A New Job – Part 3

Originally written August 27, 2009
48 hours, almost to the minute, the call came in. Could I fly out next Monday for a full day of interviews on Tuesday?
Well, that’s a fine question to ask me on a Wednesday! We have a church camping trip this weekend — leaving Friday morning, returning Sunday night. Giving me exactly one business day to book my travel, fill out the required paperwork, arrange transportation to and from the airport, re-arrange our family’s schedules, call my references, and get the time off work!
Fortunately, MS has an incredible team of professionals who’s job it is to facilitate this kind of thing, so I had lots of help — I filled out some forms online and within a couple hours flights, hotel, and rental car were all taken care of for me. I worked the phones for a few hours Wednesday night and in the morning, and then everything was set.
I’ve had moments of nervousness, and moments when excitement bursts out of me. Mercifully, all of this is happening so fast that I haven’t had too much time to over-analyze. I’ve done a some research online about the job, and found out what I could about my interviewers — the two I know about anyway. But the reality is that there isn’t much prep I can really do. Either my experience and skills are what they’re looking for, or they’re not. It’s not like there’s some chapter in the book of my 10-year professional career that I skipped over. I’ve worked my way here, with the guidance of some great mentors, and either had God’s blessing so far… or a horse-shoe up my butt. So, we’ll find out if what I’ve learned over those years, and what I have to offer now, is what they’re looking for.
And I guess I’m confident. Not confident that I’m definitely going to get the job. But confident that if I can speak about my experience without putting my foot in my mouth too often, then it’ll have been worth the trip — regardless of the outcome. In a few short days, I’ll be driving into a massive 40+ building campus as a potential employee of probably the largest, best known software company in the world — and I’m not even 30 yet. How cool is that?

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