Today, I received a letter from my university titled completion of studies.
So I’m done with studying (at least for now), and the next phase in my life is employment. I got my current job without much hassle. In fact, I didn’t actually apply for a job. Couple of months back, my current employer came to my campus for a recruitment. I remembered it was on a Tuesday and I had to skip the first half of my lab session to attend the interview.
It was a really simple interview. First they asked all the attendees to introduce themselves, then there was a short questionnaire for us to fill up. After that one by one, they had a short interview with each of the attendees. The interview was really brief and general, things like where I lived and where do I see myself in 10 years. Those sort of stuff.
At the end of the interview, they told me that my application will be reviewed and that they will be in touch with me. I left right after my session was done, and headed to the lab to join the rest of my 3rd year coursemates.
The following day, I overheard from my coursemates that they were recruiting only one person for an immediate vacancy position and that the person has been hired. I asked if I had any chances of getting an offer, he said no. Well at least I tried.
Couple of weeks later (even before finals), I received a text message from my current employer stating that there was a vacancy for the assistant consultant position and asked if i was interested. I replied yes! Haha. After my semester ended, I went to the office to meet with them for a discussion regarding the position.
So yeah, that’s pretty much how I got my very first big girl job, as an assistant consultant in a mining consultant firm. WC said that we were both very lucky to get a job fresh out of uni and in our field of study. I’ve been working for about a month now, and I wanted to write about me and my job thus far.
Positives
My workplace is pretty near my home, it takes me about 20 minutes to get there without any traffic. On peak hours, it takes an average of 45 minutes and at most an hour to get to work. My working hours are 9 am – 5.30 pm, I can leave home at eight in the morning and be home by 6.30 pm. This is such a contrast to when I was doing my internship in Klang, I had to leave home by 6.30 am every morning and only arrive home at 8 pm at night. Thank God that was only for 3 months.
My workplace is a really small office with only 5 staffs in total, excluding the bosses. So everyone knows everyone. It’s quite a cosy environment. In fact, one thing I noticed is that I found myself fitting in really well just within the first few weeks. I consider myself a mild socially awkward person, so I thought it was pretty amazing that I felt comfortable in my workplace.
The learning curve right now is exponential. So I guess for now this outweighs the negatives.
Negatives
My basic is below average and I have close to zero benefits. Haha. I think the staff usually earn extras from overtime. For me, I would spend more time at work only if I really have to. I won’t slow down on my work speed just so I could do overtime and earn more. My time is more valuable than that.
I love listening to stories about the company, the bosses and the previous staffs from my colleagues. But when they start bad mouthing and criticising them, I will feel a bit uneasy. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. But like my parents always tell me, just take it with a pinch of salt.
My boss does not have very good sense of time. Haha. There was one Saturday he wanted to see both the assistant consultants in the morning, so I arrived in the office at 9.15 am. Better for me to wait for the boss than vice versa. He didn’t show up till about 1.10 pm, and I was on the verge of leaving the office already. Haha.
I’m only a month into employment with this mining consultant firm and when people ask me how’s work, all I can say is so far so good because I haven’t been with the company long enough to have a more elaborated answer for that question. Plus I have yet to encounter any major hiccups on the job.
But over this one month I’ve learnt plenty and that’s great. There are days when there isn’t much to do and time passes so slowly and there are days where I don’t even have time to daydream for a second.
I’m pretty sure that with any job, there are both pros and cons. There’s a 6 months probation period before I become a confirmed employee. In the meantime, I have to give it some time to see how all of it gels with my life and I.
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