Seniority this, seniority that. I understand why employers want to hire people who have served the most time, or experience. But maybe they should focus on knowledge first. I lost a job opportunity to a fruit loop dingus. I blame it on myself, seniority, and the other dingus who hired her. I have no choice but to blow it off, but i’ll keep in mind how difficult it will be for both of them, and how easy it would have been if she chose me. —Your loss, not mine
This article appears in Sep 11-17, 2014.
Awwww, didn’t make the Soud Efrican Rugby Team?
http://t.fod4.com/t/7bbb630c15/c1280x720_5…
Chopper says “Harden the fuck up”
Well, I’m pretty sure that the fruit loop dinguses to whom you refer have something you don’t – experience. Knowledge may be power, but it’s experience that will get you the job. Welcome to grown up Life future fruit loop dingus!
OB. employers don’t give a shoot about your knowledge, they want to know what you can do for them.Stop making excuses and start making the interview about them.
‘knowledge’ works as long as the job stays ‘textbook’.
but when it throws curve balls (as they all do, all the time) then experience remembers how to catch it.
this is one of the reasons why people should always start lower in the team. you get to observe, watch, learn as those curve balls fly at the senior person, and see what they do. you can learn without damaging anything because you are not the one expected to catch that 110 km ball. and as you gain experience in the job itself you will be storing up memories of all the weird, unexpected, out of the blue shit that can happen in any job for when YOU are in that senior position.
there are exceptions to this job scenario, but most stuff works this way. jumping out of school with shiny business degrees is just absurd. skip school and start in the warehouse.
Ah yes, entitlement. Now be thankful you are not a government troll who toils away and then wakes up one day realizing you have no prospects and will never move along the food chain. Scared to leave because of the pension and benefits as well as lack of initiative. Next thing you know your health deteriorates and you get sick thinking about going into work each day. See, there are things for you to be thankful about.
I believe the proper plural for dingus is either dingi or dingea….. or maybe it’s like beer is the proper plural for beer… or porn for porn. JS
POLITICS IN BUSINESS?
Ah yes, you must come to Montréal!
A pleasure as always.
Cheerio!
OB, it could be that the superior knowledge that you feel you posess may not be as apparent to others or, more likely, it could possibly be your lack of other abilities that kept you out of the job. I interviewed many technically astute people over the years but, unfortunately, their people skills were often non-existent so they were unsuited for supervisory roles. They tended to be very dismissive and condescenidng toward anyone who they felt was of inferior knowledge and skills (fruit loop dinguses?). This caused many problems in the workplace since they considered just about everyone to be inferior. Moving them into senior (presumabaly supervisory) roles was usually a big mistake. So, I recommend you work on your people skills and emphasize that in future interviews. Better luck next time!
BAHAHA I was passed up for a job last year I was backfilling on contract because they went with someone who had been with the company for 20+ years. I had glowing reviews from my supervisors and to this day when I run into one particular supervisor they still comment on how awesome I was at the position.
The catch to hiring this person? They had NO experience doing this type of job. None. They had just been in the company since before Jesus had been crucified and they like to ‘reward employees for service with job advancement’ (as explained to me). It doesn’t matter if they actually have no actual relevant qualifications. I had the pleasure of training this person (who didn’t even know how to turn the computer on – I wanted to stab myself in the throat with a pencil on multiple occasions during that two week period – two weeks to train this person on a job that took me three days to get the hang of)… and then the organization wanted me to stay an additional month because this person was so inept. I said “nope – see ya” and let them deal with the consequences of hiring someone because they were an ‘internal’ candidate and not because they actually had any qualifications.
So sometimes organizations DO make shitty hiring decisions based on ridiculously dumb reasons. The only comfort you end up getting is from the difficult consequences that comes with hiring the less-than-best candidate.
If all you have to look forward to is the failure of someone else, you need to re evaluate your situation.
Seniority-based hiring and promotion systems are put in place as a cooperative solution to the problem of mutually offsetting instances of workplace showboating, and to reward senior employees for years of working at pay levels that were less than commensurate to their productivity *at that time*.
OB, the point is that while you have allegedly been passed over by an older, less productive person than yourself, the tables will one day turn. There will come a day when someone younger and more productive than bitter-old-feeble you is passed over so that you are not left out in the cold at age 58. Isn’t the world we live in so nice and compassionate?
Politics in business: it’s not who you know, it’s who you blow.
Plural form of words ending in -us
(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
In the English language, the plural form of words ending in -us, especially those derived from Latin, replaces -us with -i. Many exceptions exist, some because the word does not derive from Latin, and others due to habit (for example, campus, plural campuses). Conversely, some non-Latin words ending in -us and Latin words that did not have their Latin plurals with -i form their English plurals with -i. Between these extremes are words that do not justify a Latin plural on etymological grounds, but that native English speakers commonly pluralize with -i (for example, octopi as a plural for octopus). Whether to regard these alternative plural forms as incorrect depends on one’s position in the on-going debate over prescriptivism versus descriptivism in linguistics and language education.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural_form_o…
I don’t think it’s that, Tomaso – I think it’s just a certain amount of satisfaction one gets from knowing that they shot themselves in the foot and it’s not your problem.
I know myself, and I’m assuming OB isn’t letting this simple smirk-worthy situation really consume their/our life.
govt jobs don’t follow any rules that make good business sense. i think anyone who has spent the entire career coddled in the taxpayers’ arms should spend a year working in private enterprise. non-union private enterprise.
That’s what happens when decent jobs are filled by Baby Boomers and over priveledged Gen-Xers.
Education should count, but just a degree is useless to potential employers, unless you’re in a scientific field. Past that, its a matter of what you can do for me, and for what cost. Just like a consumer, I shop around for the best value in an employee. Like it or not, but people with fresh degrees and less than 5 years of experience in the field, not just a related field are like paying for a dollar store calculator. They rarely work well, and they need to be replaced within a year. Except in this example, the university/college complex have educated Gen-Yers and Millenials that they’re worth 50 K a year out of the gate. Plus the investment bankers that made trillions on your parent’s RESP contributions reinforced that idea on a yearly basis so your parents could get that upper middle class tax cut. As a result, a university degree of any sort is like a high school education.
Who benefitted the most? People who were smart and became plumbers. That and professors. I hear tenured profs can take a poop in the middle of the floor and get a raise for it.
Perchance have you ever worked in the public service Bad Dog?
It’s not all sunshine and cupcakes, and not ALL public servants are unionized. In fact, most upper management IS NOT unionized along with their support staff in Nova Scotia.
I could go on a whole rant about my experience in government (unionized point of view and non unionized point of view), but that would take up too much of my time and it’s futile to try and reason with people who have preconceived notions on what it’s like to work in an environment they’ve perhaps never worked in before, especially when the media blarts on about crap they don’t bother reporting all the facts about in order to make better headlines. (not pointing this to you, BDM, I’m just saying that working in government isn’t the mecca of workplaces).
i come from a family of public service bureaucrats. federal ( including DND and Can Post) and provincial (manitoba, not ns) . i don’t let the media fluff n stuff ( with which i am intimately familiar) cloud my personal knowledge.
i could NOT work in such an environment at any level. ditto on union workplaces, although i did organize a nabet local (then promptly left the place)
public service employment has it’s downside – for the gifted and innovative.
however, what makes a rewarding work environment is going to depend mainly on the person making the judgement. in some environments person A will thrive, but person B will take to drink.
personally, i cannot work under too many rules. it BURNSES! i could never consider working in public service a ‘mecca’. good god.
my pa worked for the feds, he took early retirement. i had no idea he disliked his job until i was older
Thanks Mr. Meaty!
That’s good information to know
I have to say though, i trust Wiki only as far as i can edit it. So, to that end I’m going to say, without a doubt, that the plural of Dingus is officially Dingae. Yup, that’s right folks you heard it here first. Many dingus is now known as dingae…. as in ‘I work in an office filled with unionized dingea’.
^^^ throw a box of tide at them, then turn on the hose
KNOWLEDGE VS. EXPERIENCE: A FALSE DICHOTOMY
“Seniority this, seniority that. I understand why employers want to hire people who have served the most time, or experience. But maybe they should focus on knowledge first.” Your loss, not mine
To paraphrase an old saying, “Knowledge without experience is impotent, but experience without knowledge is blind.” What does that mean? It means that to take an exclusionary view, placing exclusive emphasis on one or the other, amounts to propounding a false dichotomy. It is false because, while experience is enriched by knowledge – indeed experience without knowledge is empty – so knowledge is matured by experience. They go together.
Of course, it all depends upon the nature of the job. For routine clerical jobs, experience may well be enough. But for jobs that require a theoretical or knowledge base, experience is not enough. One thinks of teaching, minimally at the senior secondary level. Clearly a knowledge base, one resting on subject knowledge and, to the extent that it is possible, knowledge of various pedagogical techniques, is a requirement.
However, the master teacher is not restricted to this level of practice. Paradoxically perhaps, it is experience which then comes to the fore. For example, one thinks of teaching History. It is certainly not enough to know one’s historical “facts” and strategies of “classroom management” as the school administrators would put it. On the contrary, the master teacher must, at the same time “read” her students’ minds and engage them in spirited and meaningful dialogue, but perhaps even more importantly, she must have a “philosophy of history” which serves to animate her lessons and gives them point and purpose. She must be able to give a coherent answer to the question, “What is History?”
Such a philosophy of history is an amalgam of knowledge and experience. That is why knowledge and experience is a false dichotomy.
A pleasure as always.
Cheerio!
Q. “What is history?”
A. A past period of time when MM may have been considered relevant.
As one might suppose, a primitive understanding of history which possesses neither knowledge or experience. But I’ll give you a start: History is not so much a static “period of time” in the past but rather an active interpretation by the student of the persons and events which constituted it.
Get to work now. Pass your paper in when finished. I will award marks based on your knowledge and experience, i.e., your reflective thought content. Go now.
I don’t get the sense that this is a question of knowledge vs. experience but rather competency vs. years on the job, which is a little different. When I read “froot loop dinguses (dingi?)” I understood that the person who got the job was actually not competent to do the job where the “entitled gen-exer” was actually competent to do the job. To me, this is a valid bitch. But like others have said, who would want to work in that environment anyhow? Move west, young entitled gen-exer, like the rest of us!
See my opening quotation (09/17, 3:04PM).
Hehehe, fruit loop dingus! Big Brother’s over next week so you can work on your next application.