The moving job
From the mailbag:
I have a strange question for you, but I am quite stumped how to handle this situation. I was hired to work at Company X in November, as an associate buyer for e-commerce products. I have 5 years in the industry. Week one on the job, I found out my job moving cross country and my supervisor is leaving the department. HR has a position for me to move into that is the same job title, but it a product that I am completely uninterested in and I truly feel I will have quite a challenge with this product. My question is; is there a tactful way to say this to HR? I don’t want the position you are trying to move me into? Do I have a choice? Thanks for your time!
First of all, you always have a choice. It may not be a pleasant choice but there are almost always choices and if that’s the situation you are in, you can certainly opt out at this point.
The way to be tactful is a short but cordial note or conversation essentially saying you’re going to look for something else and try to be accommodating as possible in transition away.
The really irritating part of this for me is what kind of company brings a person on for a week and then announces they are moving the position? Are they going to tell anyone that they didn’t know this was coming down the line in some way or another? I think that is just a terrible thing to do to a new hire.
I hope that you find a good job where you’ll be able to stay for more than a couple months.
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Your HR Guy is a Human Resources Generalist practicing in the field. But don't let that fool you, this isn't a boring blog. I seek relevance and humor in a place we will spend much of our lives. Everything from workplace issues, job seeking and terrible bosses. Read more...
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Wow! That is incredible. It’s very hard to believe that the move wasn’t seen before the new-hire was brought on.
This is a perfect example of a failure to communicate with a candidate during the hiring process. This worker will likely leave and look for a new job and his former employer gets to spend several thousand dollars recruiting and hiring his replacement.
Yuck.
Chris Young
The Rainmaker Group
The same thing happened to me several years ago after I’d been at the job for 3 months. The company was being sold but that was happening at the Board level. No information about it was shared with our Branch Manager nor with the manager he reported to. I would have found that hard to believe except that the Branch Manager’s boss held a sales retreat at headquarters (at considerable expense) 2 weeks before the announcement was made.
The assets of the company were bought by a competitor and that included some of the employees. If one of us worked in an area where the new company already had a sales rep., there was no need for 2 of us! A couple of us were offered other positions elswhere in the company, supposedly because the new company had only agreed to keep a couple of us “duplicates.”
Never a dull moment in life; sometimes ya’ just gotta roll with the punches!
That’s a very sound advice. But it’s easier said than done. Fortunately for me, I have never experienced this sudden of a change before. But I find that a lot of situations in work call for short and cordial conversation. There’s no need to add anything else. And if things don’t go the way you hope, then just keep moving forward. Again, easier said than done. But there are other opportunities out there. You just have to be open to them.