Ouch; I'm really sorry about that.

I've been through spells like that, including a "permanent" (direct) position that vanished after ony 6 months. The manager who hired and laid me off ending up leaving about two months after he let me go; the place was seriously screwed up. I can remember my dad going through a similar time when I was in middle school. It isn't you, but it's tough to really believe that until you get back on your feet.

Here's a hint: for the next job, don't look for one with a "dynamic" work environment; that's a code word for "unstable as hell".

Take a day or two to be pissed at them and the world in general, then jump back on the horse and find something else. There really isn't any other choice, and the sooner you find something the quicker you'll be able to put all the dark feelings behind you and know that it isn't you; it's that the world is fundamentally flawed.

About all I can do is send some positive thoughts your way; you *will* get past this.

lfr, this sucks. How frustrating. I'm so sorry.

Maybe it came down to money. Could it be they're looking to cut this position or hire a new person on the cheap?

Echoing doohickie: This will soon be a distant memory. You'll find something better.

"so i got to the end of my 3 month trial contract at my new job, and with no feedback and no warning yesterday they said 'thanks but no thanks, we just don't think you're a good fit blablabla, don't come back tomorrow'"

I don't think this means there's anything wrong with you; I think this means "we're too cheap to pay the costs of a permanent employee right now and you've done what we needed for now, so bu-bye." If it does actually mean they want to hire somebody but not you, then it means they don't know what they want.

Being unemployed or unable to find a job is the single most demoralizing thing that most people I know have ever gone through, and I don't know anyone who has found a really good way to put a positive spin on all of it. You just have to keep saying over and over and over "It's not me; it's something I have no control over. They hired someone's niece instead of me. They liked that guy's tie better than mine. I am a good person/accountant/marketing director/chiefcookandbottlewasher." It really is, seriously, unlikely to be you. The world is too impersonal for that.

What arses.

:-(

Sorry, dear, that sucks big time.

I think this means "we're too cheap to pay the costs of a permanent employee right now and you've done what we needed for now, so bu-bye."

I think crush is probably right about this. Still sucks, though. So sorry, lfr.

I was going to say exactly what crush said. They may very well like you, but hiring people on a temporary basis is cheaper.

Jerks! I hope they're cursed with aggregates from now to the end of time!
What crush said, pretty much.

Jerks.

[[[lfr]]], I'm really sorry to hear that. :-(

Clearly, it's them, not you. I'm sure you kick ass at your job. Alas, HR is always going to be weasel-y: legal liabilities should they say the "wrong" thing and invite a suit, etc.

Sorry to hear that lfr, that's a kick in the box.

*hug*

One thing to look forward to tomorrow is sleeping in. Hopefully the weather will be nice where you are and you'll be able to do something you enjoy, like a hike or mountain biking, not many people during the week so trails will be quiet and nice!

Sorry to hear this. What crush said. And I suppose it's not necessarily intentionally deceptive either -- could be they had funding or the ok to hire someone 3 months ago and now they don't. That doesn't make them any less asshole-ish for doing it, though.

Yep. This was never about you, LFR.

These people are self-serving sphincters, and if this is how they treat a hard worker with a good attitude, you're better off without them. I once worked in a really small shop where I had, like, eight different reports in 14 months, and it was a blessing when the last one made sh*t up and fired me, although it didn't feel that way at the time.

Sulk appropriately, pamper yourself a little, and then hit those want-ads.

I'm in much the same boat over here, BTW.

That's the difference between being in an overhead position instead of a value-added or income-producing position. Getting ahead in an overhead position usually means replacing three other overheads, thus making them obsolete. I wish I had learned that lesson a lot earlier in my career.

Mother fuckers. That is all.

i don't know what to say right now. i just feel... broken. i want to know what the FUCK is wrong with me that i can't seem to find a decent job doing something moderately non-boring.

They screwed you. It hurts. It hurts a lot. And you're turning the anger on yourself, blaming yourself.

I totally understand the anger, the sadness. I've been there a million times myself BUT PLEASE, PLEASE don't blame yourself. There is nothing wrong with you. You did a good job. You worked hard. There's nothing wrong with you. There's a lot wrong with the current system.

i can't get a straight answer from my HR administrator at the contract service. they just keep saying 'well, it wasn't a good fit...'

You are trying to apply human, grown-up standards to people who are neither. That's a recipe for frustration. You are trying to get to the heart of the problem. You want to communicate and to be open. HR people don't do those things. HR people are trained to open their mouths and issue a stream of syllables in a sequence that bears a striking resemblance to American English but conveys no information whatsoever. HR people are there to make sure that the company does not get sued. That's their bottom line. Trying to get actual, concrete information from an HR person, ESPECIALLY information about a workplace issue, is a bit like trying to teach string theory to baboons. It's just not in the nature of the beast.

what the FUCK does that MEAN, people? i'm not fucking CLAIRVOYANT!

It could be anything. Anything at all. It could be something so petty and outrageous that it wouldn't even occur to you because you don't have that weasel mindset. Maybe you did such a good job that the person above you felt threatened. Who knows?

It sucks. I'm sorry.

Take a day or two to be pissed at them and the world in general, then jump back on the horse and find something else.

n-thing this. You gotta hit the ground running. You gotta keep your game sharp and be ready for the next one. Which will come. I promise.

and yet, i can't get a straight answer from my HR administrator at the contract service. they just keep saying 'well, it wasn't a good fit...'

What utter bollocks. An employer knows if it's a 'good fit' or not within a week.

More and more employers in the U.S. are doing the temp-to-hire thing, for a broader range of jobs than ever they used to. But it winds up being a two edged sword, in strange ways, for a lot of organizations, in ways they don't anticipate, going in.

"Try before you buy" sounds good to a lot of employers in filling jobs, as does "work until you work out a new job" to most workers. But the practice of 25-30% of salary fee payment on hires gets pretty steep for employers who don't have the hiring volume to negotiate better terms. And the result to workers that fill jobs which can be handled well by temporary personnel, is that they often become part of a chain of people that ultimately demonstrate quite well how "plug and play" the jobs are, in terms of skills and technical requirements, by working harder than they might otherwise, while trying to impress and "catch on" in the temp period. So, eventually, what once were regular jobs become "permanent temp" positions, in companies that begin to think of themselves as "project cultures," just as employees find they're becoming permanent temps.

You might ask other people working at your next assignment how many people have done the job since it was last done by a permanent employee. And you might ask your placement people at your temp agency how long the business providing your next temp slot has been a client of the temp agency. Once you really understand the temp-to-hire game, and become artful at investigating the situations you find yourself in, you can become pretty good at figuring out where you'll likely be considered for real employment opportunities, and where you're just being shined on.

A friend of mine who is a competent legacy system programmer for IBM business class systems was confounded in his search for a permanent position while working temp-to-hire in Atlanta for nearly 2 years.

"I don't get it," he told me. "I'm doing some of the best work of my career, things that I can see other programmers have done badly, in the code comments they've left, that I've been brought into rework. And yet, although I think I've been really close to being hired a couple of times, I find myself being moved to other assignments every two or three months." He finally found out that he was being loaded with 40% hire fee, because of his knowledge of deprecated procedural languages used almost entirely on IBM mid-range systems. He eventually took what was for him a big risk, and quit temping, to build up his own area contracting business. It took him 6 months to build a steady work schedule, but eventually he was able to string together a couple of banks, some distribution and wholesale companies, and some large companies with ongoing database management issues, into something like a constant work set. His income now mainly comes from about 10 fairly steady clients, and he works in a loose federation of 4 other technical people who share most of the same clients, and cooperate to keep them happy. It's a good enough situation that he's happy with it, and he's getting 6 to 8 weeks "vacation" a year, while being able to afford it.

I've met 3 of his 4 "cooperative competitors," and they speak of the situation highly, as if it were a film making community, where the same cameramen get hired, again and again, but continue to make movies, and sometimes recommend each other for second unit jobs, or to other directors who approach them when they are too busy. Seems to work for them, and all were once in the temp-to-hire rat race.

okay so i just wanted to jump back in and say thanks to EVERYONE so much... god im sorry to have been such a bag of downers. i'm alive. i'm a little drunk. i just got back from the Denver Cruise. its 1.35 AM on thursday morning and i'm fucking SLEEPING IN tomorrow and then taking my macbook down to the apple store at 11 to get cleaned up and have a minor screen glitch looked at (yes i bought the 3 year applecare for it).

especial thanks to doohickie, crush, jason and paulsc for some seriously well considered answers that have provided some added perspective and things to think on.

i'm really getting burnt out on the contract / temp-to-hire deal. going to have a long heart to heart with myself about whether i shouldnt just say 'fuckitall' and go back to work at a restaurant or something. i mean if im going to get treated as a glorified waitress anyway, i might as well be actually doing it for the tips.

I would never, ever take a contract-to-hire job ever again. Here's the letter I wrote to my "manager" upon submitting my resignation from the contract position. A cautionary tale to be sure.

I have been down this road a few times in my career, and it has never ended being how it was described by my prospective employer before starting the engagement.

If you don't feeling like clickin through, my experience was remarkably similar to yours. I did a three month contract to hire with a large Swiss bank in the NYC area. After three months, I was told my feedback was perfect, excellent, superlative, etc., and they would be bringing me on. After another two months, I was told that I would need to go through the hiring proces, which was quite extensive. After another month, I was giving a stinging review by my manager in which they told me they would be happy to keep me on as a contractor, but that I was not at the level the position required me to be. This was first hint I had had (in the six months I was there), that my performance or capabilities were not up to snuff.

I suspected there was something else going on, and this was confirmed when the manager in question proceeded to unload the senior people in his group (people with 10-15 years experience), and hired a bunch of newbies right from college upon which to build his fiefdom. All four of us (two were full time employees, the other was also a contractor) commiserated on it after this all went down during the holidays last year, and couldn't quite figure out WTF had happened. Oddly enough, the asshole actually got promoted earlier this Spring. Go figure.

So... be a contractor, or try to get hired outright as an FTE. Temp- or so called, contract-to-hire is a treacherous road fraught with all sorts manipulations, false promises and abuse. Since they are not accountable to you, they can pretty much tell you anything they want to string you along, and as you found out, drop you on a whim. At least as a contractor you can write this off as "comes with the territory", as an employee they cannot do this without a proper review cycle. Well, then can, but it's thankfully rare.

Best wishes, and better luck next time!

(You're welcome, hon! Anytime!)

Agreed.

Temp-to-perm situations are shot through with mendacity and manipulation.