View Full Version : what if I am just not stable enough,
Kinda a mental health moment as well, so I have another mistake in the week I am applying for a promotion. sigh, last year I tried to have more of an attitude that everyone makes mistakes and I think I was wrong. Well obviously since I ended up with a pretty horrible review. So now I am kinda crushed by the latest one. I am hiring and I had a candidate and even got to offer her the job, she accepted and then someone caught that she probably doesn't have the hours worked with kids directly to pass our licensing requirements. This was not one of those things that was in the back of my head bugging me, just a total miss. I asked for lots of help in the hiring process with the HR system but none of us saw this. I can see that we all made reasonable assumptions, I hire very well for direct programming like my summer staff, I get good quality and support them so we have excellent programs. Of course she is pissed off, it is likely at this point we won't be able to hire her and I didn't ask about her hours in the interview because I didn't have a checklist or a set of interview questions. Our HR department doesn't even have a resignation form available! I saw her resume and the response to my questions as she had actually coached the soccer team, not that she had hired a soccer coach. Doesn't count for state licensing, I loved the 2nd candidate and am not sure I can get him back but meanwhile she is trying to document these hours after weeks of going through this process. I feel horrible and try to tell myself that these things happen, but am pretty sensitive to how she might feel. I know why I wanted her, she is an administrator in many ways and I really want help in that area. My 2nd choice would be an awesome person to lead clubs, have interaction with kids, lots of good energy, but I would still be heavily loaded down with the administrative tasks. No matter what I am looking at ways to delegate but that is very limited with my staffing.
I wish I could tell someone about my diagnoses and not put the final nail in my career coffin. Even finding the person to talk to while managing the politics of work seems fraught with danger. The reality is that it is still a huge risk, my job would be safe but I am sure that would be part of a discussion of my advancement if it was open. I don't want pity, I guess in a perfect world it would be seen as a strength that I have managed all this for so long. There are people with my diagnoses that can barely work so why shouldn't I feel grateful to have my job that is just barely into a living wage after all. But part of me knows that I can be very good at what I do, and I have shown it in ways that are not what seem to be valued very much. I hope I even get an interview for the job at this point, I have been writing out some statements that I don't want to forget in the nervousness of an interview.
So I am thinking about writing her a short email telling her I really would like to hire her and some strengths I see, encourage her to see if she can meet the requirements but also be honest that it may not work out. We talked already but I think it was still dealing with the shock of the situation so no one was very happy. And trying to get my job coach on the phone because I really need her support.
Thank you for listening to this long winded post, feel free to take off on your own trajectories! I love to hear from other people no matter where it leads! (that is my way to stay positive honestly)
freshstart
1-31-16, 2:06pm
do you have a mentor that happens to know your organizational culture but does not work there anymore?
Good idea FS, I have tried a few times to contact one person but I think she was more pushed into retirement and I am not sure if she wants to talk. There is a person in the middle who has given me her phone number so I called just to check about how retirement was going and didn't hear back. I heard she went to Israel on a trip! but I waited until I heard she had been back awhile to leave a message.
I will see if I can think of anyone, the OST world is pretty small here.
Not understanding why you own the whole responsibility if there are no standard forms. Did the posting state that certain hours were needed to meet state standards? Should the candidate have known that was expected? Who was responsible for the wording of the ad?
Too many unanswered questions.
I would turn any criticisms of the situation around and come up with an approach to prevent this from happening to anyone else.
I think you are taking on too much guilt for a systemic issue and I am sure you are not the one and only one responsible for hiring candidates. You are not HR or your supervisors. They should be supporting you.
No one caught this so dont take on so much guilt. Perhaps come up with some solutions or questions or a summary list for HR to use in the future. Right now you are feeling bad for everyone and you do need to let go of so much overwhelming guilt. No one is dead or forever hurt. If she cannot or does not meet licensing requirements, it is not your fault. It is what it is. PS: it is a good thing that you have more than one candidate.
Thank you all, I thought I was probably taking on too much but I needed to hear it. They made us hiring managers to justify significant raises but it is just one more thing to do, I am fine with interviewing and training but I really needed some support like you pointed out. Last year there were a lot of these type of issues and I took the fall in the form of an improvement plan. I did get one thing taken off the improvement plan, and it came down to one meeting and the plan was considered complete. That is good! one of the huge issues was a homeless family with a large bill that I argued. This last week I brought in a copy of the law concerning children in foster care and after school activities and the bill was just handled. So big change there,
Right now I am just so tired, part of stress which kicks my diagnoses. I am going to do a meditation which has been my lifesaver, sew a new pair of pants and maybe nap.
IshbelRobertson
1-31-16, 6:48pm
As a foreigner who worked in HE for many years, I find the lack of structure in your reporting hierarchy frightening. They do not seem to have a system in place to ensure that any decision is taken by trained, competent and confident staff.
I truly sympathise with your plight, but frankly, it's the useless management structure to blame, not you.
I think take responsibility for your part and find a way to prevent it in the future. Perhaps develop a checklist that would be of assistance to you in future hirings. As a manager, I think it is my responsibility to be sure that staff I hire have met the requirements for the job. HR is there to process the hire, but I take responsibility for the hire itself.
rodeosweetheart
1-31-16, 7:17pm
Just for kicks I put in a job search for jobs that you might be able to apply for in SC, and came up with this cool one in Columbia:
Health Education Coordinator
EdVenture Children's Museum - Columbia, SC
Job Summary:
This staff member will be responsible for planning, developing, implementing, maintaining, and evaluating EdVenture’s biomedical health education content, with a focus on educational programming in the BioInvestigations lab, with support from the BioInvestigations Lab Educator and Wellness Initiatives Coordinator. This educational programming includes, but is not limited to, after-school programs, home-school programs, public family programs, camp, and group Bio Lab programs for students in grades K through 12. The staff member in this position will also provide leadership to the Bio Lab Educator. As part of EdVenture’s Yes, Every Child initiative, this individual will also work with the Family and Community Health team to expand museum accessibility for diverse populations.
and this one on Hilton Head:
Requisition Number 15-0910
Post Date 12/15/2015
Organization Boys & Girls Clubs
Title Technology Center Director
Minimum Salary $36,000.00
Maximum Salary $44,000.00
Education Level Bachelors
City Hilton Head Island
State SC
Description
JOB SUMMARY
The Director of Technology and Education is an integral part of the full time leadership team at the Boys & Girls Club of Hilton Head Island and is a perfect fit for someone looking to take the next step in their career working with youth in a technology and education setting. Our technology programs have seen tremendous growth over the past five years and it is expected that growth and improvements will continue. Our goal is to be the premier agency for youth who have an interest in technology programs in the Lowcountry. Boasting one of the only 3D printers in the region, 30 newer computers, 19 Nooks, 5 tablets, numerous robotics kits, digital cameras, and engineering and networking kits, our computer lab is sufficiently stocked with all the necessary hardware to run top quality programs on an every-day basis. In addition, the “Lab” has a full suite of programming software including digital music making, digital art, 3D design, Microsoft Office, and more installed and ready for use. With their number one priority being their work with the kids during program hours, the person who fills this position will also be responsible for a number of other responsibilities as listed below.
It might be fun to look in different states at the job pool and see if anything catches your eye, now your kids are getting older. They might even want to relocate with you--Hilton Head is delightful; I'd move back, for sure! It has a great, diverse vibe and most everyone is "from away." Awesome climate, great indie movie theatres, a very nice Unity Church, and dolphins. Savannah has a nice Buddhist community and it's a short drive away. What's not to like!
Seriously, it might be fun to just do a search in 10 different states, just for fun.
I do need to take some responsibility, of course. I am very sad and frustrated. I worked at all the checklists around the HR computer system and just missed this. I saw work with kids on her resume, a degree (but not in our field), and made some assumptions that she had direct work with kids. So that is really my mistake, I do that with summer staff after all. But this position I missed it,
We have a variety of task forces this year after last year's total dysfunction. I am on the communication task force and our outside facilitator has really cleared up some things. For one thing the volume of information passed through my job category by all the departments is huge. Our responsibility is huge in this way. And things get dropped through the holes. Ishbel that is very validating, the structure is really difficult. I just don't want to be the fall guy beyond taking my responsibility. Recently we gave anonymous feedback to our supervisors through a district wide system and my supervisor had horrible scores. On the question "my supervisor trusts me" it was an extremely low 33%. Wow, I kept her in the loop the entire hiring process and talked to HR people but I still missed it.
That may be fun, I did look in a neighboring district and they had nothing. I make about $40K right now. I am not sure about relocating, I considered it awhile ago and balanced it out with my mental health issues and the stress that could trigger. However there is nothing to lose by looking :)
Oh yeah, my meetup on mindfulness with youth was great! I only had 2 people but they helped so we are working on a statement of what we want to do, and are going to post a definition of mindfulness ( non-judgmental present time awareness). I have a good lead on free space in a public school on Saturdays, they also have a center like mine but have another program on Saturdays so I don't need to pay a rental fee. It would be good to connect more to the school district on the mindfulness programs. That would be a good way to use my connections to create a program.
iris lilies
1-31-16, 8:52pm
Not understanding why you own the whole responsibility if there are no standard forms. Did the posting state that certain hours were needed to meet state standards? Should the candidate have known that was expected? Who was responsible for the wording of the ad?
Too many unanswered questions.....
Sure for some of this.
The fairly competent HR department at my prior place of employment did not have a "resignation form" either. I would not consider that a standard form, and I would expect my $40,000/annually managers responsible for securing an appropriate resignation communication from an employee. Alll ya need is a name and a date at which the resignation becomes effective.
That said, I wondered, OP, when I heard that you were suddenly directly responsible for hiring, what support you got from your central administration.
There are serious legal issues that can result from improper interviewing and hiring actions, so I hope Your HR dept is reviewing your work.
In my case, if there was a hard requirement such as "x number of contact hours required to get certification" our HR department wouldn't pass on applications to me that didn't meet this standard. So, thats just how one place, my place, worked.
You may be responsible for not checking this technical qualification of your first choice hire. So be it, move on. Make yourself a checklist for next time fof hard requirements necessary for certification. Make this a learng experience.
I just had a nice call with my job coach, so very helpful! Lots of things I can work on and I feel better. My big blazing issue is that I am not responsible for a giant dysfunctional department! I can do a great job and then let it go, because no matter how great I am I am not responsible for a giant dysfunctional family (and the district! not even going to touch that but we are better than Detroit since our ceilings are intact and toilets functional). This will be a meditation focus.
The HR thing DOES have me nervous. I know to use the same questions for every candidate, certain things I cannot ask, etc. But I would feel better if at least a screening interview was done by HR. On the resignation form I recall that it had to be specific and we used to have one. The distinction of resigning from a particular position, the department and/or the district all with proper notification. I am learning, I am going to sit with the job description (department one, not the ad I posted - and was approved) and guide the interview with that.
Williamsmith
1-31-16, 10:20pm
My wife has worked in after school programming for many years. She recently decided to get out of the full time "exempt" treadmill due to supervisory incompetence. Just from the hours and hours of venting she did to me about the inefficiencies, poor management and pressure from parents I feel for your frustration. She works in a before school program now part time and as a teachers aide part time. She is much happier.
I was never in charge of hiring or firing anyone but I made plenty of life and death decisions. I learned that survival depends on knowing when to have a short memory and when to never forget. Have a short memory when you make an unintentional well meaning mistake..........never forget that mistake and never make it again. I learned to compartmentalize certain shortcomings. The past is gone the future is so dependent on little almost undetectable changes such that you can only control the general direction but certainly not specific outcomes. Now.....is the only time you really have so live in it. These are personal opinions.
I hope you can let go of any negative feelings regarding your performance because your future performance will depend partly on this. You must act out of confidence and preparation. From the posts I have read....your heart is in the right place. I think you are too hard on yourself. In almost all cases, no one person is responsible for any good or bad outcome. I do not believe in saying, "Who's fault is this?" By the time someone assigns fault, the problem can be corrected four times over.
You are doing good things.
Have you had a sabbatical or vacation recently - without going into the specifics of this incident, my first impression is that you might want some time away from the daily stress/organizational nonsense to get some perspective.
I was never in charge of hiring or firing anyone but I made plenty of life and death decisions. I learned that survival depends on knowing when to have a short memory and when to never forget. Have a short memory when you make an unintentional well meaning mistake.........
I hope you can let go of any negative feelings regarding your performance because your future performance will depend partly on this. You must act out of confidence and preparation. From the posts I have read....your heart is in the right place. I think you are too hard on yourself. In almost all cases, no one person is responsible for any good or bad outcome. I do not believe in saying, "Who's fault is this?" By the time someone assigns fault, the problem can be corrected four times over.
That is very helpful. I am on my way to the communication task force meeting and this is what we are dealing with a lot. I can see exactly how it happened, a lot of moving parts, and I would really love to have someone I can walk through this with when I am in the middle of hiring. I do this less than once a year for this position and we keep on changing things. So there is the moderating how much responsibility I take and then dealing with whatever the department wants to do about it. One factor is that almost all our sites have been in constant hiring mode for years so they have walked through this over and over, they are taking care of all of this, but I have not hired in over a year, so I am really rusty. Maybe that is one way to look at it to put it more in perspective, this is simply a task I have not done in a long time.
One odd thing is that I am super valuing the time we have all done working with kids! 910 hours of direct supervision is actually a lot. At 3 hours a day it is more than a school year of work. That means we all have this strong basic foundation.
Bae, getting a break means hiring someone who can work independently, including having those 910 hours to pass licensing and being capable of being me. So I need to hire someone and bring them up to my standard. I have a high standard, the reason I have done well with my site. A huge stress is a visit from licensing coming up anytime in the next 5-7 weeks. It is so strict right now that I am very stressed even though my program has always done well with licensing visits. I won't take any time off until after that inspection, and I have a strong person. I think my stress level is very high due to this visit (our entire department is on high alert since they are visiting all 50 sites) and the supervisor position I applied for. And if I get the supervisor position I can work on supporting my sites with issues like hiring and
I have a little advice. I work for local county gov and have enough connections in the local school system that I can tell you not to reveal your problems.
Workplaces like ours are full of people who want to pounce on any weakness. This does seem to be more of a system failure than a personal one.
Just learn from this mistake and be positive. It is a sad fact that we cannot trust most of the people we work with. :) have a good day.
I hope you can let go of any negative feelings regarding your performance because your future performance will depend partly on this. You must act out of confidence and preparation. From the posts I have read....your heart is in the right place. I think you are too hard on yourself. In almost all cases, no one person is responsible for any good or bad outcome. I do not believe in saying, "Who's fault is this?" By the time someone assigns fault, the problem can be corrected four times over.
You are doing good things.
exactly this.
And my place had HR like Iris Lillie's that weeded out people who did not meet the requirements before they even got to us. I would not be quick to allow blame to be assigned to me.
Have you had a sabbatical or vacation recently - without going into the specifics of this incident, my first impression is that you might want some time away from the daily stress/organizational nonsense to get some perspective.
I understand you can't take vaca now with the inspection coming up and then you have the supervisory position on your plate but eventually you need to take time for you. A dear nurse friend told me when I was green, first bank some time for the unexpected (we had one bank of paid leave, no sick time or personal days), then you get 4 weeks off a year in the beginning, 6 days you have to use on holidays. Try to take 1 full week of paid leave every quarter. Take a trip, be at home with your kids, do absolutely nothing, but do not think about work no matter how hard it's been during this time, a full week of taking care of you. It makes you a better employee, parent, wife friend, etc in the end. I found this to be very true. And nothing fell apart because I was not there for a week. You have to be a little selfish in jobs that require you to give away part of you in caring for others.
I read most of your post and do not comment on all of them. I think you are stable, you are worrying and concerned about many of the same things as almost everyone. You are a great communicator and willing to discuss your issues more than most. The ideas about time away are good. It will clear your head.
Only be concerned with the issues you can control in the workplace.
Thank you all, It is a snow day so that is a break. I got up at 5 to check school closures and then stayed up and did nothing really, took a nap and now am up trying to decide what to do.
I am realizing that the supervisor that visited me was probably laying the groundwork for me not getting an interview. (I was thinking about the stories I tell myself, and examining those. Not just work but in general. I talked to my job coach when I was doing fairly badly on Sunday. When I switched to talking about mindfulness and one of my ideas she said my entire tone just changed to positive and confidence. In our volunteer services section of our department we have volunteer groups like some that are focused on reading or math. They get training in their area and then schools can ask for volunteers to come out, volunteer services then matches the person and the school. I want to create that with mindfulness instructors. I would want to make sure if I sign off on their volunteer application that they are good. At my meetup we talked about many things and when I brought up this idea one other person asked how I would know if they were good, golden moment! That is what I do, create, support and evaluate quality programming. I would have them take training (I like Mindful schools so we would have a consistent 'product'), shadow, do the program and have some observations with feedback. Now to get paid for it, ....
mschrisgo2
2-2-16, 10:14pm
Have you heard of The Connection Practice, by Rita Marie Johnson? You might find it interesting, http://rasurinternational.org
Very interesting, I could start reading the book. I didn't see all the trainer options and costs, but it has some great stuff to it that connects to my work.
I cheered up by planning summer camp programming! I always get excited about that.
Williamsmith
2-3-16, 6:32am
You are in a business highly dependent on relationships. I am used to the situation where job duties are strictly defined, measurement of job performance is precise, and the life and career goals are reliant on performance. The development of communication skills occurs with daily interaction with uncooperative persons, persons with different objectives some times conflicting objectives and persons that may either lack respect for your responsibilities or assign you more responsibility than you should have to take on. Often those people try to negatively effect your own defined goals and can do this in dangerous ways.
Therefore it takes a strong willed person to overcome this, some personal conviction based on a sense of knowing what is right and understanding how to control outcomes. It takes a willingness to chose a direction and stick with it because it is right, not because it is easy. Empathy is fine and useful but not at the cost of effective outcome control. It tends to be received as manipulation and deception when a person uses it as a tool and it does not come from a clean heart.
'Effective outcome control' is so clear and simple. When providing services, that clear thought will always help, ZG.
I moderate my empathy big time. I have tons of empathy, not necessarily feeling great or that the person is justified in their feelings, but simply able to feel it. It sucks, I am not sure why we try to develop it so much. People don't really understand what they are getting into. I hate our department meetings when they show some inspirational video or if anyone says a colleague has MS because it is all I can do to not tear up. I think about Fight Club and bite my tongue. But that program sounded like I could teach this instead of just getting another training. I would be happy to use my empathy to teach. All the wonderful studies that show people with empathy and soft skills to get ahead I think are largely wrong. Maybe if you were an a-hole and you developed some empathy but people who were 'born without skin' as I say are not getting there.
Effective outcome control - I have to say huh? I know sometimes I share something from work and I don't make a lot of sense to people here because it is context specific. I think I work under the idea I can affect outcomes, I can work towards goals and I can even often get there. I think our culture does seriously look at the work you are doing towards those outcomes and not just a number at the end. Now school day high-stakes testing will affect your pay and even your job directly. However when dealing with people it is hard to control anything, I can do things like advertise a class and then have a minimum so it is cancelled if I don't get that number, but I can only effectively market and change things up as I go.
Effective outcome control, to me, is examining what is the desired outcome and defining then measuring success. However, one needs to also examine, define and measure what is rationally doable by one individual or an organization with all its strengths and limitations. That relieves the feeling of failure, guilt, self-doubt and gives direction to one's actions. That is the control part.
You do a lot of outcome activities but are so hard on yourself on what is doable by one individual. You seem to measure yourself and your actions by what would be ideal vs what is doable under the circumstances. You do pretty well but you ain't perfect any more than anyone else.;)
Okay makes sense. It is the multiple goal systems we have and the monthly reports and data we collect, etc. Not necessarily that you are hitting all of them but that you show that you are working on them and taking effective action. My monthly report has sections I have to report on group goals, my site goals, feedback from families, school stakeholders and my staff, and my personal goals plus some data points every month. It is an 18 page google doc, of course just adding every month but seriously!
We had our massive meeting day yesterday. I usually walk out with my head spinning with a to-do list. But we got to say some really important things to the people who needed to hear it. I understand they can't make everything happen (some are stupid simple fixes like remembering that 8 of us are grants and have different due dates, but only the fee sites get mentioned every week in our group email, this has been going on for years). I am still short on trust, I need to see that when I offer my expertise in providing training that someone actually tracks that and I get to actually do it one year! Already I am working on dropping a committee or reducing. It plans summer camps but for the fee based programming. I still have to do my own work on my own camp since this committee doesn't do work on grant camps.
Awesome news! I talked to our volunteer services person in our department about my idea to have a group of mindfulness volunteers available. She was very positive about it, they already have groups of screened and trained volunteers in areas of math and reading, plus this great storyteller program. I was direct that I wanted to be the one to qualify these volunteers and she said they already interview so I would be that person. Yeah! Now to reduce some workload another place. If I don't get this assistant then I am going to get creative on some of the tasks I do. I think that paying more attention to what is naturally evolving (mindfulness) and less to trying to push my way into the job I applied for is a good idea.
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