Month: November 2024

I learned through taking these assessments that I am more stressed than I generally consider myself to be. I don’t usually intentionally express my stress or frustration, and I consider myself to be overall pretty calm and cool-headed. The Type A test revealed to me that I deal with a good amount of impatience/irritability which I don’t give much thought to, and had never considered might affect my health. According to the Holmes-Rahe Life Stress Inventory, the amount of stressors I have experienced in the last year give me a high chance of a major health breakdown in the next 2 years. I did not really think I had been through that much stress in the last year, and don’t consciously consider myself to be someone that is dealing with a lot of stressors, so that was interesting to see. My main form of coping was “problem-focused” which does make sense to me, but is concerning because it is not effective in situations where the problems may not be solvable or within my control. This feels accurate in terms of what types of problems or stressors in my life feel easier for me to handle. In reflecting on these results, it is clear to me that I need to work on managing stressors that are outside of my control, and practice patience and understanding in frustrating situations. This includes self-compassion, as well as compassion for others. It feels useful to know these things about me so that I can better manage my stress and hopefully improve my health and avoid a major health breakdown.

Some things that workplaces are doing to help employees manage stress include allowing employees to take mental health days, creating open discussions, creating physical spaces in the workplace for employees to decompress, introducing wellness or counseling programs, and encouraging physical activity.

In my last job, I received 1 day of training in the form of “shadowing” another employee, which meant them telling me what supplies I should buy, and then being allocated tasks to do independently. I only lasted about a month at that job because I did not feel adequately prepared to do my job well, and it lead to high levels of stress and conflict with my boss, who was unhappy with how many questions I had for him. In the job I had before that, I received extensive training, shadowing the manager and then another employee closely for the first few weeks. That job was far less involved and by the time training was complete, I felt very capable of doing my work adequately and really enjoyed my work there. In “Your New Hires Won’t Succeed Unless You Onboard Them Properly”, it says, “A new employee’s manager is one of the most important people in the onboarding experience, and gaining this person’s support may directly improve or undermine a new hire’s chances of succeeding.” I found this to be very true and learned first hand as an employee how important the onboarding process is to the job, not only in my confidence and ability to carry out daily tasks, but also in my relationship to my supervisors and my overall job satisfaction. I am starting a new job tomorrow which includes a week of training, and I am interested to see how it compares to the last 2 I had.

Today I had two job interviews. The first one was very informal, and it really felt like they were just trying to get a sense of who I was as a person, and whether they thought my personality was the right fit for the job. The second was very stiff, and I was asked really basic questions about my availability, work experience, and not much else. In reflecting on this week’s readings, it seems to me that the first place is more likely to find the kind of candidate they are looking for, because they were more focused on finding the right fit and less on things related to logistics and things that can be easily trained for. One big theme from this week’s learning was that personality is a really important factor when considering whether someone will thrive in a particular work environment. By spending the time getting to know me, I felt more interested in working for the company, and also more confident that if they hired me, it would be a good fit. The first interview also spent longer explaining their goals and expectations for the job, making it clear that they had intention around what they wanted in a new hire, and giving me clear expectations to work with. I believe some of this was because the first interview was through an HR department, while the second interview appeared to be less formal and the person doing the interview may not have been trained to know what questions would be helpful to ask or what they were looking for.