I am thrilled.

We’ve six days to clean up the house, repair certain aspects of it, pack all of our belongings, uproot about a hundred plants and pack them for transport to an interim garden bed, capture and kennel the cats for several weeks…and we have to leave Sunday night for Portland for my second interview with the software company (so they can hire me before I have to accept the other company’s job offer); another eight hours of driving, another high-intensity interview.

We haven’t time. There’s too much to do, and we’re already exhausted. So we’re at a party.

Of course we are.

The yarn shop in Medford is not just a place of commerce. It’s like some gaming or comics shops, a community focus of like minded folk. This place is filled with knitting little old ladies, every last one of them baudy and rough and looking like someone’s grandmother. They’re great, and we’ve spent many evenings here, Shannon knitting, me reading or writing. They’ve tossed us (they’re too fragile to throw) a going-away party, which means we’ve caught an implied obligation to be present and social and flattered.

So, under the rapidly growing shadow of a falling mountain of duties, we have declared holiday and are sitting, knitting, chatting, and gnoshing.

I’m all right with this. I really needed to catch up LJ so that I could sort out the last week in my head.

Well, that’s it in a nutshell.

I applied for an assistant project manager position with a largish construction firm, and they agreed that I should have done that. I went yesterday for my second interview, in which one of the project managers was saying things like, “If I can get you…”, and when I asked about wages the president, hearing what I make now, looked relieved. “Well, you’ll be making more than that.” On my way out the door, the PM who very obviously wanted me working for him shook my hand and told me that I was impressive, very impressive, and he looked forward to seeing me again — told me loudly, and then scooted off after the president, chatting as they went. I expect I’ll have an offer of some sort from them early this next week. It was just that positive an experience.

I had a phone interview as an applicant for a Crystal Reports design specialist for a construction software company. The HR director and I quickly became the best of friends, expressed our undying love for one another, and she told me straight out, that if she’d the authority she would make me an offer right now. I was sad and told her that, in all liklihood, I’d have an offer by the following week and wouldn’t be available by the time her company’s processes brought me in for an interview. She was appalled. She consulted with me on availability, then ran out of her office to the division VP’s office, where she jumped over the other applicants and the internal procedures. The entire staff of the Report Design department and the division VP will come in an hour early on Monday if I can be there for my second interview. Unless I grossly misunderstand how cool the reports I’ve designed are, and how much it says about me that I taught myself database architecture and Crystal design, I expect that I will get an offer from them on Monday. I quizzed her about money, and, on hearing what I’m currently making, told me I’d be making more. “Much more. Don’t worry.”

*boggles*

Have I been selling myself short for two decades? How bizarre.

How to get an interview you shouldn’t have

I had a third interview with another construction company. They wanted a project manager as well, and I made friends with the HR person until she suggested that she walk my resume through the office. After a bit I managed to talk to the chief architect who had seen my resume and asked me if I’d like to come in and look around a bit. We chatted for a while, and I cemented the relationship, then touched the HR director again. Earlier this week I called again and asked the HR director for my buddy, the architect, but he wasn’t in. “Do you want his voice mail, or should I transfer you to the VP?”

Bingo. Friend to friend to decision maker. I felt very accomplished. The VP and I talked briefly, and he called me back that afternoon to set an interview, since everyone in the office knew me by name at this point.

Score!

I met the VP, and he looked uncomfortable. He had my resume, and trouble meeting my eye. This is a very high-powered sort of office; I expected him to be a bit more assertive. He spent maybe five minutes asking me questions, and looked more uncomfortable as we went. My best efforts couldn’t put him at ease. Finally he asked me to take a test on general knowledge, just so we all knew where we stood.

The test was on strength of materials, practical knowledge of densities and applications of various varieties of steel and concrete…it was an structural engineering test. I thought about the offices we’d passed on my tour, and realized that every PM’s office had drafting equipment, and the light began to dawn.

This is a design-build firm, which means that the customer comes in with a vague idea of “I want a building” and the firm conceptualizes, drafts up plans, engineers the structure, and then builds it. Most design-builds are construction companies with an architect on the payroll. This one was an architectural firm that subcontracted out all of its construction.

The VP was uncomfortable because he KNEW that I was utterly unqualified for the position, but his staff kept putting my name forward. My calls kept filtering through the office. My name kept showing up on internal emails. I was entirely inappropriate for the job, but he didn’t know how I had gotten this far and so didn’t know what he should do with me…and hadn’t the balls to say to me, “Scott, I’m confused; why would anyone have thought you should have an interview here?” It couldn’t be that I was expected to pick things up on the job; engineering a structure is a huge liability issue for the company. Hiring someone untrained is a complete failure in due diligence.

I confirmed my perception of the work the PM’s perform, then thanked everyone for their time, thanked the individuals for being so helpful on the phone and by email, and left. I had gotten this interview solely on … I don’t know what to call it. Personal aura. Force of personality. Social engineering.

I really think I could have gotten a second interview if I had continued. “Frankly, Dave, this test isn’t going to be a good representation of my work abilities; I haven’t been doing any structural analysis myself since 1997 (when I was still in college). I’ll tell you honestly, I’ll need to get back up to speed on this, but we should talk about my abilities in documentation and litigation prevention measures. When can the president come in for a chat, the three of us?”

Unless the pres was a harder touch than his staff, I would get an offer, the company would be sued as many times as I managed projects, and the next ten years of my life would be utterly painful. I’m glad I cut it short.

So: for those of you using my methods, if you are going to accept responsibility for the decision of whether you are a suitable candidate, you must accept the responsibility for whether your presence is in the company’s best interest, as well. Sheesh.

Both of the other jobs are very desirable, but I’m hoping that I can make the software job work. We’ll see. If neither pans out, then I’ll have to actually put some effort into job hunting.

At Batzer, I do did a million tiny things. Only a few of them require much on the ball. Not everyone, it seems, can design a useful Crystal report (which boggles my mind, but there you are), but anyone can do the rest of what I do. Server maintenance, diagnose a printer or computer with a tummy ache, create or troubleshoot a spreadsheet, swap the wires on the telephone system, set up a new user or a new computer…none of that is complicated. I’ve always known that, which is part of why I don’t feel particularly knowledgeable. I reinforced my opinion this past two weeks by writing up as many of the things I do as I could think of in clear, concise, step by step instructions, sometimes with illustrations. I wrote an instruction manual for what I do.

It filled a notebook. My wrists have been hurting from the typing. My brain has been all fuzzy from thinking about exactly what steps I take for each task — try to think about what you have to do to change a roll of toilet paper, and you get the idea. Not complicated, but if you are describing it so someone who has never thought about how new toilet paper appears, and who has never looked at the mechanics of the roll, the package, or the dispenser, it’s a bear.

In between processes and procedures, I designed a Crystal report to do what I do with the estimates. Timberline estimating creates a database for each estimate, which database is not formatted in the same way as Timberline accounting. The upshot of that is that, to transfer an estimate to the accounting and management software, the estimating program creates a transfer file that can be interpreted by the accounting software and will fit the accounting formatting. Fine. In between those ends of the process is the Batzer CFO, who wants the entries that produce the data to match his opinions. The CFO has no authority over the estimating department, so he doesn’t have any influence until the data is set to transfer to accounting.

What this means is that the estimator creates an estimate, the estimate becomes a job, and the data needs to be transferred…but the CFO won’t permit that until the estimate is reformatted to meet his expectations. The estimators won’t, the accounting department can’t, so it fell to me (who worked for the CFO a few years ago, and then for estimating) to sort it all out. There are about 80 criteria that the CFO has demanded over the past few years, that I clean up before he reviews the estimate file. Nobody else in the company is willing to do the work, so nobody else knows what to look for or, in some cases, how to correct the issues. There was no way that I could train someone for the job, because, even knowing that I am leaving, no one would take the job. My duty didn’t require me to do anything, but my ego needed to not have a maelstrom in my wake, so I made a robot Me. Thursday I play-tested it on one of the estimators; she printed out the report, which flagged the issues and printed instructions on what needed to be done, what questions or backup documents need to be asked or produced. It worked like a dream.

I just saved Batzer about $25,000 a year, and it cost them about $300 of my time. Not bad.

I thought about it, while I was building the robot, and decided that if a person can relate this line of data in the estimate with that line of data in accounting, there must be discrete steps to making that connection. I liked that enough that I wrote a report that grabs the estimate database and relates it to the accounting data, which, I think, proved I was right. I told our consultant for the software about the need, and he told me that “you can’t really do that.” Then I told him I’d done it.

Buh.

Maybe I do know some stuff.

I finished the procedures, the reports, the training for half a dozen tasks, streamlined two processes (without asking) and started the entire office staff using a new and unsanctioned version of the accounting software (again, without asking). I worked like a demon for the last two weeks, finishing just at my final hour.

And now I’m unemployed. I’m not sorry. I won’t miss the pointless chaos, the wasted time, the belittling or the outright abuse. I’ll miss a few coworkers.

I have spent the morning creating procedures documents for the myriad tiny-but-vital tasks I perform, that others may perform them in my absence. Or at least know the task existed behind the scenes at one time. I recommended to one of the management that we don’t ask for the higher management’s input on who would be taking over certain vital duties, but simply pass them to the correct individual for the job. What they don’t know, I put forth, they couldn’t screw up.

Moments later, my Jeeves alarm clock (which reminds me of break time) gently cleared its throat and said in cultured tones: “Oh, dear…come come, sir, let us not be defeated. Let us seize the day and take it boldly from behind, as the Colonel used to say … in his unfortunate way.”

Right ho, Jeeves. Spot on, as usual.