Tuesday, October 25, 2011

New Job

I am very excited to announce that I have found a new job. This has me very hopeful that my happiness levels will increase. Don’t get me wrong, my previous job in public accounting gave me a lot of valuable opportunities and a broad range of experience. However, I am so thankful I was able to find a new job.

Today marks the beginning of my second week. I will keep my new job somewhat anonymous as I did with the previous on. However, I will highlight a couple of the perks that came with the new position. Coming from public accounting, my work/life balance was severely unbalanced, leaning heavily toward the work side of that equation. That being said, a major draw for this position was the 37 hour work week! I still have some flexibility with my schedule in that I can arrange those 37 hours over the week any way I want. Now every week I have a half day on Friday. That is so nice! I think I will really grasp this new schedule during the months that were previously consumed by my “busy season”.

Another major draw for me was the work itself. I am now working for a not-for-profit association. We help protect the public interest by supporting state insurance regulators. My responsibilities include quality reviews of insurance examination files, developing training programs for state examiners, and maintaining and updating the examination handbook. There are some similarities to my previous job. For instance, I still deal with financial examinations. In my new role, however, I will have much more of an oversight position rather than “work-horse” position.

Finally, the benefits really played into my decision in taking this position. The benefits package that’s provided by this company covers so much and at little cost to me. A really cool part of the package is the “Babies in the Workplace” program. This program basically allows mothers or fathers to bring their babies to work with them until the child is 6 months old. That will save a lot of money down the line, and will give me a few more weeks with my future babies before leaving them at a daycare!

What’s really interesting about my new position is that in college I wrote a thesis over internal controls best practices for not-for-profit organizations. This article was later published in Fraud Magazine. The content of my thesis included establishing best practices for maintaining reliable internal controls and preventing fraud in smaller companies where certain laws and regulations were not relevant or enforced, due to the size of the company. My new position is quite similar in that we provide oversight and best practices for insurance companies even though they are not technically required to follow our “rules”. They are simply policies and procedures to improve the company and protect consumers.

Anyway, that may not make much sense to people. I guess I still have a job that is difficult to explain to others! At least with this job I think I will get a lot more satisfaction out of it and be happier with the work I’m doing. I can actually see that my effort is making a difference and the work I do is good for the community. I’m very excited to see where this takes me!