Jobs and Benefits

I am on vacation starting December 19th. I will post again shortly after the beginning of January. In the meantime, a little lesson for the soon-to-be and newly graduated looking for their first career-type jobs:

Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover

At first glance, the Angus Journal is far from appealling to most newly minted IDM majors. In fact, unless you are familiar with the American Angus Association personally, or are interested in the agriculture/cattle industry, the Angus Journal is probably going to get skipped over by 90% of all the people reading the job description. The description of the Angus Journal itself and the job sounded rather boring, on the surface.

The knee-jerk reaction I hear most often is, “Why would you want to look at cows all day long?” The second most common question I am asked is, “What could possibly be so exciting about cows?” My answer is: I was hired to build Web sites. So I build Web sites. It doesn’t matter whether the Web sites I build are for selling socks or promoting models. All businesses need a Web site today, and what they sell or promote is secondary to what it is I actually do.

Despite the outsider’s view that the Agricultural industry (and all things related to it: farming, cattle, etc.) is boring, I went ahead and applied anyway. I was looking for the real values, not the things on the surface. I didn’t care about having a glamorous job, working for The Cool Advertising Agency that had multi-colored glass walls. At the end of the day, a cubicle is a cubicle is a cubicle, no matter how you try to distort it. What I was looking for was a bit less physically tangible.

I defined my ideal job by applying questions and seeing if the answers fit with my style of doing things. Will I be doing something different everyday, or will I be doing the same things all the time? I need something challenging, changing, and exciting. How much creative leeway am I given? What’s the point of working at Sexy Ad Agency if the colors and fonts of their client’s logo are already locked down and decided by the guy above me? That just makes me a glorified inker! Will I have any say in the processes or projects I am working on? I don’t need to change the world, but I would be greatly satisfied to know I could change my department. How promising is this company? Do they have the potential to grow and change? What are my opportunities to grow? In the tech industry keeping up to date and well educated on The Next Big Thing is important. I do not want my skills to stagnate and no longer be marketable.

I researched the Journal. I analyzed 20 randomly chosen Web sites from their VIP Web sites list. I dug deep into their site. I Googled a few different keywords. I checked out their printed publications and read staff pages. The results [from my analysis of the sites] were appalling, but that was good news for me! If the basics needed fixing, just imagine how much I could help this company improve! Looking at the sample of their customers’ web sites, I felt like I had blasted to the past. I mean 1990′s, pre-tech-bubble-bursting type of past, blinking tag intact and all, no kidding. There were Web sites with canned designs, no CSS, no dynamic information served up, animated gifs, and only two sites that implemented any Flash at all! So much potential still lie ahead for this Web Services department, and I wanted to be there to watch them grow.

Granted, this isn’t a dream come true for just anyone. It was a dream come true for me. See, I wanted a company that had potential and with a little luck and a lot of elbow grease, could achieve it. Someone once saw the potential in me, and I grew to be a sucessful student. Watching potential turn into something great sounded like a pretty rewarding job to me.

I went to interview number one. It was unlike anything I had prepared for in school. Luckily for me, it went exactly the way my old interviews went when I had worked for fast food. It was an open-ended interview. Basically, I hung out with my prospective boss for an hour, just talking. While school taught me how to handle the formal interviews, fast food taught me how to handle the informal ones. It went fine. In fact, it was fun. The informal interviews tell employers a lot more about you, stuff that they just can’t get from a formal one. I was later told that the first interview is the informal one because they wanted to make sure I would be a good fit with my co-workers. If something didn’t feel right then the interviewee was not invited back for the second round of interviews. A couple of candidates were cut out in the first round because of this.

Interview number two was with my supervisor’s bosses. It was a formal interview. The easiest question to answer was, “Why do you want to come work for us? I mean, it’s just cows.” My answer was, “This place looks like a good fit for me. Your people are friendly and straightforward, the kind that I like. And it isn’t ‘just cows.’ I would get to build Web sites, something I really enjoy doing. It wouldn’t matter to me if all the pictures in the Web site were cows or socks or famous singers. I would get to do what I like doing: building a Web site for whoever is selling the cows or socks or music.”

The salary negotiations were hard on me. I knew my potential, but by the looks of the pay, they weren’t expecting much from me. I tried negotiating for a higher rate, tried negotiating for perks. Nada. I had recently rejected a job offer from Rural Sourcing Inc. with a similarly low pay offer. I was beginning to think I would have to reject this offer too, until I weighed the intangibles from this offer compared to the Rural Sourcing offer. *The Journal refers to The Angus Journal’s Web Services department, for the sake of brevity.*

• +The Journal was offering a job that wouldn’t get old and dull, day after day. Rural Sourcing did not.
• -Rural Sourcing was offering lots of training to keep me up-to-date, the Journal was not.
• +The Journal was offering a position with lots of influence and a fair say in how Web Services did their projects and processes. Rural Sourcing did not.
• +The Journal was offering a pension plan and 100% paid health insurance. Rural Sourcing had a profit sharing plan “in the works” projected to begin 3 years from the time I would start. Health insurance was “roughly 75% paid” by the company.

I wrote out a very long list, and in the end decided that the potential in their Web Services department was too good to pass up. The opportunity was there, I just had to work at it. Unbeknownst to me, the benefits were downplayed more than I knew. Even though my pay looked low, the benefits were…in a word…insane?

1. 1 week paid vacation if you start within the first 6 months of the calendar year. I started in June, and I waited until now to take my 1 week paid vacation for this year.
2. 2 weeks paid vacation for every year after that. So January 1, 2007, I get 2 weeks paid vacation to use for 2007.
3. Paid holidays. Seven of them.
4. 12 Personal Days. Called ‘bonus time.’ Normally shows up on your checks in 4 hour increments. If you didn’t take any time off during the pay period, it’s extra time paid to you. So if I have to take 4 hours off on a Thursday because my car is in the shop, my paycheck will still have 40 hours on it, not 36. (Yes, I’m paid hourly).
5. Pension plan. 401k with no match for those who want extra retirement funds or prefer a 401k.
6. Health Insurance. 100% paid by the employer. Eligible the day you start working. Blue Cross Blue Shield estimated it costs the Angus Association $3,500 per single employee a year, $10,000 per married couple no kids, and they would not disclose how much per married couple with kids.
7. Life Insurance. 100% paid by the employer. A $100,000 policy for your first year, until you have a W-2 statement. After that, you are covered 4 times the amount on your W-2 statement or $100,000, whichever is greater.
8. Dental and Vision Insurance. Also 100% paid for by my employer.
9. Flex Spending Plan. Also called a Cafeteria Plan or a Health Spending Account. The easy way to keep track and cut taxes out of your medical expenses.
10. Casual Dress Code. Wearing jeans is acceptable almost every day. Some days there are tours that come through, or my boss asks us to dress up. So I wear khakis.
11. Weekends are free. The Web Services department doesn’t have mandatory work weekends. [My boss said, "I don't like working weekends. You don't like working weekends. I will not make you work weekends unless I have to be here too. And that's only going to happen when it's absolutely necessary. As long as you work hard for me during the week, we should be fine." So we do.]
12. Overtime is optional. If I want it, I can have it. There is always work to do, but as long as I work hard during normal hours, I don’t have to stay late.

So remember boys and girls, what you get paid is important, but it isn’t everything. While you are spending time with friends and family during Christmas and New Years, know that quality of life (job satisfaction, benefits, people you get along with) may sound like just another cheesy Human Resources catch phrase, but they really are on to something.