Please feel free to send me links of similar situations posted. Much appreciated to all or any advice given!
Here’s the rundown as brief as possible:
-Hired after 1.5 Mo. of interviewing (4 interviews total) at a highly revered “hot” company - (really don’t want to give up yet)…
-Worked there for 6 Mo., knew I’d have to relinquish a good deal of responsibility obtained at previous jobs, but not this much!!!
-Never properly trained or given a proper introduction.
-Actual responsibilities are very small, almost as if I’m an untrustworthy intern…
-Not included in any team meetings relative to my position.
-very little design work, mostly data entry, layouts, spreadsheets, etc.
-Wonderful colleagues, boss seemingly does not want to be a boss…
-Boss is extremely busy (doing jobs at once, not much work experience prior to graduating).
-Prbly doesn’t want to be mngr, but is… likely they want the credit/experience.
-Bad attitude
-Only wants to delegate small details and leaves out major ones, leaving big gaps/problems for the department (and me).
It’s understood I’ll have to patiently gain the trust of my boss and ask be more involved in teamwork, etc…
But right now I’m feeling like I’m being punished for no reason- shunned and stunned!
Where is a good place to start with someone who seems to not want me there in the first place?!
I am left worried & wondering why I was ever hired.
Talk to your boss. Ask him how his weekend was. Try to get to know him. Thank him when he does good and call him by his name.
Ask if there is any way you can lighten his workload. Ask for more responsibility.
Show him design work you have done or email him some initiatives you’d like to take. Put in extra hours or ask if it’s ok to work on something work related over the weekend.
Come up with ideas which will save him time/money/face.
If none of this helps, get a new job… hopefully stepping forward towards your goals, not back to pizza hut/walmart.
You were probably hired to bring some aspect of design the others didnt show case. Do what you do and dont worry if you get noticed. You will be as you are there and the boss not taking note in you is probably because he has faith in you. Show him why and then go a little farther. If you dont like it after a year split.
@azrehan … Thanks for your suggestions. Sadly, I’ve tried all of those/done of all of those with no regard so far. I’ve only been there 6 mo., so I guess I’ll just keep chipping away… but it’s a really complicated situation I guess.
@ad weaver … it’s not really about getting noticed, my boss very obviously has little faith in me. She won’t even allow me to go to footwear meetings, it actually hurts. I’m not trying to get my emotions involved, but it’s so frustrating.
That’s interesting. Just after I posted my last one I thought maybe the boss is a woman.
In that case, tell her her hair looks nice.
Seriously though. I have never has a female boss, so I can’t really help you there, but most things should apply across both genders.
My boss didn’t invite me to his special employees christmas party at his house this year and basically treats me like I’m a 3D model and technical information robot, so I understand your situation to some degree.
I can lay out some guesses as to why you’re in the position you currently find yourself in. With companies of any size, there are layers of decision makers - I’d bet your boss was not the sole voice in the hiring process and might even have been given direction on what talent/criteria the company needed most. If you’re doing grunt work there might have been displeasure voiced by others more senior in your department about having had to do the work you’re now tasked with…it could just as easily have been that a strategic addition of a lower level designer was necessary to satisfy HR, management or an owner and could be for budgetary reasons. We bill quite a bit for admin work and when we have a lower level person who can do it inexpensively and do it well, it makes me smile all the more! As a former global mgr of a Fortune 100 manufacturer, I can attest to being pushed to hire for various reasons - once we simply needed to eat requisition dollars and had no real need to add to our group so I spent LOTS of time finding a purpose for the new guy! Also, don’t fret not being included in meetings, she may be dealing with problems controlling the voices amongst her group when it comes to other department exposure - adding another voice / opinion is sometimes daunting.
The net-net of it all is this; if you are adding value to the deliverables of your department, you are an asset. Whether you feel valuable is something else entirely, but that’s why you get a paycheck. Like one of the previous posters offered, slowly increase how much value you add by observing the system around you and targeting areas where you think you can do a better job than is currently being done…once you’ve observed those target areas, then you slowly (and unobtrusively) begin to prove it with insight, design ideas and involvement.
Whut? So if your boss is a guy, praise their work - if she is a woman praise her looks? I hope that’s a joke.
I hope this is a joke.
Shields, your comment presents a double entendre … do you agree with shoenista (that you hope the above comment was a joke), or that you do not agree with shoenista’s comment?
