3 month notice period

cyantist

If you're serious about wanting to leave, save all your annual leave, then when you find somewhere else and hand your notice in, use up all your holiday allowance to allow you to leave current job earlier. That should reduce the time you have to work there down to 2 months or so depending on how generous your holiday allowance is and how much of it you have left at the moment.

Things could be worse. DH has a 12 month notice period!

Undervalued

cyantist wrote: »

If you're serious about wanting to leave, save all your annual leave, then when you find somewhere else and hand your notice in, use up all your holiday allowance to allow you to leave current job earlier. That should reduce the time you have to work there down to 2 months or so depending on how generous your holiday allowance is and how much of it you have left at the moment.

That only works if the employer agrees.

They could exercise their right to insist that the OP works the full three months then pay him for the accrued holiday after he leaves.

Their choice.

asajj

*~Zephyr~* wrote: »

Most companies recruit through agencies only because they have advertised in the paper / on their website / with Jobcentre/ on LinkedIn etc and received next to no response. Everyone seems to automatically sign up for an agency when they want a new job and never bother going down the traditional route of searching for themselves.

Agencies are the bane of my ruddy life. I've been actively looking for decent staff for 8 months now. Our website has the vacancies clearly displayed and the only direct applications I am receiving are from overseas.

You must remember that agencies will charge the employer anywhere between 15% and 20% of your starting salary just for introducing you. Many employers just cannot justify that as an expense for most of their staff.

If you are a £60k+ earner then an agency fee is definitely justified because of the searching they actually have to do to find a suitable candidate. But really, if you're looking for an average salary - anything less than £35k - you're much better off applying directly. No company in their right mind are going to ignore a good CV just because it came direct. They are not going to turn down the opportunity to save on the agency fee!

If you're looking, just make sure you have a fantastic CV and an outstanding covering/introductory letter. Research a few companies you specifically want to work for, ring their receptionist and, very nicely, ask them who is the best person to address your letter to, and then send it off in the post. On nice paper.

Many companies simply do not have manpower to answer calls directly from potential applicants either. Yes they do pay for agencies and they are able to do a cost/benefit analysis whether it is worth to use an agency.

No receptionist would probably would give details of employees over the phone to some random caller - not in a professional organisation at least.

Gavin83

vroombroom wrote: »

What's that I hear? You're very poorly and have been signed off for 3 months...?

;-)

Wouldn't work. Either you are genuinely signed off in which case you still can't work for the other company for 3 months or your faking it. Once they ask for a doctors certificate that won't work either.

*~Zephyr~* wrote: »

No company in their right mind are going to ignore a good CV just because it came direct. They are not going to turn down the opportunity to save on the agency fee!

If you're looking, just make sure you have a fantastic CV and an outstanding covering/introductory letter. Research a few companies you specifically want to work for, ring their receptionist and, very nicely, ask them who is the best person to address your letter to, and then send it off in the post. On nice paper.

I know several companies (including my own) that simply won't hire anyone directly. If you contact them directly they'll refer you to the agency. I don't know the reasons for this, maybe they have some sort of contract but none the less I do know they don't take staff on direct.

bargainbetty

Just tell the agency that it is in your contract and there isn't a lot you can do about it. Continue to apply, and see what happens. Waiting for the right candidate isn't unusual these days, and unless you are at a very low level, there is likely to be an improved role that would wait for you.

The other option is to consider looking at contracts (maternity leave etc) for a year or two, as they tend to plan in advance. It would get you out without leaving you unpaid.

kwmlondon

Your other option is to just leave at the end of the month. This will break your contract and you won't get a reference, but if you've got a job offer then you can do this - it's not like they can come for you and drag you back to your desk. However, there are implications when it comes to pay and references, it depends how good the job you're going for is.

Get some decent advice first and have a job offer in writing that isn't conditional on references from your previous employer before taking this drastic step. And under no circumstances whatsoever do anything risky on the advice of a recruitment agency, they really don't care one short **** about your.

Undervalued

kwmlondon wrote: »

Your other option is to just leave at the end of the month. This will break your contract and you won't get a reference, but if you've got a job offer then you can do this - it's not like they can come for you and drag you back to your desk. However, there are implications when it comes to pay and references, it depends how good the job you're going for is.

This isn't strictly true.

If you deliberately break your contract by failing to give the required notice then company could make a claim against you for any unavoidable losses this causes them.

Such claims are fairly rare but they are not unknown by any means. The firm would have to have actually suffered a quantifiable net loss, despite having taken all reasonable steps to mitigate it.

Strictly speaking they have no right to withhold any payment for work done or holidays accrued but what can happen is that they simply do, effectively saying "you sue us and we will sue you"!

kwmlondon

Undervalued wrote: »

This isn't strictly true.

If you deliberately break your contract by failing to give the required notice then company could make a claim against you for any unavoidable losses this causes them.

Such claims are fairly rare but they are not unknown by any means. The firm would have to have actually suffered a quantifiable net loss, despite having taken all reasonable steps to mitigate it.

Strictly speaking they have no right to withhold any payment for work done or holidays accrued but what can happen is that they simply do, effectively saying "you sue us and we will sue you"!

Yes, though it's worth being pragmatic. If you've got a new employer who wants to take you on as soon as possible, and a current employer who doesn't wand you to leave, only a very, very stupid company would force you to stay on for the full 3 months. You would be an absolute liability as an employee if you really didn't want to be there and had somewhere else to take you the moment you left.

Most employers will come to a compromise that everyone can live with as they recognise that a demotivated employee with a job offer elsewhere can cause way more trouble to the company than the company can to them.

TheRecruiter

kwmlondon wrote: »

The mistake you're making is that you're going to recruitment companies - don't give these people any attention whatsoever. If you apply for a job direct when you speak to the HR people at the company you're applying for they'll have no problem at all with your notice period, nor will your future employers. Recruitment agencies treat the people they are recruiting like s**t. They don't work for you, they work for the employer and just want someone in post as quickly as possible so they get their money, and they will lie to you, put pressure on you, bu*lls**t you, in short, do whatever they need to to get you or anyone else into that job as fast as they can.

Any people who interview you will be held to the same terms as you, most likely, and would never have any trouble dealing with a 3 month notice period as this is how they expect people to have to manage their jobs.

Seriously - don't worry about it, and don't take any notice of anything anyone from a recruitment company says to you. Remember, they have no interest in you or your career or your life and are working for someone else, being paid by someone else and your interests are of no concern to them whatsoever.

Awful advice from someone who clearly has no idea about recruitment. KWMLondon, I assume you're not a recruiter so why would anyone listen to your views on job searching? That's like a dentist giving advice when your boiler breaks.

Take advice from TheRecruiter - Be a "good candidate" and recruiters will want to work with you, I guarantee it. This means:

1. Know what you're good at (this doesn't mean be vague and unsure of what you can do and can't do, pigeon hole yourself, you're not good at everything so stop pretending, we'll just think you're a chancer)
2. Know what your achievements are, understand what value you would bring to an organisation.
3. Improve your CV, odds are it's pretty bad. Compare it to a couple of on-line adverts, do they look similar? If not, then change the format. No-one wants to know the complexities of every project you've ever worked on and no-one wants to read one paragraph which supposedly cover the past 8 years
4.Build relationships with recruiters. You don't go to a new restaurant and expect it to be as good as your favourite restaurant of all time do you? Then don't expect to find the perfect recruiter easily. It takes time, just like finding your favourite eating hole did.
5. Don't mess us around, we'll move quick if you do, you move slow, we've moved on.
6. Listen to our advice on interviews, we've done this literally thousands of times.

In terms of your notice, you have 2 options,

1. Suck it up, quit now and hope you're good enough to get a new job.

2. Tell your employer that you won't be able to meet your contractual obligations and ask what the consequences are. Probably just means you won't get paid for the time you don't work. Seriously, notice periods are broken all the time, just say you're not going to be able to meet the agreement. Doubt there are clauses saying what happens if you breach the contract, they may take things further if you leaving would seriously screw them up but most likely it won't and they won't do anything.

Your call.