As some of you may know, I have been out of work since June 21. The first month of this lack of employment didn't bother me because we were planning a trip to Michigan in July anyway, so I took the first month in stride, enjoyed my time with family, and figured I'd start the job search in earnest when I got back.
The search has continued with no success ... until yesterday.
I did something on Friday that I had not done in the past ... I placed a resume on Monster.com. Little did I know that this had appeared to be the missing link, so to speak.
On Wednesday, I received two calls as a result of my Monster submission. The first was from a very young sounding voice who apparently wanted nothing to do with me when my age became apparent. The phone call ended with a sudden "we'll call you ... bye" type of ending. Really??? We spoke because ... WHY??
Anyway, the second call came from a much more reputable recruiter. After we spoke and struck an instant rapport, she asked me to come in for an interview and inquired as to my availability. AVAILABILITY? I was reminded of how my dad's career at Ford started. He was one of two men being considered for a single position. When the first guy said he could start on Monday, Dad answered the same question with "I'll start this afternoon." He got the job and held it for 26 years until his retirement in 1996.
Bottom line: we made an appointment for 1:30 today. As I was preparing for today's interview, I got a call from another recruiter I had dealt with earlier in my search, who had an "opportunity" with a DC firm, on a temp-to-hire basis. He suggested that I authorize the forwarding of my resume to this firm, which I gave. It turned out that this firm would ask me in for an interview before starting me, which I was also OK with. In fact, I mentioned to the recruiter that if his client wanted to meet with me this afternoon after my first interview, I would be happy to oblige, requesting that he call me and leave a message to I can respond to him after my first interview.
He called, all right ... and told me that his client indicating that they were "very excited" about my resume, and decided they wanted me to start on Monday WITHOUT an interview. As (good) luck would have it, there is SOMEONE in this firm with whom I have worked in the past, who saw I was available and apparently sold HR on by-passing the interview. The identity of this person is still unknown to me, and it will make me crazy between now and Monday just trying to figure it out.
To summarize, I will be back among the employed on Monday and I am in a state of thankfulness. As for the "actual" interview I had today, I was glad I got an opportunity to showcase my testing talents yet again. I've been testing in the 65-70 wpm range when it comes to typing, and 65 came in again today with NO errors. I also took a patent prosecution test and scored 40 correct out of 41 questions, and then 27 out of 30 on a Microsoft Word test.
I was joking with the Mrs. when I got home, saying "the last time I was in this much demand, I was single." It's times like that that I'm also thankful for her and her sense of humor.
More to come ... stay tuned.
