Sacked after 31 days!

Ok perhaps someone can give me some sound advice on here. I completed my Business IT degree last summer with first class honours. I never really started applying for jobs until September and officially graduated in November. It was a real struggle finding a job even though I have a first class degree and a full years industry experience with a top world renowned organisation.

Then during late November I suddenly received many interviews like literally one day after the other. I went to one in Cardiff, Surrey, Nottingham, Coventry, (I'm in Birmingham), was then required to go to London and Worcester. So am at my interview in Coventry and it goes really well, they seem to like me and the company uses software applications that I used during my industry year. I walk out of the interview and 10 minutes later the guy at the recruitment agency calls me and says they want to offer you the job with a really good starting salary for a graduate, and that they want me to start next week. Seeing as I had applied for so many places and this was only my 4th interview and it was commutable from Birmingham, I decided to take up the offer. Contacted the company's in London and Worcester and told them I wouldn't be coming to the interview as I had accepted a position.

So I start work beginning of December and I get told that the work they do is very complicated so they are aware that during training a lot of the things will go straight over my head and they don't expect me to fully understand everything until at least another 6 months down the line. So it seems to be going ok for the first week...my supervisor who normally worked from home, commuted regularly to conduct training with me and I must say it was very difficult to understand how the software was being used by their huge clients., it also had a great deal of financial elements to it which I had not really covered at all during my degree programme.

I seemed a little isolated and lost at first as it was quite a small team I was working with and I didn't really have a clue what was going on. Approaching the xmas period the training kind of slowed down and became very intermittent...I thought its xmas period so perhaps we will really pick up in the new year. So the new year comes and again during the first week or so am only really getting 1 or 2 hours of training a week! I ask some of the other guys that am really not getting used to what is we do here...and they say don't worry..even we don't know every little thing about the software and we've been here years...so am thinking ok its going to take time....anyway whenever my supervisor came up from London which was now only one day a week....we would have a little bit of training and then I would be given absolutely meaningless work to do!

Approaching the middle of Jan, I was getting really bored and frustrated inside and not feeling very happy at all, and I was really struggling to understand the work. Then bang one day approaching 5:30 I get called in by one of the directors and my supervisor into the office and get told that they feel I will not be able to make it as a "Functional Consultant"...I was literally like WTF! I have hardly had any training and its been so intermittent! So the director says well the training we have given you we just feel you haven't been able to get to grips with what we do...which was kind of true...so I asked if they would persevere and give me more intense training etc...and he goes no! We would like to let you go and terminate your contract but we will pay you until the end of Feb. They also did say that I was a 'very bright lad' and that they would be willing to give me a good reference and say that I was only with them for a 2 month placement. So I couldn't really argue my case anymore as it was clear they had made up there mind and I just said ok thanks for the opportunity.

Now sorry for the long story....but I am sooo confused about whether I should put on my CV that I worked for them, after all I have nothing to put down about what I actually did there and what I learnt...because to be honest I never learned anything new! Its been 2 weeks now and ive been applying for loads of jobs but only had about 3 phone calls...one even said to me what have I been doing since I finished uni in June! I really want to put something down on my CV that I worked with this company for 2 months because I know they will give me a good reference...but I know I will get awkward questions from prospective employers or recruitment agencies....like why didn't they take you on after the placement...what did you learn there...why did they take you on 3 weeks before xmas....etc etc

So what do you guys reckon...should I add something to my CV or should I just wait for another opportunity...age is not on my side either, I am 28 and really badly need a job, just need someone to give me a bloody chance!

Sorry for such a long post!

Reply 1

lilac_glitter

put it on your CV if they say it was a placement you can say there wasnt a role to go to after so they had to let you go. As long as the reference is good id list it people know placements are short etc economic climate. Some experience is better than none :smile:

Reply 2

sir007

Yeah I was thinking some experience to put down is better than none, but I really don't know what to write in terms of what I actually did there.

Reply 3

INTit

Tell us roughly what you think you did during your time there. I'm sure we can translate it into something impressive :tongue:

Reply 4

sir007

ok as far as I know they're clients were the likes of Fidelity, Cisco, Amazon and other US Fortune 500 companies and they provided accounting solutions for these companies using Oracle E-Business Suite's financial modules but in a very complex way because the software solution they created was written by the development team and then integrated into the Oracle modules. Eventually my job would have been to become a functional analyst/configurator but I was just given some training around the complex software that they had created and then just went away trying to understand it by using training environments and going through configuration processes for just one small part of the software process and reading through manuals etc. I was asked to create a sort of user guide about the software which I was probably only 1/3 of the way through....so yeah that's about it.

Reply 5

Kutta

The company is a bit stupid, but its their loss right?

Put it down as a two month placement scheme and continue applying to other places. :smile:

I hope your job search goes well :biggrin:

Reply 6

sir007

Original post by Kutta

The company is a bit stupid, but its their loss right?

Put it down as a two month placement scheme and continue applying to other places. :smile:

I hope your job search goes well :biggrin:

Yeah thanks dude!

They had absolutely no strategy in place with regards to training a graduate and there is no way in my mind that I would not have been able to understand the whole process in a few months so yeah that's life.

Just so frustrated at the lack of responses from my applications thus far but am hopeful something will come up soon