Vent About the Job Market

Well, I'm still looking for a new job. I have a title company and I have done some legal work on the side, but I would rather get a job somewhere and do the title work on the on the side, since it takes so little time.

The frustrating thing about finding a new job is that I have two graduate degrees and I've seen so many people who are bad at their jobs and have little education making a lot of money. As an MBA student I did some consulting for a manufacturing company. I reviewed and organized all of the HR files and created spreadsheets and charts to manage all of the HR, because the HR director was "so overwhelmed" and "behind" on everything. The HR director told me it was so much work that it would take about 2 weeks. It took me 2 days, and I got to see what everyone's salaries at the company were. The HR director was making $70k and would take two weeks to do what it took me two days to do, because the HR director was unorganized and wasted a lot of time. The managers of the manufacturing plant were making $100k+ and were going back to school to get their associates in business at a junior college and were telling me how hard their algebra classes were. They were making six figures, and I can't find a job. The HR Director sure made it look like she was working very hard, that she was really busy all the time, and that her job was very complicated. I soon realized it was only complicated for her.

I've worked at other jobs as well where I oversaw some aspects of HR, since I have a law background, and saw the salaries some employees were making. Some, who were paid more than I was would often come and ask me how to do their jobs, after they had been working at the job for 5+ years! That makes me believe that a good education is better than 5 to 10 years experience at a job, which is what a lot of jobs are asking for. It's better to find someone with a good education. There were also people with high salaries who were doing very simple jobs. They could have pulled anyone out of a college business class to do it, and paid about $30k, but the company was paying the employees $60 to $80k.

I've also worked for some high paid managers who get in the way instead of lead the way at their companies. They micromanage and slow down everything and then blame everyone else for it. They work super long hours and their offices are a mess. It takes them hours just to find information some time, and they duplicate a lot of work. They over-complicate everything and it gives the impression that their jobs are very complicated, but really they are just completely unorganized, waste a lot of time, are very poor time managers, and are poor managers of their employees. But they always give the employees the impression that "the boss works so hard, he really cares about this business." Some employees actually fall for those kind of politics.

Since becoming an attorney, I've talked some attorneys who didn't know what they were doing as well. I talked to one prosecutor about a DUI case I was working on. He told me that in the court he works in, he always does pleas in abeyance for DUIs. I had to point out to him that the Utah state code specifically prohibits a plea in abeyance for a DUI. If he has really been doing pleas in abeyance for DUIs, he has been violating the statute, along with the judge in the court he works in, if the judge has been allowing it. But, I'm just a new attorney with only a year experience as in-house counsel, so no one will hire me.

When I was a law student, I worked as a research assistant for a professor. The professor asked me to find a case. When I found it after just a few minutes of searching, she came and asked me to show her how I did it. I pulled it up again on the computer using a search database, while she was standing there watching. She would have spent several hours doing legal research, looking through books to find the case, or would have at least taken a lot longer searching online. I also edited a bill for the legislature and I did a find and replace change, which had to be structured a certain way to make it work. The other older employees were surprised I was able to fix it so fast and said they would have gone through and made each change individually even though it was 500 pages long. It would have taken them hours.

I also had a position where I had to create financial statements for a company. It took me about half an hour and I didn't think much of it, using my spreadsheets that I had already put together to make financial statements. Later that day a person who had been in international banking for 30 years called my boss on the phone and said she couldn't believe I put them together so quickly. It would have taken her 8 hours she said. She also said I should get paid for 8 hours for it instead of half an hour. If she and I were applying for a financial job, she would have a much better chance at getting it than I would.

I guess I just have to work on giving the appearance of working hard and "appearing" to have a complicated job, instead of making it look easy and just getting my job done. If you make it look easy, people don't think you're doing much and don't think you should get paid so much. You may even work yourself out of a job.