't taken on its new name yet) used to work for Microsoft. Directly. As in, his paychecks came from Microsoft. Microsoft, it seems, really doesn't like to work with people who used to work for them. This apparently factored in to the reasons that The Company Formerly Known as Pentad cited for not telling Microsoft what they were up to before today. In fact, even though the fact that said former Microsoft employee now runs the company has been publicly announced today, this news still hasn't been relayed to Microsoft. Which means I can't talk about this to any of my co-workers, or my boss, or even talk about it with any of my Company Formerly Known as Pentad co-workers while AT Microsoft.
Now, if you've made it this far, you're probably wondering where my question comes in and what, if anything, this all has to do with going from a job to a career. Well, there's a little more work to do explaining the circumstances, but bear with me, I promise it doesn't take too much more time.
My brother in law (or the guy who'll be my brother in law when my fiancee and I get around to actually having the wedding) owns several companies, and in fact was one of the original partners at The Company Formerly Known as Pentad. He's like Richard Gere's character on Pretty Woman. He buys companies that are failing, turns them around, and sells his stake in them once they're profitable. He has an excellent track record so far. Having worked at several companies that were in dire need of turn-around myself, including several of the call centers that I successfully managed, I know that one of the things you need is someone to look through all of the processes that a company has, find the wasted time and energy (and money), and make the processes more efficient. And I know efficiency.
It took me 4 months to work through a 2+ year backlog of cases; and would have taken me less time than that if it hadn't been for office supply and computer access problems that were completely beyond my control. My most recent call center (the last one I managed) I instituted quality controls and a better knowledgebase system which took our average call time from 5+ minutes down to 2 minutes, allowing us to handle a lot more calls per day, almost completely eliminate hold times, and allowing us to handle more email traffic (which significantly boosted our bottom line). At one of the call centers I worked at before that (where I was a supervisor, but not the center manager), when we discovered that a new piece of software was causing one of our most frequent job functions to go from 90 seconds to process to 3 minutes to process, I got together with a couple of other software minded people and wrote a web script that not only dropped the processing time back down to our original times, but blew straight through that and dropped the time necessary down to 30 seconds.
So what I want to do is make a sales pitch to my brother in law about taking me with him when he buys his next company, as an efficiency engineer or whatever the title is that they give people who eliminate wasted processing time at a company and lean it out. My question(s) is(are), have either of you ever had to give a pitch like that, and if so, do you have any advice? Also, what title is given to people who lean the waste out of a company's processes? Are there questions that I should expect to receive in response to my pitch that I should read up on and think of answers for? Also, what's the currently accepted layout standard for this type of a resume? And on a style note, my hair is shaggy and unruly. What's the current "businessman" hairstyle? I want to look as well heeled as I can going into this meeting.
I took a big step down from being at the senior manager/director level of my last several companies to being at the lowly peon level in this position. If I can reverse that, or go even further up to the executive level, it'd be great. Maybe then I'd be able to pay my bills on time without having to borrow money from relatives, or live in an apartment where even one of the major appliances actually works. Though, I have done such a good job in this position, and been raved about to TCFKaP from Microsoft, that even if this specific position goes away, I have a good chance that my consulting company will be able to find me a new job, and a miniscule chance that my Microsoft manager will be able to find me a new job; but all through the "great news" meeting I had an ever deepening pit growing in my stomach (this is the third meeting I've had like that in 8 years and the other two didn't work out so well either) telling even if this does turn out being great for the company, I'm sunk.
There are, unfortunately, a few issues with this job, and with my contracting company. Last Thursday there was a semi-annual all-hands meeting for Pentad where they announced the yearly financials and some "great news" that they had for all of us. The company itself is doing great. Their profits are up amazingly over this period last year and they've expanded the workforce of the company by 42%. In fact, they're doing so great financially that they've decided to merge with another company that's only existed for a month, run by a guy who's never run his own business! This is awesome news! I can't imagine any possible negative results from turning a very successful consulting company over to someone who's never run one before, and who has only run his own company for a month; especially since his company specializes in an entirely different area of business. Ok, that's bullshit. I can imagine a lot of things that could go wrong, and very few things that could go right, and I have almost no confidence that we will remain in employment and existence this time next year. In fact, since my contract with Microsoft was through Pentad, and since Pentad itself doesn't exist any more, I'm not even entirely certain that at the end of the week I'll still have a job.
Then there are the issues with the job itself. You see, it's not actually very hard to do. And, it doesn't actually take very long to process each case. In fact, the average total work time for each case is only about 30 minutes, and we're averaging about 67 cases a month right now, which means that my average monthly workload comes out to 33.5 hours. Before today, this wouldn't have been an issue. After a two month period of filling my 40 hour weeks with reporting for my (since laid off) boss and jumping on any project that came near me; the department which previously did my job FINALLY transitioned their case load to me. At the time, that caseload stretched back 2+ years and included 300+ cases. Yesterday I finished all of the cases where we're not waiting for next of kin/executors to send additional documentation, plus all of the cases that had come in between transition day and when I got caught up. My inbox is completely clear, and I have no cases that I can actively work until I get more documentation from requesters. This means I have nothing to do. And since I have a new boss, who doesn't have a bunch of projects and reporting for me to do, it means I might as well not even be here.
And then, there's another issue. It seems the European Union Commission has some privacy concerns regarding our authentication requirements and policy as it concerns to deceased individuals who used to be citizens of their union. LCA (the people who came up with those practices, here at Microsoft) are investigating these concerns and determining our way forward, but they would like to take this opportunity (and every other opportunity they can get their hands on) to remind us (meaning me) that this is a voluntary program. We're not required to provide this data to family members. And one of the things they're considering is not continuing to do so, or at least not continuing to do so for members of the EU. EU cases are about half my case load, so without them my workload would be down even further.
And then there's the other, other issue. See, the guy who now (as of today) runs the company I work for (which is no longer Pentad but hasn't taken on its new name yet) used to work for Microsoft. Directly. As in, his paychecks came from Microsoft. Microsoft, it seems, really doesn't like to work with people who used to work for them. This apparently factored in to the reasons that The Company Formerly Known as Pentad cited for not telling Microsoft what they were up to before today. In fact, even though the fact that said former Microsoft employee now runs the company has been publicly announced today, this news still hasn't been relayed to Microsoft. Which means I can't talk about this to any of my co-workers, or my boss, or even talk about it with any of my Company Formerly Known as Pentad co-workers while AT Microsoft.
Now, if you've made it this far, you're probably wondering where my question comes in and what, if anything, this all has to do with going from a job to a career. Well, there's a little more work to do explaining the circumstances, but bear with me, I promise it doesn't take too much more time.
My brother in law (or the guy who'll be my brother in law when my fiancee and I get around to actually having the wedding) owns several companies, and in fact was one of the original partners at The Company Formerly Known as Pentad. He's like Richard Gere's character on Pretty Woman. He buys companies that are failing, turns them around, and sells his stake in them once they're profitable. He has an excellent track record so far. Having worked at several companies that were in dire need of turn-around myself, including several of the call centers that I successfully managed, I know that one of the things you need is someone to look through all of the processes that a company has, find the wasted time and energy (and money), and make the processes more efficient. And I know efficiency.
It took me 4 months to work through a 2+ year backlog of cases; and would have taken me less time than that if it hadn't been for office supply and computer access problems that were completely beyond my control. My most recent call center (the last one I managed) I instituted quality controls and a better knowledgebase system which took our average call time from 5+ minutes down to 2 minutes, allowing us to handle a lot more calls per day, almost completely eliminate hold times, and allowing us to handle more email traffic (which significantly boosted our bottom line). At one of the call centers I worked at before that (where I was a supervisor, but not the center manager), when we discovered that a new piece of software was causing one of our most frequent job functions to go from 90 seconds to process to 3 minutes to process, I got together with a couple of other software minded people and wrote a web script that not only dropped the processing time back down to our original times, but blew straight through that and dropped the time necessary down to 30 seconds.
So what I want to do is make a sales pitch to my brother in law about taking me with him when he buys his next company, as an efficiency engineer or whatever the title is that they give people who eliminate wasted processing time at a company and lean it out. My question(s) is(are), have either of you ever had to give a pitch like that, and if so, do you have any advice? Also, what title is given to people who lean the waste out of a company's processes? Are there questions that I should expect to receive in response to my pitch that I should read up on and think of answers for? Also, what's the currently accepted layout standard for this type of a resume? And on a style note, my hair is shaggy and unruly. What's the current "businessman" hairstyle? I want to look as well heeled as I can going into this meeting.
I took a big step down from being at the senior manager/director level of my last several companies to being at the lowly peon level in this position. If I can reverse that, or go even further up to the executive level, it'd be great. Maybe then I'd be able to pay my bills on time without having to borrow money from relatives, or live in an apartment where even one of the major appliances actually works. Though, I have done such a good job in this position, and been raved about to TCFKaP from Microsoft, that even if this specific position goes away, I have a good chance that my consulting company will be able to find me a new job, and a miniscule chance that my Microsoft manager will be able to find me a new job; but all through the "great news" meeting I had an ever deepening pit growing in my stomach (this is the third meeting I've had like that in 8 years and the other two didn't work out so well either) telling even if this does turn out being great for the company, I'm sunk.
