Perception Vs Reality - or how my old job seems to be affecting my search for a new job....

WED SEPT 15TH 2010

Well folks, here it is, I've been wracking my brain on whether to "go there" with this next blog, but since my supposed past has now apparently affected my opportunity at future employment, let's go there.

It has been a whopping year and a half now since I have worked at the world's largest consumer electronics retailer (you know who you are), and as most of you know who have read this blog, I've had some hardships in trying to land that next career role, I've had a few interviews but nothing has landed yet, it's a buyers market out there right now and one of the roles I interviewed for received over a 100 resumes for that position, yep it's ugly out there.

A couple of weeks ago, I had an opportunity to land a position that was well within my skill set, and had a couple of other folks even forward me the job opportunity, it was a contracting role and that's fine with me, it would get me back in the game, I had high hopes.

I found out that I was not granted consideration for the role due to an apparent "perception" that someone at this company has about me and my performance at my previous role at my former company. Now the person that voiced this perception is no one I even know, and granted it's a small world and some people will travel from company to company and at this point I am sure that I know or know of people at many of the big companies around town, but to have someone actually bring this up who again doesn't even know me, doesn't know what I have been through, and obviously believes something he heard from someone else (hey maybe he doesn't even have the right person!) .... well let's just say it's been deflating.

Now I decided to go back through my notes at my previous employer, hmm let's see, my performance EVERY YEAR was at an "above expectations" level, and I also have a list of 100 people (yes that's not a typo) 100 people who have told me and will attest to the fact that I was a complete partner when working with them, not to mention I have had several folks come forward and offer letters of recommendation or post something on Linked IN (which frankly I don't think does anything but hey that's a whole different blog). Now I am not one to toot my own horn, which even makes the above 'perception' even more puzzling.

So if my issues were not performance related which I doubt they were, maybe to someone it was personal...

I think my success at my former employer possibly ticked some people off, I can't help that in the time I worked there the Home Theater department kept the lights on for the company, and the project I was the PM on was the company focus and I got a lot of the resources.
It was a real thrill to be working on something that made a real difference for the stores, giving them the environment they needed to be successful, and of course that afforded me some praise and accolades.

Sure I was talking to VP's, SVP's and the like on a weekly basis, but I never used that clout to my advantage, but my "perception" is that it made some people spiteful and jealous which is too bad, but would also explain some things.

Every project I ever worked on was by the book, in my 5+ years as a project/program manager, our process and how we got things done changed constantly, besides the green belt project (and then black belt project) that defined my role, I dealt with constant new merchandising initiatives, a new "pipeline" procedure (that even the champions of this procedure were not sure how it was supposed to work) and a giant work stoppage of implementation of all in store projects while folks figured out what was happening and why, while all the time we had merchants screaming at us to put in projects or they would lose funding, it became a "who barks the loudest gets their project done" environment. Sadly the management team had their own agendas so they did not do much to support, I can't really blame them they were miserable too (2 of the 3 senior managers in the department I was in have moved on, including over half of the team itself).
Sadly the only loser in this game was the stores and ultimately the customer, the retail stores have no faith in corporate and can't you blame them, I didn't.

So there you go, I went there, it is what it is, I did my tour of duty and now I am trying to move on with my life, it's sad that someone apparently still has a problem with MY life.