Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Online Training Makes for a Chaotic Day...

Well, we never did get our bad weather here in Cincinnati. The freezing rain was gone by morning due to some extremely gusty winds that dried up all the moisture. This was good news for driving, bad for the very distant hope of a snow day. The winds, while quite nice to listen to while tucked up warm in my bed, disturbed the pups who bolted awake anytime a gust hit the house during the night.

We also had a slight emergency when the fibreglass cover over my outdoor pipes unsecured itself from the house and started to blow across the yard. I ran out in my boots, pajamas and coat and secured it but, needless to say, at 5:30 a.m., this meant I wasn't going to get much more sleep.

It seems that many of my friends to the north had bad weather and thus had a snow day. I tried not to envy them as they posted on Facebook. I could have used a snow day just because I had completely forgot until I got to the office that my boss had signed me up for online training not long after I started and the training was...today.

This meant six hours of my day were to be spent listening to a lady walk me through a PDF presentation about how to be a recruiter. If I'd have done the training when I first started, it would have been very helpful. However, having been in the job for over three months now, much of the training was more of a, um, "well, duh!" type of situation.

It also didn't help that I had to keep the phone receiver glued to my ear for periods of up to an hour and a half without a break. My ear is still hot from listening to the lady talk. What made it worse was that there were these periods when we had to read some of the worksheets before we could move on. It really only involved skimming. I did this in two minutes. The lady gave us eight minutes of radio silence before we could move on.

On the plus side, I could multitask. While I was training, I scheduled one candidate for a follow-up interview, got feedback from another candidate about his interview that happened this afternoon and also got the good news that one of my candidates had been offered a position.

This, on a normal day, is considered pretty good activity. I'd say that since I was multitasking, it was pretty darn good activity.

After the training finished, I had a ton of work to do including talking to my candidate who had the job offer. She's an Indian lady who is very nice but as is quite typical in her culture, defers to her husband. This meant that I had to talk to her husband and tell him every detail about the job as well as negotiate her rate with him. He ended up agreeing which means his wife will accept the job. This was my first time dealing with a husband. I've been told it will happen many more times.

I finally left the office late only to discover it was snowing. I took time to turn my face up and greet my favourite white frozen substance before I got in my car. I'm glad I did that because by the time I got home, I had an email from my boss with a new job opening and a strong suggestion that I start working on it tonight. He also sent it to my fellow recruiter. Thus, since I got home, I posted the job on Monster.com, posted it on my Linked In profile and contacted seven potential candidates.

I'd like to think I'm done now. The pups are feeling neglected. My Szechwan chicken stir fry needs to be prepped and cooked and, well, I'd quite like to sit down so I can enjoy "Friday Night Lights" and "Top Chef."

When I look at my day, it's probably a very good thing it wasn't a snow day, really. Even though the idea of sitting at home, doing very little but enjoying the excuse to do very little sounds nice, there's something to be said for having a good, productive day at work. There's something else to be said about having to come home and work for a little while and not minding.

I find this to be a pleasant realization. I find it even more pleasant that I can say after three months of learning and working, I actually love my job. It's been a long time since I've said that and it feels really good. It definitely makes up for not having a snow day.

Since it's still winter, I could still get my chance at a snow day. However, Punxatawny Phil might contradict that since he saw his shadow today and this means we should get an early spring.

Ah well, that would make a lot of people happy so I won't complain. I love spring as much as winter in it's own way.

Besides, no one said it didn't ever snow in the spring.

Happy Groundhog day!

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