I always have bad jobs

[Delphinous78]

I'm in my late twenties pregnant with my second baby and have no semblance of a career. I've had a succession of bad managers, one who would scream at me and uninvite internal colleagues I'd invited to meetings when she'd had arguments with them.

In my current role my manager meets with everyone she manages but me. Everyone has managed to get promoted, even those who have started after me. I do have a slightly different role to everyone in the team and am not client facing so it's not seen as an important role. I can go days without speaking to anyone on my team and there was a few months last year when my manager just appeared to forget that I worked for her. It got so bad that another colleague actually said to me 'why can't [our manager] just remember to invite you to meetings'. My confidence has been completely shattered. Ever since graduating I've just had entry level roles, I've never really earned very much money.

I am quite introverted and struggle with speaking even within our team. I feel quite uncomfortable and I'm not able to think on my feet. I've worked in business intelligence, academic publishing and other jobs were I did not speak to external clients or attend very many meetings so I have very little experience of this. I feel like people think I'm a joke.

I want a proper career with room for development and progression. I've tried twice to get into the civil service. The first time I got an interview but was awful and the second time I made it past the second round of applications.

Do you think some coaching would help? I've found someone who talks about helping you speak up at work and make yourself heard. I don't plan on returning to my current role but I do want to set myself up properly for when I have to start job hunting after my maternity leave ends.

What sort of coaching are you thinking of getting? It does sound like you would benefit from something that would increase your confidence, assertiveness and ability to speak up. However it also sounds like your manager isn’t particularly good. Mine would never forget to meet with only one person or miss them out of meetings repeatedly.

What do you do or say when you’ve been missed on a meeting invitation?

Do you know what sort of career you would like to go into?

You haven’t mentioned what your strengths are or what you feel you do well. Maybe you should also give some time to thinking about that too as undoubtedly there are things you do well. Maybe you could then think of careers that play on your strengths?

Thank you, Totally. I've had a crap day and was feeling a bit low.

The coach calls herself a communication coach and it's a mix of group and one on one sessions. She outlines what each session does on her website and it sounds good. I thought the group sessions would be useful as I really struggle to speak in group settings.

At first I didn't know I'd been missed it was only when another team member accidentally emailed everyone about the meeting that I realised there was a weekly team meeting. She also tried to forward on a meeting request after the meeting, I think to cover her back but I emailed her to say that she must have put the wrong date in as it was in the past and did she want me to redo the email invite. She just never responded.

I had thought about working in counter fraud within the civil service but I struggled with the application form. I passed the maths and situational judgement tests with 90% each but I think because I'm lacking in experience there isn't much to write about.

What worries me is that my skillset tends to be the sort of thing that is easily ignored. I provide the research to my team but they go off and speak to whomever and the value is in the conversations they've had rather than the fact that I've highlighted this person. I also proofread and sense check reports and documents but as I haven't actually written them I don't know how useful this is.

I've found an interesting swot analysis tool for my skills so I'm going to try and be objective. I can see where I'm falling down, I'm far too quiet and never have anything to add.