New Graduate, Sticky Situation. Please help.
Monkeys, I made a throw away account to stay anonymous. Sorry if this is against the rules but I have been put into an odd situation at my job and am really unsure on how to navigate and could really use some advice from the experienced monkeys.
To start I have been at my job for around two months, and they have been a good two months. This is also my first job out of college, it is in the natural gas and power. My boss is a good guy, and I have learned a lot from him, but recently he told me that if he didn’t like the job by April, he is gone. He has not liked the job so far, not even the slightest(there is history here). We have a small group, if he leaves there is absolutely no one to take his job in house and there is no way in hell I will be able to take over his duties. This would also take the company by surprise because he also told me he wouldn’t tell anyone about it until a few weeks ahead, which doesn’t give much time to bring someone in, learn processes etc.
On top of this, it looks like our company is going to be acquired by a private equity group. I have seen something similar happen to another company that essentially serves the same purpose as mine and they cleaned house. Now not that I am nervous that I don’t bring much to the table as far as hunger to learn, but I am paid a higher salary on average than the market, and I really have not been able to implement much of my learning, so I would not be surprised if I was put on the chopping block.
What scares me is that if this were to happen, I could possibly be out of a job, and a couple month stint doesn’t look good, almost no matter the circumstances. I haven’t started looking for a job yet but I think I might. The other downside is full time recruiting is kind of done with, I know there are always small shops looking for people, but power and gas is such a small industry that everyone knows everyone so if I do start to apply around, I could really bury myself.
I figured I have two options:
-Stay the course, hopefully things work out, possibly get let go, boss quit, get stranded.
- Look for a new job competing against fresh grads with a blemish on my record, possibly ruin work relationships.
This may seem like an easy decision for some, but I truly am at a crossroad here. Thank you.
(I tried to type with weird grammar to not give away who I am)
Quit today. Do it!
The following is not advice:
For what it's worth, PE will look to cut two main groups of people: underperformers/people in underperforming roles, and highly paid people (e.g. duplicate teams or executives). Are you in a revenue generating or sales quota carrying role? Those tend to be more protected than, say, back-office (finance, HR, IT) which will overlap with a PE's portfolio company, for example.
The standard PE playbook is actually to keep junior talent, fire their boss and have the junior guy try to do both roles (somewhat ironically called the "best athlete" approach). For your option one, you could prepare your parachute but not deploy it quite yet unless you get a great offer somewhere else. Are you certain you could not grow into a role of larger responsibility?
Thanks for the insight, I am on a commercial analytics team. It is a middle to front office type role.
I think I could but I would most certainly need direction. My boss created much of these processes out of thin air and without training on them, or much training (no formal training here) on the subject matter it would be almost impossible on my own.
Keeping with weird grammar, sorry.
I agree with @HighlyClevered to reignite the networking engines. It would make an interesting story to try to stay on and see how the PE is going to operate your company, how they do things, etc. Would make an interesting MBA / career journey story even if it is followed by "although I learned a lot of new things about how PE operates a company and enjoyed a new challenging role, I found something more aligned with my passion and then pursued..."
The advice to "prepare your parachute without deploying" is the best course of action here. Update the resume and start networking without officially looking for jobs. Networking is the groundwork you should lay before applying to jobs anyway, so you won't be costing yourself any time. And if the current role works out, you didn't waste time either - you spent time building your network, which is always valuable.
Agree with others here about priming the pump with respect to networking/exit, but also make sure you ask your boss a ton of questions and put in a little extra effort to learn the systems. Could be an opportunity for you if you step up and can do the job for a little bit less money (don't sell yourself too short). Win-win for you and the PE shop.
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