Recruiter Interview Yesterday

I had a recruiter interview yesterday in downtown. I had to go there during rush hour and I slightly underestimated how long that delay would be. The trip was only supposed to take 30 minutes but wound up taking a full hour. The funny thing is that it was the last five miles that took the most time. It wasn't too bad, though. I only showed up five minutes late. As it was they used the first half hour with me filling out paperwork so my tardiness wasn't even noticed.

The actual interview portion went fine. The guy just had standard questions and things like that. On one level it would actually be nice to do a contract with them because they offer all sorts of online training once you go on contract. It may wind up being lackluster but I wouldn't mind checking it out. Free training is free training.

The guy offered me the chance to take a skills assessment after my interview. Basically a technology quiz. They had them for all different topics. He said that taking the assessment can sometimes help land a job because they use it as a marketing tool. Also hiring managers use it as a quantitative measure of a candidate's knowledge level. So I took the ones for ASP.NET and C#. It was multiple choice so that made it a little easier. There were some questions that I narrowed down to two options but couldn't decide between the remaining answers. Some of them were in areas that I wasn't familiar with and so had to guess. Frequently I guessed correctly because I chose the answer that LOOKED like valid .NET syntax. The more you work with .NET the more you get a feeling for the way methods are named and used. That came in handy a few times. After the test they showed me my results and how I ranked compared to others who had taken the same tests. I came out above average on both tests. 20+ points above on the ASP.NET and 10+ points above on C#. So, that was a good thing. Hopefully that will help them find me something.

The recruiter says they have two potential openings which look good for me. He's going to submit me this week and I'll see where it goes. Hopefully things go well.

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Hooray for random movie quotes

My krav maga instructor and I started tossing quotes from the movie "The Last Dragon" back and forth last night. I had just seen the movie last week so I was up on the dialogue. It made me laugh really hard. I'm certain no one else got the references but I didn't care.

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15 Random Things About Me

1. I'm a terrible procrastinator. Actually, that's not correct. I'm a GREAT procrastinator. Sometimes I'm totally on top of stuff but I'm much more prone to putting stuff off. That's why it's taken me weeks to get around to writing this note.

2. I love teen romance movies. I'm a total sucker for those “Hughes-esque” movies set in high school about the nerd and the cool person hooking up or whatever. It's not very manly, but there it is.


3. I have tremendous respect for people in the armed forces. I can't stand a lot of our government's policies but I honor the men and women who dedicate their lives to defend people they haven't even met even if it means doing the bidding of an evil corporation.

4. I enjoy doing small craft projects with my hands. I knit, crochet, make chain mail and make Indian accessories. It only just recently occurred to me that I've been like this most of my life. When I was a teenager I made several of the pieces that I wore with my Indian outfit in the Scouts. I taught myself to knit and crochet and am actually better at it than my mom. I taught myself to make chain mail jewelry recently and have had a knack for it. I can look at a picture of a piece and replicate the weave.

5. I love improv acting and really miss it. Before we left California I had just finished up taking improv classes with a place called ComedySportz and was eligible to participate in their “minor league” shows. I liked improv a lot. For those who don’t know, improv is not stand-up comedy. It’s more like “Who’s Line is it Anyway.” I want to take some more classes out here but haven’t gotten the chance yet. I’ve been doing other things instead.

6. I’m terrible at learning languages. I tend to be a really quick study on most things, but I stink at languages. I have tried to learn French, German, Russian, Spanish and Sign Language all unsuccessfully. The best I can give you is a few words in a variety of languages. I just don’t seem to have a head for it.

7. I may be deluding myself, but I think I’m a pretty good teacher. I’m typically terrible at lesson planning (see item #1) but really good at teaching the lesson. I have to teach my Scouts every week and used to have to teach the young men at church every week. I think I have a style that is enjoyable and engaging. Again, I could be enjoying delusions of adequacy.

8. You remember that song from “Mary Poppins” called “I love to laugh”? That’s me. I love to laugh and my laugh is of the “loud and long and clear” variety, to quote the song. My laugh has garnered me lots of attention, both negative and positive, when we’re out in public. I have received many dirty looks from people around us at plays. I’ve actually gotten a little sensitive about it. I cringe even when people compliment my laugh. I just want to experience joy and laughter without feeling self-conscious. Is that so wrong?

9. I can be terribly shy at times. This totally befuddles most people who know me but it’s true. My wife and I hate going to church dinners for this reason. We hate the whole picking-a-place-to-sit thing. If we sit at a table that is already partially occupied then we may be imposing on those people. If we sit at an empty table then we fear that no one will want to sit with us and we’ll spend the evening alone. Plus, if we get thrust at a table with people we don’t know very well we wind up having to make pleasant chit chat. I know this sounds totally neurotic, but there it is.

10. I play a variety of musical instruments, at least ten. I don’t necessarily play all of them well, but I claim at least a small amount of proficiency. I’m currently teaching myself to play four instruments, guitar, bass, drums and piano. It’s pretty slow going, though, because of item #1. My life frequently comes back to that….

11. I’m terribly retentive at times. Looking around my cluttered office you wouldn’t think it, but it’s true. When I do things I tend to monkey with the little things until everything is “just so.” When I’m doing graphic design stuff something even one pixel off drives me crazy. It bugs the heck out of my wife sometimes.

12. I like to dance. I’m not necessarily very good at it and my self-consciousness frequently rears its ugly head but I still like to dance. I don’t really get the opportunity much, though, and tend to refrain from it even when the opportunity is there. My wife physically can’t dance and is too self-conscious even if she could. So, due to the lack of a partner, I tend to be a wall flower whenever there is dancing. My heart still yearns to be out on the floor looking a great big goofball, however.

13. I frequently throw out movie and song references. Generally all it takes is a couple of words and my mind immediately goes to some movie or musical quote. Frequently these quotes will be from a musical and cause me to then break out into said song. This is fine at home or with friends but gets me funny looks at work.

14. A big part of the fun of live theatre (and sometimes movies) for me is the conversation on the way home. Typically this involves ripping the thing to shreds. Both my wife and I are theatre snobs and have a good enough eye to pick out problems with acting, lighting, sound, etc. Our drive home is always occupied with a long critique of the thing we just got done seeing. Once in a while we spend the drive home raving about how good something was. We had that happen recently and it’s good to know that we can go both ways.

15. I don’t have a lot of photos of myself. If you look through our family photos you won’t find very many pictures of me. Even the large group photos don’t have me in them even though I was at the event. This is because I’m always the one taking the photos. I’m the unofficial family photographer and I like that role. I have even been the official photographer at some of the events. It always makes me smile to see family photos up on people’s wall and know that I took that picture. It makes me smile even more if it’s one that I, theoretically, should have been in. It’s like I’m the undocumented family specter. It’s kind of cool.

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The Power of Blessings

I had an experience this week that really reinforced the power of blessings for me. We had our home teacher come over on Monday night to help me give Karen a blessing.

It's a funny story, actually. I had called him earlier to ask him to come over some time that night and he said he would be over around 9:00. We waited patiently until after 10:00 figuring that he just got held up with what he was doing. We finally called over to his house to see if he was still coming over. He had totally forgotten and was already in bed. We tried to tell him he could come the next day, but he insisted on coming over anyways. He lives just a few doors down so it wasn't that much of a chore to run over here.

Anyways, he showed up and we gave Karen a blessing. While he was here I asked him to give me a blessing to help with my job search. He did and all was well.

The next morning I started thinking about the interviews I had had to date. They frequently involve a technical quiz and that is something that I really hate. I always feel like I'm unprepared and that I don't present myself the best during them. I decided to put together a study sheet of all of the questions I had been asked in my recent interviews for which I didn't have a good answer. So I started researching and putting stuff together. Beyond putting stuff down on the study sheet I did a fair amount of reading in general and educated myself on a variety of topics.

I had an interview later that day and one on Thursday. Both involved technical quizzes and both had questions directly answered off of my study sheet. While there were still questions to which I didn't the answer, I came off seeming to know far more than I would have if I hadn't done the studying.

I know that I was inspired to do that studying and that I would have been much worse off without it. Even if I don't get the jobs I was interviewing for I know that it will help me in the long run and it has definitely become part of my testimony of the power of blessings.

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Phone Interview Yesterday

Yesterday's phone interview went pretty well. It accomplished its purpose at least. They are going to bring me in for an in-person interview.

The interview was actually very short. I think it was over in 15 minutes. The main point of it seemed to be a technology quiz. See my comments yesterday for my opinions on these type of quizzes. I actually wound up not doing too poorly. He started off asking me a bunch of questions relating to C# object-oriented design which I don't ever use. So I was in unfamiliar waters with those questions. Then he switched over to ASP.NET questions. I rocked all of those. That is, of course, because I use ASP.NET all of the time. I found his questions to be fairly trivial. Which is probably how I would have found the others if I had known the answers.

In the end he must have been pleased enough because he said he was going to recommend that they bring me in for the in-person interview. So, we shall see how it goes. So far it looks like a pretty decent opportunity.

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First Half of the Interview Quartet is Finished

In four business days (really three and a half because today is a holiday) I will have four direct-hire interviews. I don't really count recruiter interviews as real interviews because they don't really mean anything. They're just formalities for the people sending resumes out. My interview today is over the phone with TransUnion. They're one of the major credit reporting bureaus. Part of the interview process is drug testing so I get the joy of peeing in a cup and hoping there's no weird interaction between my toothpaste and hairspray. Tomorrow's interview is in person at a consulting house (I believe).

The interview on Thursday was with a small consulting shop. They do a variety of projects as needed for their clients. The interview went really well. The technical guy I interviewed with told me flat-out that he thought I would be a great fit for the company. He gave me a small programming task to gauge my thought processes and told me afterwords that he had never seen my solution to that problem before and that my solution was more efficient than the others he'd seen. That made me feel good. I was really happy when I came home from that interview. The only problem is that the company needs to wait to hire until they have projects come in from clients. They are expecting that to happen at any time, though. I have a really good feeling about this job and I hope it's the one I get.

The interview on Friday was for a large publishing company and it would be a management position. I didn't have a good feeling about this place at all. I had bad feelings about it before I even went to the interview. When I got there it only got worse. The whole situation reminded me of my time at Siebel, which isn't a good thing. I interviewed with two people, a tech guy and the manager. The tech guy asked me a couple of detailed technical questions which I wasn't able to adequately answer.

We will have a brief pause in the story for Jerry to whine...

I really hate when interviewers quiz you on programming theory. It's like they expect you to have all aspects of a programming language available off the top of your head. Are they expecting the job to be closed book? Am I not allowed to use Google when I run into some problem? I have been programming for years. Who cares if I don't know the exact execution order of methods between a web page and the user controls it contains! That hasn't stopped me from being quite successful in my projects for a long time. And, of course, not knowing makes me feel like a complete loser. It's the worst part of interviewing in my opinion.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog already in progress.

So, I felt like I came up with a big goose egg with the technical interviewer. Then came the manager. His one or two questions were soft-skill related. I don't feel like I answered them adequately, either. When he described the job to me, however, he described a nightmare. The team I would be managing is responsible for this out-dated web app that houses 90% of their web sites. It apparently goes down on a regular basis and is incredibly flaky. To top it off the internal customers are the worst type of whiners and complainers with no patience at all. And the manager is a self-proclaimed work-aholic who seems to expect the same from his employees. All of this translated to me really not wanting this job. While it's true that a job is better than no job; this job would only be slightly better.

So, right now I'm batting one and one in the interview quartet. Here's to hoping that the next two interviews go more like the first.

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General Ham Radio Class

On Friday night I started my Ham Radio class for my General license. For those who don't know that's the middle level of license that you can get. It goes Technician, General and then Amateur Extra. I got my Technician license last April but I really haven't done anything with it. I have a radio now but I never turn it on. I'm not certain I'm really into the whole chat-with-random-strangers-over-the-radio thing. I'm only taking the class because it's a free and it seems wrong to turn down the training.

When I started reading for the class I learned that one of the big things about the General license is that it allows you to use HF (High Frequency) bands. HF bands allow for longer distance contacts. My current Technician license mainly allows for local contacts. Of course my radio doesn't run HF so it wouldn't even work if I did have my General. I'm certainly not going to buy another radio either. There is a whole bunch of knowledge that is expected for the General test that I just don't have. I barely use my radio, let alone know all sorts of technical details about using it. I contemplated dropping the class after the first night but I think I'm going to stick it out. I just don't know, though...

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