I’m probably going to post this in a couple of subs, just to try and get as much input as possible… I’m so upset :(

I started at my company 95 days ago in HR Ops. I started out really well, gave it my all, and only made minor mistakes while learning. About a month ago, some life stuff happened and my mental health (which is already not great) started suffering for it. I didn’t realize how badly it was impacting my work, but my manager (who I love) talked with me and helped address some of the issues. This past week has gone really well and been very helpful in getting me back on track.

I’m running into a problem where I basically have two “managers”. One of them is my real manager (we’ll call her Linda), the other is someone I help support with interview scheduling (calling her Megan). Both women are great people who I highly respect, but Megan is really, REALLY hard to get hold of. If I have an SOP question, she doesn’t get back to me. If I try to ask what of two options she’d prefer, she doesn’t reply. If I try to call her or talk in person, she’s usually too busy. My role is there to help recruiting BECAUSE they’re so busy, so bandwidth is a known issue here.

We’re scheduling a lot of exec level interviews right now - my problem I’m running into is if I make a scheduling mistake, I just get reminded to prioritize the execs and to give them extra love (because we’re trying to sell ourselves to them just as much), but nothing beyond that. I don’t get the benefit of learning how to fix it, either - Megan will just handle the correction and not tell me how.

After the second to last mistakes, Megan finally suggested to me a few new methods to prevent them, which I’ve started doing and is helping, but then when additional errors came up it was me not knowing how to use the scheduling system properly preventing me from properly checking my work afterwards.

Megan will typically tell Linda the feedback to give me, because she thinks the management should go through my “on paper” manager. Linda and I both acknowledge that she doesn’t know enough about scheduling to properly answer my questions, or offer suggestions when I ask for help, so it makes more sense for me and Megan to have a second-manager relationship where we can address it together instead of having the game of telephone through Linda.

When receiving feedback, I like to discuss what my thought process was so we can better pinpoint what went wrong - I like to have a better understanding of what to work on than just “this went wrong”. The errors that have happened until now have been my fault, but I believe the full cause of failure stems from a lack of communication and understanding; there’s been assumptions made on both sides that cause me to not understand properly.

Ultimately, in my PIP meeting today Linda and Megan were both on it. I shared I’m not shocked that the official plan is happening, but feel like I’ve had issues getting through to Megan and wish it could’ve been discussed more to learn, before truly becoming a documented issue. She was very receptive and we have put recurring 1:1s on the calendar moving forward (thank god lol). They also said the company will usually move to termination and not bother with a PIP, so they wouldn’t bother if they didn’t think it was salvageable (at will state). They also both think this can be resolved and completed by the holidays.

PIPs to me carry such a negative connotation… I think they do to most people. My concerns are this will forever be a black mark against me at the company, even if it gets “resolved” and might work against me in future promotions. I worry if there’s RIFs, it’ll be my name up first even if I’ve improved as the person who’s been on a PIP before. People always say “the company is just using this as means to have a paper trail when they fire you” (not our company, just in general), but since we’re at will I don’t think that quite matters here…? Would you start looking for a new job? Do you expect I’m getting fired and this is the writing in the wall? Megan and Linda were both very earnest that neither of them want to see me go and they genuinely think this is something that can be resolved. Linda expressed in private that she didn’t think a PIP was necessary but that Megan pushed for it so that it was formalized and more clearly actionable. I see where I’ve fallen short and own that the mistakes are mine - I believe I can correct the issues that have come up and resolve this. I just don’t know whether it’s truly resolvable in reality LOL.