Position still undefined..

[Rewind]

I'm at my new job a little over 3 weeks. It was a rocky start bc during the first week I was going to leave bc of issues but I worked things out decided to stay. My main problem from the get go I sensed that this position was not clearly or should I say truthfully explained to me. I am an admin supporting the director (my boss) and supposdly 2 other groups. Well my problem..I have been receiving pretty much no work. The training involved has been the other admin showing me something once for about 5 min..so of course she tells me if I have questions to ask..so I do..which I think annoys her bc after I ask her something I'll see her run back to another coworker. Well how am I supposed to know how to do something when I am in a new field and most of these things I've never done before. If I ask my boss anything his repsonse is to contact her. My boss is nice, laid back, on the quiet side and sits in his office all day in front of the computer or on conference calls..everything is work related. He's very self sufficient and he's never had his own admin before. So little by little he gives me things to do..thing is they take up about an hr if that of an 8 hr day. So I went and asked the group who I'm suppsdly supporting if they needed any help. Well they looked at me like I had 10 heads then told me well hasnt "jeff" our manager given u any work or told u what ure job is going to be bc we don't know what work ure supposed to be douing for us lol..obivously he didnt. So i'll go into my boss and ask him if there's anything that needs to be done..he'll either say no, send me something to copy and paste or tell me to make a folder:rolleyes: all of which take about 10 min. Now I'm making good money at this job so I find it hard to believe that they're gonna have me sitting there with no work to do ever. Does he think I'm stupid or is he just wanting to start me out very slow. The other admin told me that they started her off giving her hardly any work either. This is some newely created position I may add and when I questioned him the first week his answer changed to that they're main goal is to see what I'm good at. I feel like him the manager doesn't he even know what I'm supposed to be doing. The reason I left my last job was bc I was bored outta my mind..and for the past few weeks its been the same here. No training..bc no one knows what the hell my role is..The only thing that got me worried is that I read online that my company is known for not describing positions properly and use the same postings over and over again and are always laying people off. My company is world wide and another thing I always ovehear my boss talking about how they need to get positions filled quickly and how they hope so and so takes the position and it seems like alot of competiton with other corps..but really my corp is soo big I find is wierd that they can't find people?

[amerikajin]

I'm at my new job a little over 3 weeks. It was a rocky start bc during the first week I was going to leave bc of issues but I worked things out decided to stay. My main problem from the get go I sensed that this position was not clearly or should I say truthfully explained to me. I am an admin supporting the director (my boss) and supposdly 2 other groups. Well my problem..I have been receiving pretty much no work. The training involved has been the other admin showing me something once for about 5 min..so of course she tells me if I have questions to ask..so I do..which I think annoys her bc after I ask her something I'll see her run back to another coworker. Well how am I supposed to know how to do something when I am in a new field and most of these things I've never done before. If I ask my boss anything his repsonse is to contact her. My boss is nice, laid back, on the quiet side and sits in his office all day in front of the computer or on conference calls..everything is work related. He's very self sufficient and he's never had his own admin before. So little by little he gives me things to do..thing is they take up about an hr if that of an 8 hr day. So I went and asked the group who I'm suppsdly supporting if they needed any help. Well they looked at me like I had 10 heads then told me well hasnt "jeff" our manager given u any work or told u what ure job is going to be bc we don't know what work ure supposed to be douing for us lol..obivously he didnt. So i'll go into my boss and ask him if there's anything that needs to be done..he'll either say no, send me something to copy and paste or tell me to make a folder:rolleyes: all of which take about 10 min. Now I'm making good money at this job so I find it hard to believe that they're gonna have me sitting there with no work to do ever. Does he think I'm stupid or is he just wanting to start me out very slow. The other admin told me that they started her off giving her hardly any work either. This is some newely created position I may add and when I questioned him the first week his answer changed to that they're main goal is to see what I'm good at. I feel like him the manager doesn't he even know what I'm supposed to be doing. The reason I left my last job was bc I was bored outta my mind..and for the past few weeks its been the same here. No training..bc no one knows what the hell my role is..The only thing that got me worried is that I read online that my company is known for not describing positions properly and use the same postings over and over again and are always laying people off. My company is world wide and another thing I always ovehear my boss talking about how they need to get positions filled quickly and how they hope so and so takes the position and it seems like alot of competiton with other corps..but really my corp is soo big I find is wierd that they can't find people?

 

I found myself in a very similar situation - and ended up losing my job. My situation was probably made worse by the fact that I was working out of my home and I had already made it clear before the job that I would not be interested in being a traveling salesman, but the problem was similar to yours: nothing was hammered out. I very naively assumed that 'things would work themselves out' in time and that I would get busier when I was needed, which was a very bad assumption on my part because by the time I found out that my board was wondering what I was up to my chicken**** boss had already sold me out and agreed to tell me in a nice way that I wasn't needed anymore. There were other issues, but part of the problem was perception.

 

I don't know what it's like in your case, but one thing I learned is that you never, ever, ever put yourself in a position where your job roles aren't clearly defined. If it's at-will employment and during your probationary period, he can pretty much decide not to extend your employment past 90 days for any reason. My advice is to get a job description. Be nice about it, but persistent. If you feel like you're being a pest, maybe just be really observant and start volunteering to do odd jobs here and there - things you know you can do such as filing and copying, and gradually get in the game. Just look interested and ready to work but do not just sit around and wait for work to find its way to your desk. It wouldn't be your fault, but you might unwittingly create a perception you wouldn't easily be able to live down.