{"id":119,"date":"2004-07-29T16:39:00","date_gmt":"2004-07-29T20:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ukmelia.com\/ridiculousthoughts\/?p=119"},"modified":"2004-07-29T16:39:00","modified_gmt":"2004-07-29T20:39:00","slug":"the-job-hunt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ukmelia.com\/ridiculousthoughts\/2004\/07\/29\/the-job-hunt\/","title":{"rendered":"The Job Hunt"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have come to the conclusion that I&#8217;m not very patient. &#8220;You&#8217;re just now finding that out, after 33 years on this planet?&#8221; Oh shut it. <\/p>\n<p>Recently, almost on a whim, I applied for a position on the staff at my city&#8217;s newspaper in their New Media department. When I say &#8216;on a whim&#8217; I mean that before I saw the ad for the job, I hadn&#8217;t even been thinking of leaving my current job. Then I emailed the hiring person and asked what the salary range for the position was. I figured that it wouldn&#8217;t be worth anyone&#8217;s time if it was the same-ish to what I make now. Unfortunately (for my current employer) the newspaper pays a goodly chunk more and as anyone who&#8217;s trawled through my blog knows, Je suis poor. I would have been stupid not to at least try for the position.<\/p>\n<p>But it wasn&#8217;t without some soul-searching and advice-seeking that I made that decision. I love where I work and the people I work with. I have the best bosses I have ever had and my coworkers are fabulous. It would be really hard to leave here. I even spoke to my boss about all of this because I don&#8217;t believe in blindsiding him with an abrupt departure. His exact words to me were &#8216;You have to do what&#8217;s best for you.&#8217; And he is right. <\/p>\n<p>So I updated my CV and wrote a rocking cover letter, printed them on very nice paper and sent them off. A couple of days later I had an email asking me for a phone interview &#8211; the screening process. I made it through that after a bit of an agonizing wait that had me on pins and needles and then a proper interview was set up for the following Tuesday. <\/p>\n<p>I prepared my ass off for that interview &#8211; something I&#8217;d never done before, but then again I haven&#8217;t gone on very many formal interviews. Just a couple here at the hospital where I already knew everyone. So I poured through website after website and grilled myself on the tough interview questions: &#8216;What are your strengths\/weaknesses&#8217; (ugh!), &#8216;Tell me about yourself&#8217;, &#8216;What&#8217;s an obstacle youve had to overcome in your job&#8217;, and worst of all, &#8216;Why do you want to leave your current job?&#8217; The last one, for me was the most difficult to answer. I can&#8217;t just come out and say &#8216;Well, you&#8217;re paying more moula.&#8217; hat&#8217;s a big factor, but there are other reasons I think this would be a good move for me.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, I felt good going into the interview. I was nervous but not overly so. I spent an hour with the director of the department and she skipped the strength\/weakness question than goodness. I could have answered it, but I just hate it anyway. But the interview, I think, went very well. I left her with my references, and she asked me all kinds of questions about when I could start, whether I&#8217;d be comfortable using a Mac, stuff like that. She kept speaking as if I had the job (&#8220;Your Mac is due to be replaced within the next year.&#8221; &#8220;Your desk is in the corner.&#8221; etc.) So I&#8217;m feeling like it&#8217;s in the bag, and then she said, &#8220;Well&nbsp;I have a few more interviews today but I hope to have a decision made by the end of the day.&#8221; Cue my brain to go into over-analyze mode.<\/p>\n<p>Did I blow it somehow? I don&#8217;t know. But it&#8217;s only gotten worse because it&#8217;s near the end of the day, Thursday, 2-ish days after the interview and I&#8217;ve not heard anything from her about it. Did someone come in after me who blew her mind? Did I answer the dreaded salary requirement position wrong? I know what you&#8217;re thinking. &#8220;Geez it&#8217;s only been two days, chill out!&#8221; and normally you would be right. I wouldn&#8217;t be thinking about it much at all if she hadn&#8217;t said &#8216;I hope to have a decision by the end of the day&#8217; after my interview.&nbsp; It&#8217;s that one little sentence that has thrown me for a loop and made me freak out that I haven&#8217;t heard from her yet. I would think if she&#8217;s moving that fast on filling the position, if I was chosen, then surely I would have heard by now.<\/p>\n<p>So I haven&#8217;t gotten much sleep and&nbsp;I can&#8217;t seem to stop worrying about it. I do not like this feeling of not knowing. And it&#8217;s ironic because 2 weeks ago I never would have guessed I&#8217;d be in this situation at all. Oh and one of my key references is bloody away on vacation as well \ud83d\ude41 Argh. <\/p>\n<p>An update: After&nbsp;I wrote the above stuff, I heard from another one of my references that they had just been called about it and that the call went very well. This reference didn&#8217;t go into detail about it and I didn&#8217;t ask, but this person knew how much I&#8217;ve been angsting about not hearing anything so gave me the heads up. So if she is checking my references right now, it at least means that someone else hasn&#8217;t gotten the position (yet.) I hope.<\/p>\n<p>My plan of action right now is to wait until tomorrow afternoon, no matter how much it is killing me, and then I will call her and enquire about the process and how it&#8217;s all going in a very nonchalant, casual way.<\/p>\n<p>*fingers and toes crossed*<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<br \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have come to the conclusion that I&#8217;m not very patient. &#8220;You&#8217;re just now finding that out, after 33 years on this planet?&#8221; Oh shut it. Recently, almost on a&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ukmelia.com\/ridiculousthoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ukmelia.com\/ridiculousthoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ukmelia.com\/ridiculousthoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ukmelia.com\/ridiculousthoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ukmelia.com\/ridiculousthoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.ukmelia.com\/ridiculousthoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ukmelia.com\/ridiculousthoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ukmelia.com\/ridiculousthoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ukmelia.com\/ridiculousthoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}