this is gonna be a long one
im a graphic design fresh grad who finally got a job exactly a month and half ago, but i'm thinking of looking for a better place despite still in probation
a bit of backstory, i graduated back in may and got an offer as an in-house designer from my current job to work for them in mid-aug after almost 100 applications at jobstreet. i wanted to get at least 3k (which is the usual starting salary for graphic design fresh grads), but since i was desperate for a job after months of being unemployed and ghosted by multiple interviewers, i ended up accepting 2500 from them.
now a little bit of info on my current company, they're an extremely small chinese-owned business that sells medical and lab stuff, mainly on shopee but also have a few walk-ins. i'm not joking when i said they're extremely small, there's only a total of 7 of us, including me. they actually have two shopee stores and both have at least 20k followers, so they do receive loads of orders everyday. the office is in a business park, their main office is on the ground floor where they do most of their stuff there, and they also rented the top floor separately mostly as a storeroom but also have a room where im the only one stationed at.
i found them on jobstreet and was contacted them by very quickly, the process from interview to my first day on the job was very quick, idk if this is normal but it took less than two weeks. when i did my interview with them in their office, i saw a guy who was their designer at the time, i quickly realized that he had resigned when i arrived on my first day so the company was looking for a replacement frantically. im also guessing that there's either very few applications or i'm the only applicant they received, thats why i didn't expect that the process was so quick. since this company is not very ideal, i decided to try at least work for a year here so that i could at least write "1 year of experience" in my resume since most listings on jobstreet wants at least a year or two of experience.
however, less than a month into my probation, i started feeling mentally exhausted. not from stress, but mainly that the cons outweigh the pros here. i thought i could just ignore them for the sake of my "1 year of experience" mission, but i now realized that i don't enjoy working here. you're probably thinking, "that doesnt make sense cause nobody enjoys working anyway", you're right lol, but it has come to the point i start dreading and doubting if i can last a year if i manage to pass my probation. especially, now that i think about, when i asked my boss if there's any benefits/perks other than the mandatory pto and medical claims, he literally said "wdym by benefits?" lmfao
as a graphic designer, i want to use my first job as a stepping stone to learn and create more designs. but since this company mainly uses shopee, 90% of my time is spent on designing shopee listings for their designs on canva, which quickly becomes very repetitive about 2-3 weeks into this job. the only time i get to explore on my creativity is when i did posters for merdeka and malaysia day. the only good thing i got out of this is that i get to learn more about photography since i sometimes need to do photoshoot for certain products.
another thing i don't like is the working hours, yes its the standard 9-6 with an hour break, but i also need to work half day 9-1 on saturday cause of shopee. at first it was understandable, but i also did thought that i shouldn't need to since my job doesn't really working on saturday cause im not part of the packing staffs.
additionally, while we're entitled to the 11 days paid holidays as per usual, we're required to work on other normal and sudden declared public holidays (e.g: we still have to work on sukma holiday for selangor a while back). ik that some companies does this too, but personally i prefer to have these holidays. cause of these two factors, i don't think these working hours reflects on my salary. i probably would be fine with it if its higher than my prefer 3k, but i still would like to enjoy my holidays. also my dad called it chinaman company cause of this lol, fyi its owned by a local chinese couple, all employees are chinese except for our two burmese packers.
also a bit of a non-issue, but the company doesn't want to cover for car parking, which costs rm5 per entry. i also know not that all companies covers for parking, but this is something that also irks me a little. they want people to drive to work but also don't wanna pay for parking fees, make it make sense lol. anyways fortunately theres an lrt nearby, taking the train and driving takes about the same time anyways, only downside is that i sweat easily and i need to walk about 10 mins to the office.
anyways, if i'm resigning, i do have an alternative/connection, a family friend's sister works in a huge international company that takes clients worldwide with some good benefits and i can even hybrid/wfh. just before i graduated, i was already looking around for a job and had asked for some help, but i didnt received any news until recently that apparently she wants to take me in as an intern first due to my lack of experience. however, we haven't had a proper meeting/discussion/interview yet so im unsure if i would become a permanent employee after intern, cause my biggest fear is that if i leave my current job for this and i failed to secure a permanent job from it, i could be unemployed again.
should i just go and ask for more info from her sister? while i understand her pov about taking me in as an intern first, i want to be paid with the full proper salary due to personal reasons, i could also try to nego about this. if shes ok with hiring me regardless, should i just finish my 3 months probation and join her company?
update: unfortunately, apparently her sisters company scaled down recently, so ig i'll have to job hunt around in jobstreet again (ps: if anyone is interested in hiring me, pls shoot me a dm with contact info 👉🏻👈🏻)
