I know this question has probably been asked before, but I'd like some advice from everyone: I'm about to have a PIP (Professional Improvement Plan) drawn up, so is my employment over?
My boss brought up two issues:
I wasn't showing "confidence" in client meetings when showing the software updates. Okay, this could be fair. But what's not fair is that the last client meeting we had was 3 weeks ago! If there was an issue, why didn't my boss bring it up after the meeting? Why did he wait 3 weeks to say something? When I asked him about this he said I should be more excited and almost act like a salesman towards the client. Okay, this is fair feedback also.
On my resume, I said one of my skills is "Fortran", but my resume clearly shows I haven't used it for an employer in about 5 years. My boss complained that he gave me a Fortran issue ticket that I didn't complete in time. Yet I'm rusty on it AND this is the first time that I'm hearing that he's not happy that I'm not working as quickly as he thinks I should. When I asked him about this, he said he expects people to be masters of everything listed on their resume, even on programming languages they haven't used in years.
The PIP is coming out of the blue with no prior verbal warnings. And I've looked through my hiring agreement and every HR documentation I can find, but nothing mentions the PIP process.
The goals in my PIP includes things like "improve your confidence when presenting at the client meeting" and "improve your Fortran skills". Obviously neither of these has a measurable goal or a specific deadline. Maybe "improve your Fortran skills to finish this ticket in 80% of the allotted time" is a measurable goal, but then why not state this on the PIP?
Some other factors:
- The company seems to be hiring college graduates every few weeks. I take this to mean they have no problem with the time and costs of interviewing and hiring people.
- A possible red flag I only discovered after I started here: the longest person working here has only been here for about 3 years. This means people don't stay long, either because they're fired or they quit.
- I'm approaching 3 months at the company, which is usually a probationary period.
So my question is: is this something I can improve on and recover from? Or is it just a matter of time before I'm fired, but now they can say I didn't meet the conditions of the PIP?
As a follow-up:
I had a meeting with my bosses about the PIP process and I wound up putting in my resignation the next day.
In the meeting, I told them that I've already started some classes to improve my skills, but a family emergency came up, and I wouldn't be able to study over the weekend. One boss said he was disappointed that I wasn't making better progress. The other one pulled up my resume and started going over it, job by job, saying I used Fortran 3 years ago at a previous job and that I used it 6 years ago on a second job. He asked if I was "bigging up my resume" and did I actually know Fortran, or am I just rusty?
As my spouse said, if the boss is pulling out my resume in the middle of the meeting to basically accuse me of lying about my skills, then the business relationship is over. When I said there was a miscommunication about the required skills, the second boss tried to argue that he asked about this in the interview and I said I knew it, so (again) he expected me to be an expert at it. I took this to mean this means it's not their fault for properly vetting the candidate (me) and making sure I could do what's expected, it's my fault for inflating the skills on my resume.
So, thanks to everyone for the advice.
Fortran
nowadays. While it is not impossible to learn Fortran, not many people would be very excited about working with Fortran.