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Well that could have gone better... |
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So my last update was the inevitable yearly New Year quiz, and now here we are in May already. These few months have gone so fast, I'm sure it was only yesterday it was still Summer.
This year has not gone as planned, it's fair to say. At the point I was last updating this, I had recently started the new role at BDO and was enjoying a nice longer Summer break over Christmas and New Year before heading back there.
Well, things didn't work out as planned. A few keys bits of information:
1. There is this law in New Zealand where, provided the employer puts it in their contract, an employer can terminate an employee within their first 90 days of employment, without needing a reason. This law used to only apply to small businesses, but now applies to larger employers too.
2. When BDO were advertising for the person I was hired for, they were advertising for an Intermediate-Senior Tax Accountant. When they interviewed me, I had been working at Findex for less than 2 years, and was at more of a Junior-Intermediate level of knowledge and experience. BDO knew this when they interviewed me.
3. BDO hired me very quickly after my interview, and seemed very eager for me to start as soon as possible.
4. When I began at BDO, they mentioned they had two staff away on maternity leave, but that one would be coming back in February.
So guess what happened? It got towards the end of February, a manager who had been on maternity leave came back mid-February, and by the end of the month it would coming up to 90 days since I had begun working at BDO.
Sure enough, I was called in for a meeting with the partners who had hired me, and they announced they would not be extending my 90 day trial period into full employment. They sighted no reason, and when I questioned one of them, she awkwardly paused for a while before saying they needed more senior-level staff at this stage.
I accepted that without question in the moment. I was still processing, and I knew that I had been finding the workload very full compared to what I had been used to at Findex.
The end of the job was effective immediately, so I had plenty of time to think over the next few weeks, and it slowly started to dawn on me that it perhaps wasn't a coincidence that they had terminated my employment very soon after the manager returned from maternity leave. Perhaps it also should have been a red flag that they had been so keen to hire me, knowing I was at a lower experience level than they ideally wanted, and been seemingly so desperate for me to start as soon as possible.
Hindsight is 20/20. (Or 6/6 if you are using the metric system).
Here's the other annoying thing. For accountants, the end of the financial year is a crucial time. The end of the financial year in New Zealand is 31 March. So I was out of a job, and looking for new accounting roles right before the end of the financial year, when most employers were in rush mode and not even thinking about hiring anyone.
Recruiters contacted me left, right and centre, having seen my LinkedIn and Seek profiles, and wanting to find me something. But nothing was coming up.
I applied for every remotely applicable job I could. But I was too under-qualified for management and partner positions, and too over-qualified for bookkeeping and accounting administration roles. There seemed to be nothing in-between available.
So now I have been out of work for nearly three months, and our finances are dire. We're behind on rent, power bill, phone bill, and we owe money for the after-school programme Sabrina was going to while I was still working, and I have an unpaid parking ticket. Just lots of things that need money basically.
All of a sudden recently more jobs options have started popping up. The ones of note:
1. A role for a well-known accounting software company, essentially a call centre role where I help accountants and people in finance with their technical issues. I had an interview there on Thursday. Positives are they have already tentatively offered me the role, pending they are happy with my references. Pay they offered is reasonable. Negatives are, because it is essentially like a call centre role, the hours are terrible, and are going to be hard to navigate around Sabrina's school hours. Also the type of role is definitely not what I would enjoy, it would be something I could put up with for a little while but would likely burn me out after too long.
2. An accounting role in a small finance department of a recruiting company, where I had an interview on Friday. Positives- small company, everyone knows each other and workload not too intense. Location is near Wellington station so easier for commuting than the other job. Involves actual accounting work, and staff tend to get the opportunity to work up to bigger accounting roles from there so good long-term option. Negatives- haven't been offered it yet. Don't know what the pay will be if I do get offered it. Although they discussed they are flexible and people often work two days from home a week, they are not that open to me starting any later than 8.30 in the mornings, so Sabrina would have to go to both before and after-school care, which costs a lot and would tire her out a lot.
3. A tax accounting role for the NZ stock exchange, where I was supposed to have an interview today, but...
The interview is through MS Teams. I tried initially to logon through my phone just to confirm the meeting, but the Teams app kept automatically trying to log me into my old work Teams account from Findex, without allowing me to sign in to a different account. When it tries to load the Findex account, inevitably it doesn't work because the account is disabled, so it loads an error page, but still no options to try login to a different account. No matter what I did, it just kept trying to login to Findex and then fail, over and over again.
I tried to login on a laptop. Fine, except my passwords are automatically saved on my phone so I don't actually remember what any of them are. So had to reset the password to log on on the laptop. Then, turns out I've never actually used Teams on my own personal email account before, so there were several steps involved to actually get it set up. By the time I had got it sorted, it was already ten minutes into the interview time, and so inevitably the interviewers weren't there.
I stayed online in case they came back, and while doing that I emailed and called the various details I found to let them know what was happening and to request they please let me make a new time.
The interviewers never came back on.
Fortunately, the HR person who I had emailed contacted me back, saying she will call me this afternoon to reschedule a time. I just really really hope this incident hasn't jeopardised my chances.
So positives for that role: a Tax Accountant role, so my knowledge and experience fits perfectly with what they are looking for. Presumably also a typical Mon-Fri office hours role. Fairly close to the train station.
Negatives: no idea whether they are even going to still consider me at this point. No idea how flexible they might be around work times to fit school drop offs and pick ups. No idea about pay, advancement opportunities, etc.
Meanwhile there's also still more applications I haven't heard back from, and a recruiter is still trying to enquire with a firm in Lower Hutt (good location, plus I know some of the staff there who I used to work with at Findex). So I guess I just having to keep pushing through, and being optimistic that my financial drought will be coming to an end soon.
 weezieishness · Mon May 19, 2025 @ 02:08am · 0 Comments |
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