What a difference a year makes
I always feel crappy when I realize I haven't updated my journal in months. It often gets shuffled down the priority list because there's so much else going on. I will hopefully be updating a little more regularly, but this will be my opportunity to get everyone up-to-date on what's happening:
I have been working. Yes... working since July 30th. I had been losing my mind trying to find a job until July. It was then that I noticed that my profiles were not fully set up the way they should have been on Monster and CareerBuilder, especially Monster. Once I did that, offers started popping up out of the woodwork. I wound up doing two or three interviews and met with another agency. But the breakthrough came with Robert Half Technology.
I signed up with them quite a while back. The agent there who was trying to help me sent me to interview with one place who needed someone immediately to help out their IT department. The agent told me it would involve troubleshooting and repairing PCs and doing some disk imaging. Even though I hadn't done any imaging myself to that point, I was willing to figure it out quick in order to get a job. When I got to the interview, I quickly learned that they were doing a clean-up project where a network was attacked by viruses and I would have to isolate and do enterprise-level clean-up and reimaging... i.e. I was in over my head. I had to sit through the rest of the interview trying my best not to embarass myself (further), all the time feeling like a dope. I thought that had sunk my chances with the agency, too, but around June the agent had me do a phone interview with another company that needed a helpdesk person. Sadly, though, they were looking for someone with a lot more network experience. Again, I looked like a fool who didn't know enough of anything.
Somehow, though, the manager at the branch got involved, feeling they had to get a job for me. I'm not sure if it was out of kindness or to save face with me... I don't care, really. The manager said he had sent my information over to Virtua Healthcare and the IS manager there liked what she saw, so he called me while I was in Atlantic City to see if I wanted to do a phone interview right then and there or on the following Monday. It was very loud in the casino, and I already can't hear as well as I could on the cell phone, so I told him to set it for Monday. Monday came... no call. I called the RHT manager, and he said he'd get of the lady and have her call. Nothing. He said he'd have her call Tuesday. Nada. He said it didn't make sense because she was interested in me, so he'd keep checking and get back to me. In the meantime, he set me up for another phone interview. I thought it went okay, but apparently the place decided to hire from within. Then, out of the blue, one of the RHT manager's head agents called me up about the Virtua job. He said the manager lady was unavailable but they (Virtua) wanted to proceed and have the agent ask me some IS questions. I kid you not when I saw they were such easy computer questions that you could blindfold me, tie my hands behind my back, and dunk me in a tank of water so that I could only answer by writing the answer on the glass tank with my toes and I still would have got them all right.
I started July 30th. I found I was filling in for a lady there who was out on maternity leave, and it was $12 an hour, but it'd be 6 to 8 weeks that I would be actually working again and not relying on unemployment, which was already towards the end of its first extension and would have had to be extended again. I was trained by a couple of the helpdesk staff, so it was informal on-the-job training, but I felt I got the jist of it well. It's fairly easy work... password resets, remoting to computers to fix stuff, logging incident tickets and work orders for techs or application helpdesks. The IS coordinator kinda filled it a bit for the manager and approached me about the possibility of staying on longer if they needed me (do they really need to ask??). So she was able to get me 4 more weeks, which runs until October 16th. I had learned that the manager wound up on emergency medical leave in the hospital right after she had picked me as a candidate, which is why she never interviewed me. She finally came back a couple weeks ago. She has a tendancy of jumping in behind me and telling me "you need to do this... you need to do that... you should be doing it this way, not that way", which bothers me because I've been doing very well on my own, but she is a nice, friendly person... a bit more hands-on managery than I'm used to but still likeable. My extra 4 weeks will be up two weeks from now. She has been talking to me, though, like someone who will be with them longer, and they already have plans to expand their whole IS department... plans that have just started to play out, so I'll have to wait as patiently as I can.
Meanwhile, Chrissy had been through heck. She was working at one place, but there was trouble with one or two of the ladies there causing problems, so the agency got her out of there. She wound up working at a place in South Philly, which was going okay, but then another agency found her a job that paid the same money but is only about 8 miles down the road in South Jersey rather than a half-hour away across the bridge... so she would save money on gas and tolls. She took that job, but then it fell through because the client they were supposed to get they didn't, so they couldn't find enough work for her to do. She wasn't laid off or fired, because they did like her, just 'on leave' until they could figure something out. They never did. After a month or so, she got a job in Center City Philly at a title insurance place that just underwent a merger. The atmosphere there was very tense, the manager was micro-managing and nit-picking everything, there were travel delay problems, and she was very close to being at the scene of a bank robbery as she was taking money in to be deposited... so that job was out. We had spent a couple months together, trying to pass the time and keep from going insane before I got my job. Then she got a breakthrough... a small company that needed an office assistant/bookkeeper and was willing to pay over $18 an hour. She got the job, which so far has been a mixed blessing. The money is phenominal, but the boss is very curmudgeony and hardly lets her do anything and the lady she was supposed to replace hasn't gone away (though she might shortly). There's a large amount of drama involved, and it has been wearing Chrissy down, but she has been hanging in because that kind of money is hard to come by and she wants to keep working and proving her worth.
Otherwise, summer was pretty tame. Didn't get to the beach... did get to go swimming one day up in the mountains. Went to AC a few times. Got to see Carlos Mencia last month. Was going to see Kool and the Gang but didn't get out in time. Chrissy and her mom will probably go see Whoopi Goldberg next weekend. Other than that... groceries, bills, work work work.
I have been working. Yes... working since July 30th. I had been losing my mind trying to find a job until July. It was then that I noticed that my profiles were not fully set up the way they should have been on Monster and CareerBuilder, especially Monster. Once I did that, offers started popping up out of the woodwork. I wound up doing two or three interviews and met with another agency. But the breakthrough came with Robert Half Technology.
I signed up with them quite a while back. The agent there who was trying to help me sent me to interview with one place who needed someone immediately to help out their IT department. The agent told me it would involve troubleshooting and repairing PCs and doing some disk imaging. Even though I hadn't done any imaging myself to that point, I was willing to figure it out quick in order to get a job. When I got to the interview, I quickly learned that they were doing a clean-up project where a network was attacked by viruses and I would have to isolate and do enterprise-level clean-up and reimaging... i.e. I was in over my head. I had to sit through the rest of the interview trying my best not to embarass myself (further), all the time feeling like a dope. I thought that had sunk my chances with the agency, too, but around June the agent had me do a phone interview with another company that needed a helpdesk person. Sadly, though, they were looking for someone with a lot more network experience. Again, I looked like a fool who didn't know enough of anything.
Somehow, though, the manager at the branch got involved, feeling they had to get a job for me. I'm not sure if it was out of kindness or to save face with me... I don't care, really. The manager said he had sent my information over to Virtua Healthcare and the IS manager there liked what she saw, so he called me while I was in Atlantic City to see if I wanted to do a phone interview right then and there or on the following Monday. It was very loud in the casino, and I already can't hear as well as I could on the cell phone, so I told him to set it for Monday. Monday came... no call. I called the RHT manager, and he said he'd get of the lady and have her call. Nothing. He said he'd have her call Tuesday. Nada. He said it didn't make sense because she was interested in me, so he'd keep checking and get back to me. In the meantime, he set me up for another phone interview. I thought it went okay, but apparently the place decided to hire from within. Then, out of the blue, one of the RHT manager's head agents called me up about the Virtua job. He said the manager lady was unavailable but they (Virtua) wanted to proceed and have the agent ask me some IS questions. I kid you not when I saw they were such easy computer questions that you could blindfold me, tie my hands behind my back, and dunk me in a tank of water so that I could only answer by writing the answer on the glass tank with my toes and I still would have got them all right.
I started July 30th. I found I was filling in for a lady there who was out on maternity leave, and it was $12 an hour, but it'd be 6 to 8 weeks that I would be actually working again and not relying on unemployment, which was already towards the end of its first extension and would have had to be extended again. I was trained by a couple of the helpdesk staff, so it was informal on-the-job training, but I felt I got the jist of it well. It's fairly easy work... password resets, remoting to computers to fix stuff, logging incident tickets and work orders for techs or application helpdesks. The IS coordinator kinda filled it a bit for the manager and approached me about the possibility of staying on longer if they needed me (do they really need to ask??). So she was able to get me 4 more weeks, which runs until October 16th. I had learned that the manager wound up on emergency medical leave in the hospital right after she had picked me as a candidate, which is why she never interviewed me. She finally came back a couple weeks ago. She has a tendancy of jumping in behind me and telling me "you need to do this... you need to do that... you should be doing it this way, not that way", which bothers me because I've been doing very well on my own, but she is a nice, friendly person... a bit more hands-on managery than I'm used to but still likeable. My extra 4 weeks will be up two weeks from now. She has been talking to me, though, like someone who will be with them longer, and they already have plans to expand their whole IS department... plans that have just started to play out, so I'll have to wait as patiently as I can.
Meanwhile, Chrissy had been through heck. She was working at one place, but there was trouble with one or two of the ladies there causing problems, so the agency got her out of there. She wound up working at a place in South Philly, which was going okay, but then another agency found her a job that paid the same money but is only about 8 miles down the road in South Jersey rather than a half-hour away across the bridge... so she would save money on gas and tolls. She took that job, but then it fell through because the client they were supposed to get they didn't, so they couldn't find enough work for her to do. She wasn't laid off or fired, because they did like her, just 'on leave' until they could figure something out. They never did. After a month or so, she got a job in Center City Philly at a title insurance place that just underwent a merger. The atmosphere there was very tense, the manager was micro-managing and nit-picking everything, there were travel delay problems, and she was very close to being at the scene of a bank robbery as she was taking money in to be deposited... so that job was out. We had spent a couple months together, trying to pass the time and keep from going insane before I got my job. Then she got a breakthrough... a small company that needed an office assistant/bookkeeper and was willing to pay over $18 an hour. She got the job, which so far has been a mixed blessing. The money is phenominal, but the boss is very curmudgeony and hardly lets her do anything and the lady she was supposed to replace hasn't gone away (though she might shortly). There's a large amount of drama involved, and it has been wearing Chrissy down, but she has been hanging in because that kind of money is hard to come by and she wants to keep working and proving her worth.
Otherwise, summer was pretty tame. Didn't get to the beach... did get to go swimming one day up in the mountains. Went to AC a few times. Got to see Carlos Mencia last month. Was going to see Kool and the Gang but didn't get out in time. Chrissy and her mom will probably go see Whoopi Goldberg next weekend. Other than that... groceries, bills, work work work.