by Darcy » Mon Sep 09, 2002 4:27 pm
I've had only a handful of job interviews. Most of the time I've gotten jobs more through serendipity than anything else.
While waiting for the results of the PA bar exam (which I passed because I'm very good at multiple-guess tests), I interviewed for a job with a university library system. One of the benefits was that they would pay for me to attend library school, and I was considering becoming a law librarian. The interviewer went over my resume, complete with the law degree, three years experience working in my law school's library, and training people to use the then-new WestLaw computerized legal research system, Lexis. He looked up and sighed. "I know this is going to sound a little weird," he said, "but do you know the alphabet?" Once I assured him I did, he told me why he had asked. "We didn't used to ask that, and we hired someone who kept a little card with the alphabet on it in his pocket for shelving. Unfortunately, he didn't consult it often enough, and by the time we figured out who was mis-shelving everything he'd gotten past his three-month probationary period. We had to go through a full arbitration hearing to get rid of him. Of course, we also had to go through a full arbitration hearing for the employee who tried to run over another employee with a book truck ,,,," They eventually decided I was over-qualified. I think what I actually was was relieved!
Instead of going to library school, I started working for a fundraising organization, which sidetracked me into not-for-profit stuff and eventually computers. I was the only employee interested in computers when the agency I was working for decided to computerize their operations, so I became their MIS director, which sounds far more grandiose than it was. In that capacity I invited companies to bid on the support for our minicomputer/terminal system (ok, it was a looong time ago!). A short time later I got a call from one of them (where a friend from college worked) asking if I could recommend some techs - and not long after they offered me a job, even though I had no formal education in computers (unless you count the summer course in Fortran, which was so long ago that we were using 80-column punch cards).
So I had this bizarre interview where Tish, who owned the company, kept telling me why she wanted to hire me, and I kept telling her why she didn't. She finally convinced me she was serious, and I spent 12 years there (during which I not only learned to repair the machines that used the 80-column punch cards, but got my Novell certification and started designing and building networks). When I needed another job (she was retiring and closing the company) my job hunt pretty much consisted of a phone call: "Hey, Lou, you tried to hire me away from Tish a few years back. Are you still interested?" Not much of an interview, and it took him five months to maneuver the paperwork through the state bureacracy (it's really difficult to hire outsiders into the higher levels of state government), but he got me.
i tried to suck up some more, but they're getting faster. damn survival of the fittest! 