jobs – everydaysparks

So, it’s been a while. I just checked and the last post that I made was on 3 September last year, when I was in Washington DC. I really hope no one was waiting on this blog to give travel tips for an imminent US holiday, or as proof of life, or as inspiration for being. Although if you were, then I’m sorry, and I do hope that you found other sources of support.

Hope you’ve been well. I’m all good, thanks. I am a bit (ok, a lot) of a fair weather friend to this blog, only really making the time to write when I feel like I have a lot of spare time. Which, when you’re in the thick of work and family and life, with all of the things that take up time on evenings and weekends, doesn’t happen that often. Usually when I’m on holidays (see 3 September post from Washington DC here). Or when I’m not working as much, as is the case now.

I’ve just finished up in the rollercoaster-ride of a job that I’d been in for the past couple of years. NB, I wasn’t actually working on a roller coaster, although I do note that the ride at Luna Park in Melbourne does have an attendant standing or sitting in the middle of the carts on each ride, so don’t rule that out as a potential career option.

Image from lunapark.com.au — FYI, the person in the middle of this gaggle is the Attendant standing up on The Great Scenic Railway ride at Luna Park in St Kilda. I don’t know what they ever get called on to do during the ride, but it’s a real job. [image from lunapark.com.au]

I’m also moved and am now technically living between two cities (Sydney and Melbourne), which has been lots of fun. I have been very lucky to have finally moved to Melbourne – a city that I have loved for a very long time, even looking for graduate roles down here back in the 90’s. I’ve spent a bit of time down here with a number of jobs, but when the opportunity came up to move earlier this year, I took it. And then a month or so later, I resigned. That sounds bad, but please don’t think that I tricked my employer into paying for my relocation (they didn’t), or that I found another gig shortly after moving (I didn’t).

It was just a case of bad timing – the work rollercoaster had been on the up and up for what felt like such a long time, and I was in the front cart waving and laughing and screaming and enjoying the whole amazing experience. Best ride EVER. Then the rapid and steep descent started around January and that left me grimacing and holding onto the bars too tight and the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach wouldn’t go away, and so I decided to get off the ride before it put me off amusement parks for life.

silly-serpent-hero1 — Not such a silly idea. [image from lunapark.com.au]

Sure, I guess most sensible people wouldn’t get off the rollercoaster until they’d found their next ride – the Silly Serpent (see above) maybe, or the exotic sounding Arabian Merry. Instead, I am going to hang out for a while and see what ride to go on next. I feel as though I’ll know the right one when I see it, and hope that I’m tall enough to get on. In the meantime, I’ll read some books and walk around and do some people-watching while I wait. And hopefully get back to this blog, sharing my particular brand of nonsense with you. Maybe while snacking on the carnival foods that the Luna Park website offers (“Fairy-floss, pop-corn, snow-cones and hot-dogs”). All of the hyphenated goodness.

I am doing some recruitment in my new job, which I’m enjoying because I haven’t hired people in a long time. It’s always an interesting process – especially when you put the ad on an online job board yourself, rather than using a recruiter. You craft the ad, then with all the hope of a lovestruck teen you click on ‘publish’ and 30 minutes later, your new job is up in lights, being looked over by prospective suitors. And within about 1.25 minutes, the applications start arriving – especially if the job is in IT or administration. The quality of those applications and general tips for candidates is another rant altogether. (In which I would suggest little things, like: get the job title right, get the company name right, get your own name right. Stuff like that.)

Anyways, this recent batch of recruitment has got me thinking about names and what is in them. I have decided that the answer is: a lot. Although I do accept that I’m a bit odd in this regard. When I hear the name (or prospective name) of a new baby, I always run three very quick scenarios – not to cover the whole spectrum of options, you understand, but to get an idea of how the name fits. So, if you tell me that your baby’s name is Pixie McGee, I will automatically do this (usually in my head, sometimes out loud): “Good morning, Pixie McGee’s office”; “Pixie McGee reporting for National Nine News”; and “Hello, I’m your doctor, Pixie McGee”. I don’t judge (out loud), I don’t try to persuade a name change, I just play it back to see how it sounds in a few different scenarios. Although if you tell me that you’ve chosen a name that spells something backwards (as Nevaeh), then I may say that is a little bit yzarc.

But back to recruitment. I am not sure who the prankster is that suggests names for incoming students or employees to adopt so they can ‘fit in’ when they arrive. When I was younger, there were a lot of old-school English type names chosen: Daisy, Eugene, Harold, Violet. Now, it seems as though anything goes – I have recently come across real-life students named: Magic, Sexy, Chicken, Thunder, George Washington and Tennis. Now, I don’t mean to be superficial, but I don’t think those names are going to help you blend in to your new community. Sure, you’re out of the primary school days of sticks & stones breaking your bones…but really? I don’t know that we’ll see Sexy as a company CEO. Or Chicken as a leading investment banker. Or Magic, the school principal. Sure, Thunder and Tennis might have more obvious career paths mapped out for them in fields relevant to their names, but if they wanted to become, say, barristers or office managers, I’m not sure how that would pan out.

Then I think, maybe it doesn’t matter to most people – a rose by any other name and all that. And maybe we should have more names that are fun and bring a smile to people’s faces.

So I’m going to sign off all my recruitment correspondence as Mermaid O’Krypton. Just because I can.

Tag: jobs

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What’s in a name?