Is there no job?

Toyotafanboi

Hi, need a bit of advice here. i'l try make this as condensed as possible. i'm actually asking this on behalf of my partner, as i think i am more concerned than she is.

basically, she is 2 years out of college, working in a retail job, nothing fancy, minimum wage, shop floor kind of thing.

as and from the time she left college she applied for a lot of graduate programmes with various companies. a lot of them were unsuccessful (as i'm sure competition for these is huge); she was finally accepted for one around April of last year, told she was accepted, given a start date/ location etc and then a few weeks later the company done a u-turn and pulled the plug on the graduate programme completely.

she kept applying around, and long story really short after several rounds of jumping through hoops she was "hired" by another similar company. She has attended a "meet and greet day" type of thing where they were given a talking to about the company background and done some team building type things with the other new recruits. The company took their details for payroll and to sign them up for their healthcare etc. they were given an approximated start date (the month of September) and told they would be contacted after around 8 weeks with exact start dates and locations.

that was in January. March came and went and there was no correspondence to do with starting her role. she contacted them in April and they replied in May with a stalling for time style, non committal response. she has kept in touch with them ever since and all they have done is stall for time "we'll email next week", "HR are still working on it, don't call us, we'l call you" kind of thing.

Now the knub of the issue is that we are due to go on holidays for the first two weeks in August and she was always planning to hand in her two weeks notice the second week in July to leave her retail job, go on holidays, the come home and start her new graduate position.

we are currently in the second week in July and she is feeling under real pressure to hand in her notice or face missing our holiday, but i really don't think she should hand in her notice until she has a concrete start date and location from this new company, otherwise she could end up with no job at all and we need the money, i'd rather miss the holiday than have no job. i understand she is excited about her new role, but seeing as a similar role fell through before for her and the company she is currently due to start with sold off all their international branches right after they offered her a job, i think the company are looking for a way to get out.

any opinions or thoughts would be great. getting holidays re-arranged with her current employer seem like a no-go.

gandalf

First thing I'd say is has she definitely asked the current employer for the time off? If not then I'd suggest closing this avenue off first. If they agree then it gives you both some additional wriggle room. If not then she will have to face not going on holiday or having no job.

Does she have a contact name for the person who interviewed her for the new position? Are they based in Dublin? If they are I'd suggest going in to meet them as she will probably get more joy face to face especially if anything "dodgy" is going on. I'd also suggest that she is very direct with them and ask specific questions on when she is starting without any wriggle room for wishy washy answers.

tradhead

I don't have a huge amount of experience with this but- could she ring someone in the new company and just explain her situation as you have here?

They might be more inclined to give a definite answer when she's actually speaking to them, or if nothing else she'll probably be better able to suss out if they're bluffing and there's no actual job. I can't understand why any company would want to mess people around like this for no reason tho, so hopefully they're just a bit disorganised

Toyotafanboi

Thanks for the replies. re-scheduling with her current employer is a no-go, they are the sort of employer (whether it be right or wrong of them) that assign you your holiday time, not for your choosing and her weeks are already assigned, she already inquired into taking time at her own expense and was pretty much told that unless someone is dead or dying, it's not happening.

that said, she enjoys the people and the subject matter in her current job, it's very close to home and they have offered her options to move up the ladder already so it isn't the worst stop gap job to be stuck in, which is why i would hate to see her lose it.

she isn't a fool but i think she is being very naive to this whole thing, kind of closing her eyes, crossing her fingers and hoping for the best. maybe this is better suited to the P.I. forum :P

it is hard to understand why a company would want to do this. but last year, as i said, one particular programme received over 1k applications for 12 jobs, she applied, made it through the various rounds of assessments , was offered one of the 12 jobs. they were then contacted to say due to cutbacks that the 12 jobs were now 3 but she was still being offered one, then a subsequent call back to say that there were no jobs at all and that is with a very very large irish company, obviously they could revoke the offer as no contracts were signed etc. so there is a real concern this could happen again.

i know you guys can't give a direct answer but thanks for the advice, i guess i just need to hear that i'm not crazy in the way i'm thinking.

as for email correspondence, it's really all done and dusted. we are kind of in the zone of just getting a string along message ever 2-3 weeks, "we'l be in touch next week" etc etc and a similar response if you ask what's going on.

visiting in person may be an option at this point. but would that look a bit psycho if she just turned up in person "demanding answers" so to speak?

gandalf

Toyotafanboi wrote: »

visiting in person may be an option at this point. but would that look a bit psycho if she just turned up in person "demanding answers" so to speak?

Not if it is presented correctly no. It shows that she is still interested in working for them but does require them to reciprocate that commitment as well by giving a proper start date.

TBH she should expect a straight answer at this stage.

starlit

I suggest she wait till a date is confirmed to start the new job. She be as well not to hand in her notice and to stay in the job she is in until it is certain what date the new job starts. Think there is a two week leeway about handing in job notices so surely by the time ye are back from holiday a date be sorted by then? She may need to contact them again about the start date, its annoying that they can't give a straight answer.

hdowney

doovdela wrote: »

I suggest she wait till a date is confirmed to start the new job. She be as well not to hand in her notice and to stay in the job she is in until it is certain what date the new job starts. Think there is a two week leeway about handing in job notices so surely by the time ye are back from holiday a date be sorted by then? She may need to contact them again about the start date, its annoying that they can't give a straight answer.

The OP said above that if she stays in the current job she cannot go on holiday. It's either stay in the current job, lose the holiday and hope the new job comes thru OR leave the current job, go on holiday and hope the current job comes thru. But the difference is the former she still has job security, the latter she could end up with nothing but the holiday.