New Developments

So about a week ago, my boss' bosses pulled me into a late afternoon meeting and told me "we think we have a great opportunity for you, and don't think you really have a choice about it"

Great opening lines eh? They went on to say that due to my student supervisory experience at the MU and my master's degree, that they would like me to supervise our group of evening student telecounselors. As well as continue to do all my other duties. They mentioned how it would help build my resume, and also would make me point person for our social media branding as well as our private social network (in which the telecounselors are student bloggers).

While that might not sound like a great offer to many of you, it actually is really great, because it does bolster my resume AND let's me get more involved in our social networking, skills I gained as a college student and for my graduate program.

My only major worry (aside from how to do it all and my counseling duties) was how I as going to work full time and supervise evening student workers? that would be 12 hours days. My bosses let me know they were hiring a part-time staffer to actually supervise those students, and he would report to me - whew! oh, and I would receive a 10% raise. The offer is good until the end of the fiscal year in June.

I am pretty excited about it!

Then this week, they posted a new position for an assistant director of communications for the department. this person would be in charge of the entire communication flow to students, as well as manage social networking, and work with other university offices to maintain consistent branding. This job sounds like about half of it is duties they just assigned me, so I am definitely applying for the job.

This would be a perfect move up for me. I don't want to get too excited though, it is highly possible they will get applicants with more communications experience than me, but I definitely don't think it will hurt me to apply. My past experience isn't so strong, but my knowledge of the department and my ideas for how we can move forward are pretty good, so I think I have a shot. I am going to meet with some people I know at the university who can give some advice on how to best approach this application, but I am excited that this new job has appeared.

I don't know how many times people have asked me what my career goals are, or where I plan to be in 5 years - I think that was because jobs like this werent invented yet for me to know that was an option.

If I don't get this job, I will certainly need to look outside the department - after all my raise is good until June, and then whoever becomes this asst. director will have most of those duties, seems unlikely it would continue for me.