A December to remember…part one

I’ve been meaning to write this post for some time now but kept on getting distracting with life.  This post is late and long so I’ll be doing it in parts, sorry.

In December I celebrated my five year anniversary of working full time with my company.  I started working there on a student contract in July 2008 but for some reason they use December as my start date because that’s when I became a regular full-time employee.

December was hectic for me because I was getting ready to write my exam for that blasted class.  I was applying to more jobs than ever and making sure to take the time out to personalize my cover letters for the position I was applying for. I had friend and family gatherings to attend; to say I was tired and almost burned out is an understatement.  What I really needed was to take some days off but I was saving my vacation (and sick) days in case I got a call for an interview.

I remember sitting at my desk and seeing the email notification light on my smartphone go off. I checked it and saw that there was an email from one of the companies I applied to right after I did a resume makeover. The email asked if I was still interested in the position and asked about my salary expectations. After the last email I received asking about salary expectations I decided to ask around a bit and asked my mentor for some advice.  After speaking with her, I realized that I was in the right range the whole time.  Actually her range was a bit higher, she told me not to sell myself short.

The next morning I replied to the email and said I was still interested in the position and gave me salary expectations; within the hour she called me for a phone interview. Because I had just walked into the office I asked to reschedule for 1130.  In the meantime, I started preparing myself. I did some quick research on the company, printed my resume so I could follow along and prepared some questions to ask the HR representative. I went to a Tim Hortons close by and called the HR rep back. I found the interview to be very weird. She started by telling me the current company I worked for was in trouble and asked why I wanted to leave considering I’ve been there for long. She told me I was a ‘lucky one’. I corrected her and told her my company wasn’t in trouble, we had just purchased a company overseas for over $1billion. I told her I’ve been working for the company for five years and was looking for an industry change.  Her next question was why I wasn’t pursuing my accounting designation.  In my cover letter and resume it clearly states that I working towards a designation, so I’m not entirely sure where she got this from. The whole interview threw me off and it didn’t help that her phone kept chipping in and out. She told me I would hear from her in the next couple of days but I felt like I wouldn’t.  I went into this phone interview prepared and left feeling like I wasn’t at all. I brushed it off and looked at it as experience.

I made a decision…

Over the past couple of months I’ve been having a war with myself.  I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do.  Do I finish my accounting designation, do I move to project management, do I scrape everything all together and try something completely new? After looking at the type of person I am, I came to a decision.  I really dislike when projects are started and never finished.  So I decided to finish my designation. Like I previous said, I like numbers and helping people. I feel accounting will give me that balance.  And I once I finish my designation I can use it as a stepping to stone to do something else.  Having a designation can help me get into project management.  I also realized that no one regrets doing their designation but some do regret not finishing it.  So finish I shall. I shall put on my big girl panties, stop the crying about how hard and time consuming it is and realize that it will all most definitely be worth it all in the end.