Try to be nice...

Wow, been a while since I posted on here. Been keeping busy with work... for a change ;-) And it's been good-- makes the days fly by, that's for sure!

So, a little background info on what's been keeping my so busy this past couple weeks, in addition to my regular programming work:

I came in as a college hire, fresh out of school at UCSB, and straight to work. Now, most of you know that I work for the world's largest biotech company, but I don't work in the science area-- I work in the Information Systems department, where we basically work to support the scientist and researchers with their computer/software/hardware needs. The IS department has an active college hire program, recruiting from target universities in the area every hiring season (each year). And this year we're expanding relationships with my alma mater. As one of UCSB's first few college hires, I ended up with the role of the recruiting facilitator, so I've been busy spearheading our recruiting efforts there. Since most of the recruiting occurs during Fall quarter, the past few weeks have been extremely busy, kicking things into high gear.

This week is full of activities: Career Fair tomorrow, where we'll (that is, 4 of my team members) be manning a booth, handing out info and accepting resumes, and then an Information Session Thursday to present more info about the IS department and make students aware that we do recruit computer/tech geeks, not just scientists and lab rats.

This year for the first time, another department (called POQ-- I'll spare you the explanation of what it stands for-- it's basically manufacturing and QC) is joining in on the college recruiting efforts, as they've got a ton of openings for other engineers. They are joining us for our Info Session so they can explain more about their department to prospective hires. As this is the first time venturing into collegiate territory, they've asked us to help them out with their efforts. Okay, no problem, always happy to lend a hand.

But then I found out that they weren't going to attend the Career Fair with us. Okay, that's fine too-- when we get people in their target majors showing up at our booth, we'll tell them to come to the Info Session for more details.

Then HR said they were giving us printed out job descriptions for handouts. Cool-- we can give those students a handout when we tell them to come back on Thursday.

Today Kinko's delivered the printouts. POQ has 7 types of positions available. And each position was printed on a separate sheet of paper. SEVEN sheets of paper for ONE department, and they're not even going to be at the Career Fair to hand them out!?

What irks me is that I've been pounding on desks trying to enlist their help with my efforts-- making the PowerPoint slides for the joint Info Session, making the fliers to post on campus to promote said Info Session, etc... and not a peep out of the POQ folks. But then they go and dump a bunch of papers on me and expect my team to hand them out tomorrow.

The second thing that irks me is that they CHOSE not to attend our Career Fair, which would've enabled them to set up an extra table RIGHT NEXT TO OURS so they could personally hand out their sheets and actually be able to EXPLAIN more about the jobs listed there!

Nope, apparently they expect that since we're already there, we can handle that for them.

Ummm... yeah, right. There's barely enough room on our table for all of OUR handouts, let alone some POQ handouts that none of us are equipped to explain.

I was tempted to chuck them into a fire. But, being the nice person that I am, and seeing how "team playing efforts" are prized at work, I decided to play nice and collated and stapled (by hand!) 50 packets of 7 sheets each, and stuck them in a box that my team can dig into (read: NOT displayed on our already-crowded table) to hand out.

Seriously, that's as far as I'm willing to go. If they run out tomorrow, too fucking bad. I'm only willing to be a team player if the others play too. And so far they haven't been playing.

Hey, I can be a bitch and play hardball, too.

(originally posted at:  http://www.myspace.com/hellykwee/blog/181195810)