Retrenchment and the 25% pay increase that I did not ask for

I have finally confirmed that I secured new employment and by a fantastic twist of events, I got into a better situation than before. Thank God for opening doors when one was being closed. In short, I received a tidy sum of severance while my annual package increased by 25% (probably because I'm underpaid at current employment, but I won't complain)

It took me 84 days before I secured the offer that I wanted. In total, I sent out a fair bit of applications to which I landed 4 interviews and had 3 offers. I also met a few very nice potential future employers. One of them even held the position open for me for a while despite me rejecting them because I made a pretty strong impression with the boss.

For tips on interviews/career planning, refer to my previous posts:
Interview process cycle: How to increase your interview rates
Investing in our Career (Taking care of the goose) (Constantly upgrade while making plan Bs)
Why we should keep our Resume updated, always. (And dealing with interview preparation)

84 days Job Hunt Timeline
3rd April  - Announcement of retrenchment of my department (Blogged 9/4/2019)
17th April - Attended 1st interview in 1.5 years and screwed it up so bad they didn't contact me
23rd April - Attended 2nd interview (Part sales/Technical role) Offered but rejected
6th May - Attended 3rd interview (Business Support/Technical role) Eventually accepted
31st May - 4th Interview pre- video interview
7th June - Attended 4th Interview (Lab Exec role with School) Offered but rejected

As can be seen, my interview hit-rate is not very good. It is about 1 interview every 21 days or almost 1 on average per month. According to Jobstreet, my total applications was 39. I went for quality instead of quantity in doing and sending out one or two tailored good resume/cover letter per day. I also applied a few through other platforms but not much. One of the interviews that came was from being contacted by a headhunter from LinkedIn (which would become my eventual job). There were also other recruiters that contacted me but it did not materialise into anything.

Breakdown of numbers:
Assuming 45 applications made,
Returns rate of interviews for applications made = 4 / 45 = 8.9%
Offer rate  = 3/4 x 8.9% = 6.7%

From experience, the success rate based on the number of good applications made is around 5%. Alot of it was down to luck and opportunity to secure a ticket to interview. The main difficulty encountered was that my current company bogged down my job hunt with job responsibilities that I was obligated to complete. There were pros and cons to this (allowed me to look for another job while still getting paid until June 30). I was prepared to continue this numbers game if I had no offer on the table until eventually I exhausted all options. Thankfully it did not come to that.


Interesting Interview Experiences:
My first interview in 1.5 years was a total disaster. On the back drop of being retrenched, desperation, fear and unpreparedness caught me off guard. I was even ridiculed by the interviewer for even "daring to apply for their position". In the end, I said a few wrong things and gave a pretty bad impression. It is actually very normal to screw up your first interview in a while. I was sad and frustrated for a day or two over my performance but quickly moved on from it.

The second interview was a pretty memorable one. I guess I will let a screen shot with the recruiter in charge do the talking.

An offer from a reputable company listed in Singapore

After 2 years of Insurance, 2 years as a Lab analyst and now almost 1.5 years as a Chemist, I have developed quite a keen business sense despite being in the Technical side of things. As a testament and vote of confidence for my interview/rapport skills, the HR at this company also mentioned that :"Past candidates usually only get 15 - 20 minutes but you are the first that managed to chat with the Boss for 1 hour plus." I managed to add this Boss to my connections of friends after this as well.

I do think that getting relaxed and being oneself helps one to outperform during interviews (assuming you crunched the interview questions and internalised them). My third interview and fourth ones went pretty well as I looked to be comfortable and display a positive attitude to learn. In actual fact, I "failed" my third interview for the position I was being interviewed for. However, I made sure I had made a strong impression and they offered me an alternative role which was lower but had the opportunity to learn new things. This became my eventual offer that I took up (I left the headhunter to negotiate my package while giving a lowest amount I was prepared to take. They offered me better and the rest was history)

The fourth one was pretty straightforward. It also matched the offer from the third interview in terms of remuneration but it was likely to be a stagnant job going forward.

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Final thoughts
Overall, retrenchment could have ended badly. But it didn't, and it doesn't have to. Perhaps I am still young. Perhaps being positive and taking action helped create my own luck. But perhaps there will be a time in future when I get older and retrenchment might be more fatal.

But hey, that's why we are planning early to invest and hopefully be self-sufficient one day. Last but not least, I'M BACK. And I can start looking at investments once again.

If you are looking for a job, don't give up. It is a numbers game.

Until Next Time,

K.C.

If you like this post, you might like our facebook page as well. I'm also on Investing Note.

Related topics:
1. About K.C. What is my story?
2. My 3Cs to money/investing
3. Why you need to set aside money for savings first
4. Interview process cycle: How to increase your interview rates
5. My 2018 Year end review
6. I'm retrenched: 3 things to think about

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