Wednesday, March 30, 2011

An Accidentally Good Week Part 1

Greetings Bloggies.

On monday I woke up for the facing the second week in a row where I was struggling to come up with an agenda.  The previous week was largely wasted.  Monday of this week was not well used.  I left the house to walk along Broadway, trying to look for inspiration.  I was angry at my self for wasting the previous week and was going to try to use that anger to get me motivated again.  Motivation when looking for a job is a stop and start thing.   I did learn that I should be able to get a smart phone for very little. I did do laundry in the morning of that day so it was not wasted. 

After coming home not having gained inspiration or motivation, I returned the the time killing device I have been using, Minecraft.  To make minecraft run smoother, I shut down a bunch of apps including my mail app.  So it was not until late that I fingured I might as well check the mail because I am just OCD enough that un checked mail don't sit right.  In the mail was one short email.  I saw the name of the company and knew it was legitimate.

How did I get mailed you might ask, well I was a bit nuts.  I put my resume, on Craigslist.  I stripped it of phone email and address and placed it in a category where I had seen geology jobs posted.  That was a fishing expedition.  Classed under, its not supposed to work but the risk was low enough and the cost nonexistent.  Knowing enough about the firm that reached out to me I quickly wrote back that I was willing and able to come in for an interview on short notice if need be.

The next morning, I got called and was in my good shirt and tie and in the board room less then an hour and a half later.   When questioned if I could query, I not being able to think of any SQL on the fly but wanting to show that I had comprehension mentioned Little Bobby Tables.  There was a laugh.

Things did have a hick up where I miss heard an instruction to come back in twenty and thought that I was going to be called.  Thankfully the situation was solved. I got invited back into the office again, this morning for a more in depth follow through, a skills assessment and  chance to meet people. 

In between the miscommunication and is resolution, that time frame being yesterday afternoon, two other good things happened.  I got a call from a firm I have been trying to land an interview with for some time that interview is now scheduled for friday.  I also got called by an engineering company looking for geologists, also office based and vancouver based.  That phone call ended and with in a minuet my phone rang, it was the call that fixed the miscommunication of earlier in the day.  

So now, I need to learn somethings from Fridays interview.  It is agreed that the friday interview is a good thing, I want to know what plan A is since plan B came out of the blue relatively speaking.  I want to get a handle on what the details of the post at plan A are.  I would kick myself for not finding out and loosing a possibly better job.  I know that Friday afternoon I will be close to making a choice.  

Part two will be when I sign some paperwork or otherwise take action to accept an offer. 

It has to be said there was luck in all of this.  Enough brains to see what I saw as worth while but the luck of being seen on craigslist is still luck. 

2 comments:

Ien in the Kootenays said...

query, SQL? Nice to see the good news anyway! Looking for work is one of the worst things to have to do.

MrHobbit said...

SQL, Structured Query Language, a bundle of roughly standardized commands for retrieving sorting, editing and creating databases. In the XKCD strip I linked to the kids name was Robert; drop table students;, which tells the database to delete the table students.