Well, got the "Dear John" letter from the job I had high hopes for. One, I performed the job tasked at or above the level they needed for 12 years. Two, their benefits were just what I needed. It was in-house for an industry I knew about. I could have helped them greatly. But no, not even a chance for an interview or even a call back. How crazy is that? Also wish I could have found a way to contact them directly (rebuffed at every turn I made) to say, "Thanks anyway, if you have something else just like this I'd really be interested."
Of course I haven't been sitting still waiting for a response. There's two other jobs that I have high hopes for. One would be good. While I've done the work before, the actual position would be a promotion. They have a specific "Don't Call Us" policy, although I did send a follow up email. Still no word that direction. The other one is a slightly different position, while it includes design there a lot of "public relations" parts of the job. Well, I can handle that with all I do as a Village Councilman. It depends on if they agree or not. It's also the only position that they've posted the pay, which isn't a much as my previous positions, but it's closer and the subject matter is something I like.
In other employment news, I finished up all the testing and jumped through all the hoops to get the appointment with JFS to talk about possible retraining moneys. Today was taking the TABE test. Four hours (well, in my case three) of job and mind numbing, ass in chair going numb, brain starting to ossify fun. I'd like to tell you I got 100%, but I didn't. My average on all the sections was 96%. But then understand that some sections were 4 questions, so if you missed one you scored 75% for that section (yep, got me). However they do list "mastery levels", which, I'm proud to say, out of 34 "Objectives" there was only one that I scored below "Mastery" (and that one was "Partial Mastery" - which was "Data Analysis" which was a second WTF moment of the day). On that section, despite the verbal instructions, the written instructions said we were allowed to use a calculator (which, because of the verbal instructions, I hadn't brought with me). My guess is I made some algebraic error early in the computation. For the "National Percentile" I scored in the 99th percentile on all but two categories (Language Mechanics and Spelling, go figure, but 98 and 97th percentiles respectively).
Now it's off to get scheduled with a career advisor and have my resume reviewed. Hurdles cross and hoops jumped through for today. Tomorrow, I'm sure, there will be new hurdles and hoops. Maybe flaming hoops. Just have to make sure that when I do get an interview, the circus music in my head isn't too distracting.
3 comments:
Rats! I was hoping that it would be good news about that position -- glad to hear that there are two more good possibilities for you.
In a couple of interviews that Hubby Steve had recently, he got the distinct impression that the interviewers didn't want to hire someone smarter than they were, he sensed that the other person was threatened by him because of his abilities.
This goes against traditional business advice -- at least that I've read. I'm thinking about Napoleon Hill's "Think and Grow Rich" where Hill gave Henry Ford as an example. Henry was smart enough to know his limitations, and he surrounded himself with people who were smarter than he was.
Of course, it's always hard to say why you aren't hired, especially when you can't size up the competition. But the odd feelings that Steve had made me wonder all the same.
The good news is that we all go through four or five career changes in our lives. I would have chosen circus clown (I do so love scaring young children), but I couldn't afford the big yellow shoes
thanks, Sheila. Yeah, we're back to the good ol' days of bad business practices. I could never understand the thinking behind keeping yourself the brightest bulb in the room, but then I also married a woman is is smarter than I am, so I may not be the best judge of this.
And some of it is people looking at where I live and thinking, "oh, that's so far away." As we say in the writing biz, "It's not your job to reject the story for the editor. It's their job, and they get upset when you start doing their work for them." Or, "I know where the business is at, I've lived closer in (and I've looked on mapquest), if it was too far I wouldn't have applied.
Stewart, those shoes are damn expensive. And you have to have them before applying. And I was hoping to have the writing be my career change (which would have made #3).
Part of me is happy I've gone to all the conventions and done all the things I've done for the writing. But then there's the other side that is saying I should have spent that time updating skills in the day job and expanding the network for that profession. And when it comes down to it, I'd rather network (and for some reason don't mind it) for the writing than for the day job. However I'm not sure I can do all the other work to make a living at the writing (and genre work would barely be able to keep me in a garret on the bad side of town).
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