Category Archives: HR Guide

What I learned from my previous jobs – Part 7

PolyWogg.ca
April 28 2017

At the end of my previous post, I had wrapped up all my contracts with DFAIT. And I was wondering what to do with my life. It was April, and I took a trip to the Bahamas. I enjoyed myself, but there was a small nagging worry. What was I going to do for work when I got back?

The answer turned out to be almost nothing. I couldn’t work at DFAIT, and I didn’t have many contacts that were hiring at other departments the way DFAIT did. I wasn’t one of the high-priced contractors that people hired at $500-$1000 a day but only 10-20 days at a time. I was basically an employee who couldn’t be hired as an employee given the freeze, and I didn’t have any contracts.

The obvious answer would have been, at least to some people, to return to school. I could have shown up in May, done a semester, and continued on with my schooling. Every four months since I started at DFAIT, I had sent an update to the school saying “Okay, stopping out another four months”. All I had to do was go back, and I could resume.

Except for one thing. I didn’t want to.… Read the rest

What I learned from my previous jobs – Part 6

PolyWogg.ca
April 27 2017

In my last two posts, I covered my first co-op at DFAIT and my transition from simply being a student worker to actually being eligible for / capable of / considered for staff jobs. Sure, it was a contract. Sure, I wasn’t sure what it all meant. But I knew it meant something.

The most important thing was that I had to figure out HOW to stay. I found a basement apartment near Carlingwood, a neighbourhood I was familiar with at least and didn’t think was full of crack houses or loitering prostitutes (see the previous post about Vanier). I negotiated a new salary — basically worked out how much I was earning as a student per day, and added $10 or 15, which brought it to $135-$140 a day which is what they were prepared to offer anyway (CIDA used to pay their consultants way more, but DFAIT used casuals like full-time staff). And I had to figure out what to do about school.

The law school had this “stop out” option, for up to 2 years. Technically it wasn’t really a law school option, it was a calculation within the B.C. law society that you had to finish your degree within 7 years of starting, and with my planned articling and MPA classes and co-ops, it would take almost five years.… Read the rest

What I learned from my previous jobs – Part 5 addendum

PolyWogg.ca
April 26 2017

In my last post (What I learned from my previous jobs – Part 5), I covered my eight-month co-op period at DFAIT, and what I experienced, but I left something out. The “what I learned” part. It seems odd to title the blog post about what I learned, and then leave it out, but I left it out because the important things weren’t learned during the actual eight months. It came afterwards when I had a chance to evaluate the experience.

As I mentioned in the post, I was not a policy wonk who lived and breathed the federal government policy world. Sure, I knew generally there was “Cabinet”, but I didn’t really know who was in it and which committees were full, etc. I didn’t even know if the PM was always there. I vaguely knew, but I wasn’t some Parliament Hill staffer-wannabe. Nor had I ever once thought I would want to be.

Yet the preparation of the deck for Cabinet was fast, challenging, exciting. And the PM saw my charts. That was pretty heady stuff for someone who was used to installing software on a secretary’s computer.

I also realized that I had different skills from other people.… Read the rest

What I learned from my previous jobs – Part 5

PolyWogg.ca
April 26 2017

The year was 1992. Fall. At this point in the tale of my “career”, I’ve graduated from entry-level jobs, part-time this, part-time that, volunteer this, etc., and I have three good work experiences under my belt — the library job at Trent University, the computer tech support jobs at the University of Victoria, and the law co-op job and subsequent contract job with the Ministry of Education in B.C.

My career path, as I said in the last post (What I learned from my previous jobs – Part 4), was relatively set. I would do six more semesters of school, five more semesters of co-op, graduate with two degrees, article for a year or so, and become a lawyer.

Except life wasn’t going that smoothly. I loved the law co-op job, I loved government, I had confirmed or validated my “career” choice. But I was still hating law school as I started into second-year. In second-year, most law students start to breathe a little easier in terms of knowing both how it all “works” (i.e. things like 100% finals) as well as having some say in the courses and electives to take. I was thinking potentially about tax law, thought it was a way to scratch both an accounting and a law itch, while still interacting with government.… Read the rest

What I learned from my previous jobs – Part 4

PolyWogg.ca
April 23 2017

This post is a bit of a challenge to write because it combines so many elements, not all of which are about the job itself. I had mentioned in previous posts that had tried dishwashing, and well, I hadn’t been able to do it very well. Other manual tasks were likely to be similar if dishwashing or my experience in tech classes were any indication. For lack of a better description, I was a bit worried about my future and what “I” could actually do.

The university library job showed me a white or pink-collar job that I was capable of doing, and had enjoyed, and although it set a good baseline, it wasn’t exactly what I wanted out of my career. Similarly for the computer jobs — they were things I did to pay the bills, not what I wanted to do with my life…I had moved away from computers back when I graduated high school and I had both turned down and didn’t think I could afford going to Waterloo to do computer science.

During my undergrad, I slowly found myself separating myself from a lot of my classmates in terms of my interests. Being in the equivalent of a commerce/business admin program (it was officially a “Bachelor of Administrative Studies”), I did economics, law, public policy, political studies, etc.,… Read the rest

What I learned from my previous jobs – Part 3

PolyWogg.ca
April 23 2017

In my first post about earlier jobs (What I learned from my previous jobs – Part 1), I talked about my teenage jobs delivering papers, trying dishwashing, and even telemarketing, before talking about my first “real” job as a library assistant through my undergrad years. In the end, I said I would cover my law school years next, but in my second post (What I learned from my previous jobs – Part 2), I realized that I hadn’t covered two other computer-related jobs I did while I was working at the library too, so I covered them.

But I did actually leave Peterborough for the bright lights of the big, err, medium city of Victoria. Bigger than Peterborough, obviously, but not like a giant metropolis of Toronto or Vancouver. It still felt “right-size” for me, as did the university.

Many people disagree about what law school is really like, ranging from a Paper Chase model of the Socratic method to an apprentice-style world of civil procedure and internships to a Law Review / moot court world of John Grisham-like-protagonist-wannabes. For me, Scott Turow’s One-L is the best portrayal I’ve seen at approximating real life at first-year law school.… Read the rest

What I learned from my previous jobs – Part 2

PolyWogg.ca
April 14 2017

In my previous post (What I learned from my previous jobs – Part 1), I covered my first four jobs up until I headed off to law school. In doing so, I did go chronologically, but I skipped over two small jobs in there as they overlapped my job at the library, and I was focused on telling that part of the story. However, others are worth mentioning.

E. Assistant to the Treasurer — My girlfriend at the time had ties to the local Anglican church, and the wife of the Canon was the Treasurer to the Canadian Gerontological Nursing Association. Nice lady, but not particularly computer savvy beyond Word Processing, etc., and I had my own computer plus the know-how and software to run spreadsheets and print mailing labels, etc. I had struggled to get a job out of high school, including the library one, and I was looking for more experience to round out my work history. I didn’t know at the time that I would be working in the library pretty much full-time for four years, so I volunteered to be her assistant.

Generally speaking, that meant maintaining a database showing what type of member each person was (full, associate, etc.),… Read the rest

What I learned from my previous jobs – Part 1

PolyWogg.ca
April 10 2017

I mentioned in my previous post (Starting the Official Job Search of 2017), that I’m looking for a new job this year. And since I want this to be a “good search” that reflects my true interests and desires, I have been reflecting on ALL of my previous jobs to see what they tell me about myself and what I might be looking for in 2017.

A. Paper delivery boy — Yep, I delivered the Shoppers’ Market and the Peterborough Examiner when I was a teenager. I took over the Shoppers’ Market (think Kijiji on paper) route from my brother and it was pretty sweet. It literally covered my immediate neighbourhood — one block south, one block west, one block east and two blocks north. There wasn’t a perfect route that didn’t involve either some crisscrossing or doubling-back, but it was once a week, and they did direct deposit into a bank account. No collecting.

Later I had three different Examiner routes, all late afternoon and it ran Monday to Saturday (no Sunday paper). While many people did paper routes and say later they learned about dependability, or value for money, etc., my lessons were not so positive. It gave me my own money, which was good, but there was a serious limit to what you could make.… Read the rest

French update: Standard conjugation, the hypothese, and pronoun replacement (#2017-009)

PolyWogg.ca
March 13 2017

Mostly a summary of rules to remember around the various conjugations in present, hypothesis forms, some useful vocabulary to remember for nuances, and replacement pronouns.

GENERAL FRENCH REVIEW
B. Standard conjugationsAvoir
J’ai
Tu as
Il/elle/on a
Nous avons
Vous avez
Ils/elles ont
être
Je suis
Tu es
Il / elle / on est
Nous sommes
Vous êtes
Ils / elles sont
Parler
Je parle
Tu parles
Il/elle/on parle
Nous parlons
Vous parlez
Ils/elles parlent
C. Verb tensesWith the “si” (hypothesis), there are three choices:
Si je suis…(present) –j”accepterai… (future)
Si j’étais…(imparfait) –j’accepterais…(conditional)
Si j’avais été…(plus que parfait) –j”aurais accepté…(conditional passé)
Only really the second one is needed for the exam.
D. Common verbsDemander qqch, mais poser une question
E. Useful vocabularyDéposer — to drop something or someone off somewhere (Je dépose mon enfant a l’ecole);
Porter — to wear something, to carry something somewhere, or to support something;
Apporter — to take something with you;
Amener — to bring someone;
Ramener — to bring someone back;
Tableau blanc, tableau d’affichage — white board, notice board
Bureau/espace à aires ouvertes — open air office
Cubicle — cubique? cubicule? poste de travail modulaire?
F. Specialized vocabularyAboutir — successful result to a negotiation (usually conjugated in the past with avoir) — Les négociations ont abouti;
Des formules de travail de rechange — alternative work arrangements;
G.
… Read the rest

French update: Using DuoLingo (#2017-007)

PolyWogg.ca
March 12 2017

Just over two years ago, perhaps closer to three, I started using DuoLingo as a way just to keep my mind occupied with French. I have no grand illusions that an app like this will make me “fluent”, and I feel the same way about even the more intensive programs like Rosetta Stone. I think they are good, but the only real way to learn a language is to use it in your daily life. Telling stories that are relevant to you, figuring out how to say something the way YOU would, not the way Jean-Pierre would if he was renting a car in Paris.

I was quite surprised with the program. I thought it would be completely along the lines of a refresher, and then I hit something that was a bit of a tiny awakening in an area that I thought was both easy and settled. The present tense. I mentioned in the last post (French update – Screwing up the conditional (#2017-006)) a bit about the present tense seeming to me to be a bit “too active”.

For example, I mentioned that the phrase in french, in the present, for eating is “je mange”. Officially translated, that is “I eat” in English.… Read the rest

French update: Screwing up the conditional (#2017-006)

PolyWogg.ca
March 12 2017

Back in the day, when I started my french training, I struggled with the five main verb tenses as many new students do. While the present tense is always considered the easiest, I confess that I always found it a bit abrupt. For example, “je mange” which translates simply as “I eat”. It isn’t the normal “voice” we would use in English, at least not most of the time. We CAN use it, in context, such as where someone might be talking about avoiding unhealthy snacks, and they might say, “If I get hungry during the day, I eat an apple instead.”  However, in general, we would more likely say, “I’ll eat an apple”, or, out of that context, simply “I am eating an apple” to describe it in the present. A slightly more passive voice which describes the action rather than takes the action.

With passé composé vs. imparfait, I struggled not necessarily with the rules but with the actual usage – I tend to speak in a passive voice in English, and in my view, that requires the imparfait for the past. I am “describing” what happened in the past, and the imparfait always seems more natural to me, even when a situation clearly calls for passé composé.… Read the rest

French update: Understanding the two exams (#2017-005)

PolyWogg.ca
March 9 2017

Okay, so I know WHAT the tests look like and what I have to practice. I spent a lot of time tonight that seemed almost wasted, although mostly it was identifying certain phrases that I need to simply memorize the structure of, and to recognize them when they show up in the test.

EXAM PREPARATIONS
K. Written Exam, Part 1The first part is a “fill in the blank” option … there is a gap in a phrase where I have 4 choices of a word to place in the sentence. Other times it is a long phrase. The farther I go in the test, the harder the practice questions become. I don’t know if that happens in the actual test. While there are no “tricks”, there are certain small elements to watch for such as concordance of verbs, verb tenses, prepositions, vocabulary, or sometimes, “faux amis” (false friends where a word in English is used, as an anglicism, rather than the real french word).
L. Written Exam, Part 2The second part is “identify the error”, if there is one. There is a paragraph with three sub-phrases highlighted. I have to choose which one of them has an error in it, or if none do, to choose “aucune” error.
… Read the rest

French update: Training for my exams (#2017-003)

PolyWogg.ca
March 7 2017

I was finally able to get the one-on-one french training started last week (some long delays due to administrative inertia followed by a few weeks of figuring it out with the new approach to delivery followed by a mixup that delayed me two more weeks), and the first week went about as I expected. I’m pretty rusty, my pronunciation is off (too anglo-sounding for some of the words), and I’m not using enough “mots liens” (linking words) to give myself a good structure. I have confirmed however that my three strengths remain — large vocabulary (with good retention), good flow (“mon debit”) and willingness to speak / elaborate. Lots of people trying for their “C” levels in government have blocks to their progression — some speak in stutter-steps i.e. start and stop, start and stop, start and stop as they search for words and structure; some have limited vocabulary specific to a work area, for example, and have trouble going beyond to talk about stories from their past; or some have both of the first two and combine it with a general inability or unwillingness to elaborate to say anything other than short answers.

I have never had a problem to speak in English, nor to elaborate, and as a result, those aren’t my blockages.… Read the rest

Articles I Like: Figure Out the Leadership Style That Fits Who You Are

PolyWogg.ca
February 19 2017

I’m frequently on the look-out for articles or new ideas related to self-management and goal-setting. Sometimes it shows up in articles about management or leadership. One such article I found recently was Figure Out the Leadership Style That Fits Who You Are on the Harvard Business Review blog site. Written by William C. Taylor back in August, I was reading through it again this week and basically his argument is that there are a small set of leadership styles, and we should try to figure out what type we are.

The Classic Entrepreneur. Sure, these leaders care about the values their company stands for, but it’s the dollars-and-cents value proposition that matters most. They love to build killer products and butt-kicking companies.

The Modern Missionary. Winning is less about beating the competition than it is about building something original and meaningful. Success is less about making money than it is about making a difference and having an impact.

The Problem Solver. They worry less about dramatic impact than about concrete results. They believe in the power of expertise and the value of experience. These top-down, take-charge, the-buck-stops-here executives may be the most recognizable sorts of leaders, in terms of the image we carry around of what it takes to get things done.

… Read the rest

French update: Structure for my written review (#2017-002)

PolyWogg.ca
January 12 2017

I’ve been working on my structure for my review of French to support my next written test. Lots to review, but since a lot of it will be all over the place, with multiple tools, I need a structure to figure out what exactly I’m “reviewing”. It will also be the basis for future oral review too, so I’m trying keep some of those things in mind too.

Here are the categories I’m anticipating using for my note-taking:

  1. Standard conjugations — Avoir and Être of course, plus about five or six other common ones;
  2. Verb tenses — standard ones plus “linking” phrases for the past that require certain forms…I frequently have trouble with passé compose vs. imparfait, partly as I use a passive voice in English (including this sentence!), and as a result, often I would be using imparfait for a description. But the instructors kept telling me it had to be PC instead, yet the real problem was not verb tense but my tendency towards a passive voice in any language which requires imparfait to sound right to me…a simple solution? there are certain common phrases that when you use them to introduce a description, the rest of it HAS to be imparfait, so when I started using them in conversation, i.e.
… Read the rest

French update: The new plan (#2017-001)

PolyWogg.ca
January 9 2017

For my last update, I finished with “I’m going to blog my way through my re-certification process, from low-level beginner back to moderately fluent. Wish me luck…”. Fast-forward 8 months, and not much changed. I pushed for training, and ran into massive administrative inertia as to what I was supposed to do for training. They’ve been working to update the policy, and in the meantime, my training request went nowhere.

I was initially assessed back in August or September and they recommended 52 weeks of training, 6 hours per week of self-study and 3 hours of practice. Not exactly the speed I was looking for. Plus I was supposed to be a priority. Try again, different process, okay, now they say 3 weeks full-time one on one initially, just need the paperwork. Five weeks later, I was still waiting for the paperwork, and when we pushed yet again, they said, “Oh, right, well we don’t do it that way any more, now it has to be a 12 week course.” Pushed again, and they said, “okay, 12 weeks, starting the end of January”, take it or leave it. Four times the cost in salary, plus not what their own assessors told me I needed.… Read the rest

Song v. Deputy Minister National Defence

PolyWogg.ca
November 16 2016

I’m a government HR geek, and I like reading Public Service Labour Relations and Employment Board decisions just to see what’s going on in the world of grievances that make it that far (many drop out earlier with simple alternate arrangements or the government realizing it did something wrong and reversing itself). One that made it that far recently was Song v. Deputy Minister National Defence. And mostly what I like about it was the unique outcome.

As is often the case, the issue started with a competition where a candidate was screened out at the application stage. It is always the applicant’s responsibility to demonstrate they meet the criteria and if they don’t, they’re out. This can and often is a pretty hard and fast rule. Many rulings are out there on this factor — if they don’t say it in the application, you don’t have to accept follow-up info or anything else, and if you do, it should only be in very unusual situations (for example, the person has to prove they did budget forecasting, and they say they completed three years work of budget updates in their current job — without specifying that it includes both reporting and forecasting for the coming year…when they follow-up, they find out that the screener’s department use different terminology, and so “updates” there doesn’t include forecasting, but now that they know what it means, and they may even look at a sample, they say, “Oh, okay, you do meet it” and might screen them in…or say, “Sorry, no, you didn’t prove it in the original application, not our problem, you’re out”).… Read the rest

HR and switching classifications

PolyWogg.ca
October 9 2016

In my presentations about competing for public sector jobs, one thing I talk about is the idea of landing the “dream job” even though it is way out of your current classification. That doesn’t mean you’re not qualified, it just means that it’ll be a challenge. Here’s an example:

  • You work in administration at Health Canada (AS-02);
  • Your dream job in agriculture comes up at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and it’s one level higher (AG-03).

Now maybe you have enough experience to apply, etc. Here’s the challenge (think of it like figure skating, gymnastics or diving):

  • Switching departments usually is about half- to one-degree of difficulty…there’s always at least some bias towards internal candidates because they already know the department;
  • Aiming for a promotion in level is always at least one degree of difficulty; and,
  • Switching categories is always at least one degree of difficulty and is often two degrees.

So the AS-02 trying to get an AS-03 in the same area would only be one degree of difficulty, but switching categories, increasing level and changing departments raises your challenge to four degrees of difficulty.

Does that mean you have no chance? No, it just means you need to prepare and practice a lot before trying to land it in competition.… Read the rest

Managing inside/outside a cycle

PolyWogg.ca
September 11 2016

I’m often surprised by what topics will spark interest in people, and cycles vs. innovation/disruption would not be one on my list of topics expected to interest people. But a couple asked me if I could elaborate my example a little more clearly, and so I’m going to go for a specific example currently facing my team.

We have a large branch, some 500+ people. Before the last round of cuts and reorganization, that number was closer to 700. Ten directorates dropped to 7, we moved a lot of financial processing people (back-office types) to a service delivery branch, etc. But the part I want to talk about is the regular financing files for non-salary costs.

These costs are not extensive, maybe 10-15% of salary costs, and include things like travel, hospitality, equipment, newspapers, water machines, software licenses, training, etc. A lot of small costs that require a bit of transaction time. During the reorg a few years ago, it was felt that there were economies of scale and increased consistency to be had by centralizing the macro entry of planning figures for finances by our finance branch. They left basic processing in the branch, and each directorate has an admin officer that handles that.… Read the rest

Disruption deja vu in government

PolyWogg.ca
September 10 2016

While there are lots of politics watchers and lovers, my interest in government is really about public administration…structures, choices of instruments, governance processes, really anything “internal” about how the machine works. This past week ended with an expected announcement of a change in our branch structure as a result of changes in strategic direction and a rethinking of how best to meet those new needs.

However, what is of interest to me in the general sense is that some of the changes “undo” some changes that were made a few years ago. That sounds bad, but it’s really not. It’s just that some things that were changed a few years ago for very good reasons have now been changed also for very good reasons, yet environmental factors are not the only issue, nor even necessarily the driver. Some of it is, or perhaps may be, just cyclical.

Take for example programming by, well, just about by anyone delivering public services. The “best practices” are simple and ubiquitous…you want the program delivery to be light and flexible and as close to the client as possible. You ideally want the clients to have say in the design or at least feedback that can drive annual flexible tweaks.… Read the rest