Consider my ego stroked. Now there will be no stopping me. Just one week of unemployment and I’ve already had two interviews, both of which went really well. I was considering not returning to work and being a stay at home Dad, but my wife informed me otherwise. As it turns out, we don’t even have kids, who knew? Anyhow, I’ve been offered a job, and I’m going to take it. So much for working on my tan.
My first interview was with a company called STATUSfirm. A much better name than MindTravellers, but to me it sounds like what a NASA engineer would say when describing an erection, “Penile Status: Firm. We are a go for fornication.” I spent an afternoon at the office just to see what goes on around there and it seems like it would be a lot of fun. They do work that is both a) cool, and b) stuff I haven’t done before.
My interview there was hilarious. It started off in pretty typical fashion, or as typical an interview can be when one of the people interviewing you is Dave Nedohin (World Champion Curler from Alberta). I am a curling fan, for this I blame my parents, so that was pretty cool. At one point in the interview Dave asked me “what do you think your strengths are?” and I replied “I do a good job, and I do it real fast like.”
Well as it turns out that with every interview, they have a test they like to put applicants through to see how they perform under pressure. Basically they gave me a client sheet, some jpegs, and a computer and told me to build as much of a website as I could in one hour. To quantify this, a simple website usually takes 40 hours, give or take. More or less, I threw down some crap about how awesome I am, and they totally called me on it. Crud.
So I sit down and begin building frantically. After about 30 minutes of this, someone comes up to me and says “we’re going to add five minutes on to your timer so that you can come meet Paul Coffey.”
What? No. What? Did I hear that correctly? Paul Coffey? What the hell kind of interview is this? So I walk into a room, and there he is, Paul Coffey, just standing there talking to Dave Nedohin about curling. So I meet Paul Coffey, then I have to go back to the computer and round out my one hour website.
After all of that, I sat down with again and had one last chat, then I was out the door with a job offer on the table. I was so whacked out on adrenaline, stress, and excitement that I was practically vibrating. That was one of the most over-stimulating experiences of my life. I mean, going into a job interview there’s always some stress involved, but stacking on meeting Dave Nedohin and Paul Coffey, combined with having to frantically work to prove my skill set, and you have one high strung Keith.
I told my Father-in-law and he said “you probably shouldn’t take the job because it pretty much has to be all downhill from there.” Hopefully he’s not right.
