John Linton I had an Exetel free day yesterday for the first time in a very long while. Perhaps t was the very late start to the 'computer' day caused by whatever it was but by the time that was fixed there was very little time to complete the Sunday 'chores' before driving my youngest daughter to the airport. She is going to London for three days to meet some people at IBM who she has applied to for a transfer from IBM Australia. Very exciting for her and I really hope she gets the job despite feeling a regret that we will see very little of her for at least two years and quite possibly longer than that. She has worked for IBM since finishing her IT degree some 5+ years ago and it has given her a very solid basis for continuing a career in the booming technology marketplaces if that's what she wants to do. Her current 'boy' friend (if you can apply such a term to males in their late 20s) is also planning to go to the UK to do his MBA so that allows her to keep one set of her options open.
Annette and I then met up with our eldest son and had a leisurely lunch (which was surprisingly good) at one of the 'strip' of restaurants that now comprise half of the rebuilt Finger Wharf at Woolloomooloo. We chatted on about this and that for a couple of hours until the sun no longer warmed our part of the world and drank some very nice wine to go with the very nice food (I can't remember when I last had a decent, unfussed with, piece of beef). It occurred to me over lunch that four of my five children have all taken up jobs in IT from the time they graduated and three of them worked part time in IT throughout their studies from late high school. As Annette had been her usual abstemious self we we able to drive home without incident.
While we were driving home I thought about today's graduates and what they wanted from their "20's". We recently had a spate of resignations (if three can be described as a spate) from the graduates we have employed in corporate sales trainee roles which has caused me to re-think that, to date, very successful process of building a corporate sales team. Each one of the resignations were because the people concerned wanted to 'take three months off' to go and do something more interesting than their current jobs. Their time with Exetel had varied - 25 months 20 months and 8 months but I found it difficult to understand why people would give up a career that they were beginning to do well at to "do something more interesting" for three months after barely starting their working life. Times have obviously changed considerably and I haven't been aware of these changes. It is something that we will need to much better understand and change in our recruiting processes.
I would like to be able to say that when we got home that I did something useful but that would not be true. I dozed in front of the TV for a while before arousing to pretend I was interested in the news and then an old movie. It was only when we eventually went to bed that I realised that I had done no 'work' and for the vast majority of the day I hadn't thought about Exetel or the Australian comms markets. A very strange day in that respect and perhaps an indication of days to come.
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