I was given a job by my recruiting agency to work for a government contracting company. My duties were to prepare expense reconciliation spreadsheets using Microsoft Excel based on invoices for contracted projects from workers at the site. I was part of their billing department. Billing supervisor told me she selected me because I had done some bank reconciliations in one of my internships listed on my resume.

1st week I made no errors. 2nd week I made 3 or 4 mistakes in my spreadsheets in regards to per diem calculations for meals and hotel lodgings. I was taught the proper way to calculate them and I wrote notes down. 3rd week made 2 mistakes for per diems again. I corrected them and made additional notes to myself. On the weekend I rewrote my notes and studied them, I felt awful for making the same per diem rate mistakes.

4th, 5th, and 6th week I made no mistakes. Everything was starting to “click” and come together for me. I would still ask clarifications questions though every once in a while. Friday of my 6th week I was given a call from my agency that the company has decided to let me go. I asked my recruiter if there was something wrong with my work performance. She told me I am in good standing and got positive feedback from supervisor, it was a budget issue.

On my last day I asked my supervisor for feedback. She told me I did a good job and told me she gave good reviews to my agency about me. She said it was the project manager who decided to not retain me because of budget issues. I asked her on what could I have done to improve myself as a working professional. She told me I should try to understand a company’s role and business better so that way I am not trying to “force things to make things work/numbers work/match” and not” over think” too much when preparing spreadsheets. I think she was referring to my 2nd&3rd week struggles. However I had it addressed and fixed.

I am not buying the budget issue. During my 5th week the company hired two new other people to do the exact same thing as me. According to my supervisor the project manager felt that we were backed up and needed more help. One of the new hires had a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Czech Republic in economics and financial banking. The other had bachelor’s in biology and was taking online classes for master’s in accounting. Both had done some form of budgeting& government contracting job experience.

I was very social and got along with my co-workers. Whenever given a new task I would get it done before workday ends of that day or the following day in the afternoon, and then ask for more tasks. My recruiter has not called me back. Company hired two new temps for same position as me week before I got dreaded call.

For those reading please tell me what do you think is the reason I was let go.

Was it because of budget, work performance (not “clicking” fast enough?), or something else?