To be Fair

The hunt is on

Looking for a job after 11 years of a highly charged career in a consulting firm has proven to be trickier than I thought. For the simple reason that I have no single clue of what I fancy, but a long list of what I do not want.

No more late night slogging to meet inhumanely project timeline. No more singing along with the pop songs of IT’s spin doctors that technology is the mother of all solutions to management’s headaches. Enough of trading in my conviction for down-to-earth and yet sustainable organizational improvements to flamboyant in-your-face type of big bang transformation. No more going through the ordeal of convincing young restless consultants the values of a job well done is more important than a job sweetened with lots of per deim and outstation perks.

I saw both the good and bad time of the local consulting market. I conclude, after all these years, that the best paid job there is, if you want to be a salaried employee, is still as as a hired consultant. The paycheck is fairly proportional to the density of your brainware and charisma. But the tide is turned if you are driving a business in an overly crowded local IT consulting market. Market forces, like plague, are without mercy. Such frustration, I believe, shared currently by our health minister, in his futile attempts to keep the foot and mouth disease under check. At least as a minister, I was told, enjoys lifetime pension even if you lose your job. Not in a million years for the folks sitting in management chairs operating in the local IT consulting market.

While I comtemplated to be a delivery consultant again, for an assortment of benefits from huge paycheck, opportunities to travel and ample opportunities to flaunt my intellectual breadth, my yearning to take driver’s seat to build something tangible is burgeoning each day. But based on previous argument, a management position in a local consulting firm is to be ruled out firmly. It is clear to me that taking a break from consulting business could be an idea worthwhile considering.

After uncountable attempts, I am relieved that I have come to some kind of concensus with myself on the following 3 criterion of my dream job. First it must be in a tangible brick and mortar business, able to allow me to be creative and work with people, while still giving me time to contribute to charitable causes in my community.

On the note of contributing to charitable cause, my friend PW’s advice resonates loudly in my head. To be the front runner for a charitable cause, according to her, requires time and money. It will be hard to achieve if I have a full time career during the week while prunning my budding potential in oil painting during the weekends. Moreover, charity begins at home.

So for now, I will settle for the first two criterions and wait and see if I could juggle community services in between my busy work schedule. In the meantime, my pursuit in my artistic and literary skill shall continue. Don't laugh. Hopefully this skill will come in handy for my next milestone in life.

Before I end this article, an assortment of job offers in brick and mortar companies has indeed come my way. From being the marketing manager of a movie production company (too little pay), to setting up a factory in poverty-stricken Nicaragua (Exciting but was a short term project plus it would be an uphill task to put my parents’ mind at ease), to a travelling regional sales manager for some filtration equipment (I turned it down as it is a lone ranger in the wild wild west of process industry), not to mention offers of key positions in an upstart business consulting firm and another in the company that I have just served for 11 years (yes yes is consulting business all over again). But none of them fits the total package of what I am looking for. Hence the hunt continues. …

posted by Vegie @ 10:51 PM