After taking such a crazy trip, I’m super lucky that I didn’t have to start at my new day job the next day. In fact, the day after getting back from the trip was spent recovering from it.
I had some pretty crazy jet lag (taking a 5 hour nap when I finally got home really didn’t help) and for the first time ever, my feet and ankles swelled up like crazy after being on the plane. Maybe it’s because the guy in the middle seat was a big basketball player and I spent the flight squished in my seat (I balanced one foot on top of the other on the side of the plane because that’s the only room I had). So my Monday was spent with my feet up so the swelling would go down (which it did in about a day).
Tuesday was my first day at the new day job. I’m working as a recruiting assistant for lawyers. Basically, my boss tells me about a job opening that we need to fill and I cold call lawyers to see if any of them meet the requirements and if they do, try to get them to go for an interview. Basically, I’m a headhunter (or at least an assistant headhunter).
My first day was pretty much spent learning about the business and going over legal terms and how law firms work. It’s a lot of totally new information for me to learn about, and I’m still working on feeling confident using legal terms.
All my legal knowledge that I’ve had before has come from film and tv (like watching “Legally Blonde” and “Drop Dead Diva”). Fortunately, it turns out that legal shows are a bit more accurate than medical shows, so my film/tv legal knowledge was actually pretty useful.
My second day was similar to the first except I got to listen in to some phone calls and hear what I’m supposed to do. The company that I’m working for is a husband and wife team (and now me, I guess) so I’m learning from the boss. At the end of my shift that day, I made a few calls on my own.
The third day was all phone calls at their home office. I got more comfortable on the phone and started to get some good information out of people. I’m shocked how easily people will tell you how much they make on a first phone call.
Finally, on Friday this past week, I got to work from home. This is what I was told I would be doing once I was trained, and my new boss decided that we should test it out and see how it goes. While I was nervous to not have the support of the boss sitting right next to me, it was also nice to not have the pressure of having the boss right next to me as well.
Since pretty much my entire shift is spent on the phone, I got my iPhone headphones out and tried to make as many phone calls as I could in my four hour shift.
I think it went really well. I checked in by phone with my boss after I was done, and he was very impressed with what I got done. I’m going to be working from home again this week. We aren’t sure when I will have to go in to work in their home office, but I know that if the search changes, I’ll have to go in to learn about the new search parameters.
I’ve worked from home a bit before, but for some reason this time it was different. I made an effort to make it seem as much like a workplace as possible. I did get dressed (no working in pjs for me) so that helped me feel less casual. Although I did skip shoes, doing my hair, or putting on makeup.
So far, I’m really happy with the progress I’ve made with the new job. I feel like it has the possibility to be a great day job, and my boss and his wife love the idea that I’m an actor.
It’s funny. For a while, even before I was laid off, I put it out in the universe that all I wanted was a job that worked from home, had very flexible hours, and had bosses that were excited that I was an actor not annoyed by it. While I did get exactly what I wanted, I probably should have specified that I wanted to only have to have 1 day job. I’m still going to also have to work part-time at my old workplace (working in the box office), but I think that between my 2 new jobs, I should be ok soon.
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