Well, I’m sure y’all all know by now, the Washington Capitals lost in sudden death overtime to the Philadelphia Flyers, 2-3 on Tuesday. It kind of sucked to watch that, but it was an exciting game nonetheless.
But the real kicker was in the morning at work. First, you have to understand that I work for a consulting firm. Second you have to understand what ‘being on the bench’ means and how it’s basically death for consultants. Being on the bench is when you’re not working on a client’s project. You’re not being productive and your billable hours goal for the year will be missed, so you want as little bench time as possible during the year.
Tuesday morning, I get to work, run get a little breakfast with some of my teammates, and return to find out that my project has come to an untimely end, a bit like CleverDude in the link above. Next thing I know, I’m laughing mildly hysterically at the situation and at the slight edge of panic in the room.
I find it damned ironic that I need to find a new engagement at work in a hurry because the day before, I was at an internal corporate event trying to network so I can line up the next gig in a few weeks at the planned close of my project. A friend of mine who’s been at the firm for almost a decade introduced me to someone who needs staff in the next 2 weeks. but I won’t be released till midsummer so that isn’t going to work for me.
But how much do things change in 24 hours. You can bet your bippy the first person I called after being axed in the morning was the one staffing up soon. Although I probably won’t end up on that particular project, I was hugely relieved to have a place to turn right away for help.
The moral of the story is to seize your opportunities to network, internally and externally. I can’t say that enough. It’s the reason I guess why us DC PF bloggers like to meet for happy hour. We try to do what we can for our network. It’s a bit of a quid pro quo though. I mean, if I’m willing to take someone’s resume and pass it along, then hopefully they would do the same for me, right?
No comments:
Post a Comment