It seems frightening to think that it has been nearly a year.

A little over a year ago, in fact at the end of next week it will be a year, that I made the decision to change jobs.
 
Time flies when having fun.

Little did I suspect how that decision would impact me and how the activities of last summer and the people I would meet would change my life. I’m not talking about a change so inspiring that an afternoon TV drama could be made of it.  But it did change me, for the better I hope.

What was I doing? 

I was looking for my next job.  I won’t review that experience in this post because I wrote about it extensively last summer in the series “#myjobhunt”, covering Days 1 to 32 of my experiences.
It became the best bracketed six weeks of my adult life; a period that still makes me smile.

As a result of #myjobhunt I started my current role at the very end of Sept, nine and half months ago.  It started as a six month contract.  Since then I have learned so much, grown plenty and achieved a huge amount both personally and in my job.  The job itself was incredibly exciting and daunting before I started, quite a stretch from my previous role.  This perception was nothing compared to how I felt after the first month.  The pace and scale of what I had to do and what we were trying to achieve was and still is incredible.  This job is huge! 

I would love to go into the details of what has been achieved by me personally, by the Recruiting teams and by the European HR Service Delivery structure, of which the Resourcing and Recruiting structure is a part, but discretion and company confidentiality needs to be respected.  Many of the challenges are the same that plenty have been through before and will go through time and again in the future.  Organisations change and develop, going through OD programs with multifaceted change and transformation programmes in order to evolve and grow. 

It is what happens.  I am excited to be an integral part of these changes. 

There are of course frustrations that come with a complex multi-cultural corporation that has grown over 3 centuries.  There are the matrix of reporting lines, local priorities, legacy attitudes and the inevitable resistance to change, all of which need to be managed to be sure the overall business goals are achieved in the timescales required.  Not only that, there are the inevitable moving goal posts.  But one thing has been constant; the desire by the Service Delivery management team to get the job done and work through a problem, not circumvent it regardless of the challenge and degree of difficulty, and still achieve results that will make a substantial difference.

From my desk I can see where the improvements have been made. I count reducing the average Time to Hire by nearly 30%, the average Cost per Hire being reduced by 50%, the dependency of agencies being reduced from approx. 80% to less than 20% across the region in 9 months as significant achievements, but there is always much more that can be done.  That is the best and most exciting part of my job. Set aside the five hours a day I have to commute with a 5am start and the not-so-wonderful smells on the tube, I actually feel like I work in HR now and belong in it as part of the changes we are making in the business and I tell you what, I love it!  Maybe it is the company, maybe it’s my boss, or it could be her team of direct reports or it could be my team of direct reports or it could just be the job is the right one for me. All of the above I suspect.

I have been asked a number of times over the last few months what my perfect job would be if I were to spec it out myself.  I have always answered that it would be the one have right now.

Which is sad, because being on a contract means that it inevitably it is going to come to an end and that end is likely to be fast approaching.

So time to dust the CV off, update it with all that has been done this last year (sorry Merv – still need a CV) and embark on another #myjobhunt.  Of course anything can happen and I could still be here this time next year.  I hope I am, truly I do.  It would be great to take the changes and the results of this last year and use them as a platform next year and the year after. Can’t always have what we want though, eh? But I have to be practical and think and act wisely. So #myjobhunt starts again.

Needless to say that #myjobhunt won’t be the same daily serialisation it was last year. I won’t have the time for that – I will still have a job to do.  Yet I will do my best to share my thoughts and observations in much the same way I did last year and I really hope I will meet as many wonderful supportive people and have as many laughs.  I also hope I learn as many new things about myself as I did in the six weeks last summer and the subsequent 9 months.

And of course I welcome any input, introductions and opportunities. More about me can be found here on my personal blog

Song of the Day – Back from Cali by Slash (feat. Myles Kennedy)