After 3+ months of relative quiet in my job search, I've begun to get some more job interviews. I had three different sessions last week -- in-person with a large technical recruitment firm, in-person with a large on-line retailer (who had me sign an NDA beforehand, and then disclosed nothing of significance about the position or their work) and on the phone with a medium-sized software company. I have three or four more opportunities this week, so the "Why am I not getting interviews?" monkey's finally been dislodged.
The large on-line retailer has offices in a building where the elevators don't have floor buttons. An efficient elevator algorithm being a classic puzzle of the programming genre, I thought at first that it was a clever part of the interview. You must select your destination on a screen in the lobby, and the screen then indicates a specific elevator for you to ride. This is apparently an advanced form of load balancing, though I wonder how well it handles peak loads versus the traditional model. If you get in the wrong one (ahem) then you get a free ride to the wrong floor, then you have to go back down to the lobby and try again. I think I probably lost one life when I had to restart on the ground floor.
In other developments, over a week ago my left calf swelled up to twice the size of my right, leading to serious discomfort, a painful limp, and an eventual diagnosis of deep venous thrombosis -- a blood clot in my thigh. So, it's blood thinners for me. Yay! The doctor said that I should "try not to bleed." Fortunately that's how I typically comport myself anyway. I aint got time to bleed. I am also to be alert for sudden, sharp chest pain. This is also in my ordinary list of things to be wary of, so it's all good. Now after almost a week, my leg is still a meat balloon, and I am running up high scores on the pharmacy blood pressure machine, so there may be further developments. I learned that the pharmacy machine can display three digits for diastolic pressure, which for me is a new achievement unlocked. I was disappointed that it didn't play victory music for my high score.
Unlike my earlier experience with the millenial-focused e-commerce software vendor, last week's interviews were all behavioral interviews. Despite my extensive experience with the technique, I would say I did OK but not fantastic with the questions. Mostly what I did wrong was in trying to keep things conversational, I would pause before giving the payoff (result) and the interviewer would ask a new question instead of following up on my answer. So I learned that I need to be more aggressive about telling the end of my story before relinquishing the conversational ball.
So as I'm waiting for results from last week's interviews and doing three or four more this week, I am both hopeful and a bit sad that my extended vacation might be drawing to a close. In the meantime, I'll node a version of my behavioral interview prep sheet in hopes that's a helpful complement to the more technically-focused nodes like hard interview questions and my previous content under how to kick ass at a job interview at al.