2024 Reflections - What doesn't kill me makes me stronger
I can’t wait for 2024 to be over. Just when I thought things can’t get worse than 2023, 2024 proved to be a worse, if not one of the worst years for me. Long story short: the AI startup I joined at start of 2024 didn’t work out, I was without a pay check for 5 months - and it was my third time hunting for a full-time role in 12 months. 2024 is also the year I think I came closest to anxiety / depression.
On this very last day of the year, I’m penning down some of the best and worst memories. As a reflection - and down the road - a reminder to myself the things I have experienced and overcome.
(Some of the) Worst memories:
Job hunting and interviews: the job market in 2024 has not been the best, especially for tech sector. Two incidences stood out:
Changi Airport Group (CAG):
Interviewer (hiring manager) was late for > 1 hour for the scheduled online interview. Someone in her HR team had to whatsapp me to push back the timing twice cos her current interview/call over ran.
In the interview, hiring manager made a comment about candidates from marketplaces (i.e. Lazada) “usually don’t do well at CAG - cos we don’t burn money here”. Throughout the entire interview process, I encountered with 3 HR folks who were coordinating. (Typically it’s just 1, max 2 - from my experience). To the best of my knowledge and insider intel, CAG iShopChangi has not been profitable at all. And observing the way the hiring manager (who’s been there at CAG for past 20 years - her entire career) over runs meetings, it felt ironic hearing her sneer at other organisations for “burning money” / wasting resources.
Next round: case study. I’d understand if the assignment was to submit strategic plan for the role I applied for (it’s a business development role). But the case study included strategic plan for 2 other open roles which CAG was hiring for. I wrote back to clarify and ask why my case study included scope for the other 2 roles which I didn’t apply for. The response after 4 working days: “As both X and Y are two of our core categories, the written assessment include these 2 questions. Let us know if you have any further questions and would be comfortable to proceed with the written assessment.” [Look, I get it that companies tend to ‘exploit’ these case studies to source ideas. But to use candidate for 1 role to source ideas for 2 other roles??] A lot of major red flags at this point but nevertheless I still proceeded with the case study. Because I needed to land a job to fulfil my responsibility as the sole breadwinner, there were no other job opportunity closer to the ‘finish line’ and I wanted to do my best for every shot I got. I remember thinking this was possibly one of the lowest moments of my career.
I submitted my case study on 25 Jun 2024. I asked for acknowledgement of receipt, which I received on same day. Around 2-3 weeks after that, I received phone call from the HR manager who said something along the lines of “we are still currently interviewing candidates, please bear with us. You should hear from us in the next 2-3 weeks”. I said sure no problem, and asked if it’s ok for me to follow up if I don’t hear from them in 2 weeks. She said “Sure of course”. On 29 July (1 month after submitting my case study), I emailed the same HR manager to follow up since I did not hear back after her call. Guess what I received? See screenshot below. And I have not received any response from her/CAG ever since.
Side note: looking at the auto-response, there was no “For urgent matters, please kindly contact <colleague/manager> at <alternative contact details>”, which is pretty common in the business world.
Side side note: my submitted case study was viewed by the hiring manager only once - pretty much immediately the moment I sent across. (I saved the case study in PDF and shared to the relevant email addresses and I could see activity/who and when it was viewed). Which raised another set of so many questions….but I rest my case.
Screenshot of out-of-office auto email reply
Nanyang Polytechnic (NYP):
I applied for Lecturer role in the domain of Entrepreneurship & International Business. During 2nd interview (in-person), I faced a panel of 4 which included Business Management School Director and HR Director. As I presented my career journey - I was on the part of leaving tech startup Igloohome after 2 years to join Lazada as I wanted to learn how larger organisations manage and organise resources - I was interrupted by the HR Director who made a snide remark along the lines of “…and here we are supposed to teach the students grit…but it’s ok please carry on….” I took it that he was implying I lacked grit for leaving the startup after 2 years.
I was thrown off-track by his remark. Not by typical interview nerves. But by how insanely stupid and ridiculously out-of-touch the HR Director’s remark was. Does he really define grit as staying long at an organisation? (For context, before the interviews I LinkedIn-ed the interviewers - and their tenure at NYP ranged from 8-20 years. Which is, from my observation, way way longer than the typical average single-organisation tenure of those in private sector or at least tech industry.) If that’s really the case, I think his definition of grit is a very narrow and fundamentally flawed one. (Is it the expectation of an Entrepreneurship lecturer to encourage students to stay years long as an employee in an organisation no matter what?)
Regardless how he defines grit, for him to interrupt like that when the interview candidate is speaking says a lot about him and professionalism (or lackof) - especially he is at Director level and he’s from HR(!).
I kept replaying the interview scene in my head - and really wished I had countered him/his remark differently and/or asked him to clarify his remark.
Justifying my worth
I left the AI startup in early May and soon after I was working on an opportunity to join an ex-colleague’s bootstrapped startup. It took 2 months just to formalise and sign a contractor / sales agent contract between both parties. There were back-and-forth discussions of utilising government grants to subsidise good portion of my basic salary if I join. I had to justify why I’m worth $XXXX even though it was grant-subsidised. Long story short, it didn’t work out because he didn’t believe in investing in business development. He’d rather hire product folks over sales.
While I think I dodged a bullet there, it was ego-crushing to have my expertise looked over and having to justify my worth.
Anxiety - is real
The anxiety of being sole breadwinner and having no income is real - as I wrote here: https://www.johnlimcy.com/blog/anxiety-16-july-2024
The fear / guilt of jeopardising my family’s future - through no fault of theirs - hit me.
The expectation of me landing a full-time role (quickly) while also helping out at home.
Accepting that my life circumstances does not allow me to experiment too much with career choices/options.
Employment requires permission i.e. you need permission for your CV to be read, accepted, interviews to be scheduled, job offers to be given, etc. - and the sense of helplessness when you’re in the process.
Well, it was not all gloom and doom. Some of my best memories in 2024 include:
Family:
Spending time with the family and seeing Julian and Jude grow and play with each other with so much love ❤️
Witnessing Julian’s growth and learning at St James
Staycation in Dec 2024 - Julian and Jude love chasing each other in the safari-themed family suite!
Julian on his last official day at St James Kindergarten at Gilstead with his 2 class teachers
Health:
Losing 7kg from going meatless for 6 weeks - and sticking to meatless diet after (mostly)
Friends:
Friends / ex-colleagues checking in on me - Derek, Kriang, Nic, Jeff, Aaron, Justin, Vik, Jasper, etc
Huiling telling me - as strong and resilient as I can be, I can still lean on my friends ❤️
Being able to help friends with what I have/am going through i.e. Naresh, etc and in the midst of it feeling like I’ve found my calling - helping others through career / life coaching (one of the things I am aiming to work more on in 2025)
Reconnecting with an ex university-mate who did a career switch from IT sales to career coaching now
Career / Life:
One huge learning was me being at peace with my life circumstances and being zen with treating work / job as merely one part of my life and viewing my job as a transaction of income in exchange for my time, energy and brains.
Screenshot of a chat I had with a friend - it’s almost a mantra for me now
Happy 2025! To a greater wiser healthy year ahead!!
