Today's interview was a complete waste of time. It took me longer to put my makeup on than I spent in the "interview."
I mean, I ask you. If you hired a recruiter and she sent you a handful of resumes and you picked the people you wanted to interview, then when one of them arrived for their interview, wouldn't you actually, you know, interview them?
I estimate I spent between 4 and 5 minutes with the woman who "interviewed" me today. She asked me no questions about my skills, provided no additional information about the job, and would not have been more obviously bored if she'd actually just gone ahead and fallen asleep at the table.
I told the recruiter so, when she called me just a few minutes ago.
Fortunately, the R.C. had an interview with a different recruiter this morning --a woman who offered her an interview for a job I'd be very good at. And the R.C. told the recruiter so, and promised to have me call her! I did--leaving her a voicemail message, and now I'm waiting to hear back from her.
In the meantime, Buehler has resurfaced, very briefly, to send me a check for hours worked and to say we need to talk about a new database he's found that he might want to mine for his own mailing list.
And Bernie's still hovering over me, like a little raincloud, of course. His latest is to suggest that we all meet at 9:15 before tomorrow's 11 a.m. training so we can spend 30 minutes going over our training plan. My email to him pointing out that this plan will leave us with 1 hour and 15 minutes of spare time before the training is scheduled to begin has so far gone unanswered.
Oh, and She called today, to say She's got "a tickle" and She's just sure She will be out sick tomorrow and unable to attend the meeting but that's okay because She has been so busy with reports for these two clients (one of which I did for Her when She was off Thanksgiving week) that She hasn't had a second to work with the software anyhow.
That wasn't Her main reason for calling, though. Her main reason for calling was because She couldn't get a Table of Contents to generate correctly in Word and She wanted to know how to fix whatever it was that had gone wrong.
Do I look like a Microsoft technical support person?
Anyhow.
Now I'm sitting in the living room, eating junk food, and just generally sulking.
The R.C. has scored a temp job and will be out periodically between now and the end of the year.
How's your day?
Oh, man, aren't you glad you don't work for Bernie permanently any more? And I love that She can predict that her "tickle" will become a Real Disease Worthy Of Staying Home From Work. Me, I'd have dumped some Airborne in a glass and hoped for the best.
I keep my fingers crossed for your various interviews as much as I can (sometimes I just need them for other things)...
posted by: Dail on 12.07.07 at 08:19 AM [permalink]Serious disconnect between recruitment and hiring: unprofessional, but it sure seems to happen a lot.
I'm up to seven conference interviews, including schools in Mississippi ("It's not what it used to be" said the contact person, which is supposed to be a good thing) and near Philly.
posted by: Jonathan Dresner on 12.07.07 at 11:19 AM [permalink]As it turns out, Dail, She was there today, and although Her professionalism in front of clients was precisely what I anticipated (i.e., seriously lacking), most of the meeting went really well.
More interviews coming up next week, whenever you can spare a couple of fingers. :)
posted by: Anne on 12.07.07 at 01:57 PM [permalink]You wouldn't even believe it, Jonathan, if I gave all of the ways in which that woman, in a five-minute time-span, managed to be offensive and unprofessional. It was much worse than I put in the blog.
Philly is supposed to be a cool place. I don't know about Mississippi. I've never been there but of course I know the state's rep for poverty and a steamingly humid climate.
More importantly, are there any schools in the list you think you would like to work at?
posted by: Anne on 12.07.07 at 02:00 PM [permalink]I think so. Which is to say: the structural aspects of the job aren't, ultimately, as important as the culture of the place and the character of my colleagues. I'd do OK, I think, in a research-oriented environment, as long as the teaching load were appropriate to the expectations; I'd be fine in a teaching-oriented environment, as long as the research expectations were appropriate and the teaching evaluation process more comprehensive than numeric. I'm OK with a balanced place, like this one, if there's real support for rigor, real feedback that goes beyond "publish or perish/leave 'em laughing."
Geographically, I'm much more concerned with my family than with myself: some Jewish life would be nice; accessibility to our extended family is a real plus. I can live in any weather there is, as long as I can dress appropriately; it's the people and culture which make a difference. Some of the less obvious schools are located in nationally-ranked "best places to live" towns: some of the more obvious ones are near, but not in, major metropolitan areas, with all the amenities that entails.
That's why my search is so broad, really. It's nearly impossible to gauge the character of a place without talking to people, seeing it. And even then.... well, I've been fooled before.
There are definitely a few schools on the list which I really would consider myself lucky to get offers from, and a few about which I have serious doubts, but the rest are "let's see what they have to say."
posted by: Jonathan Dresner on 12.07.07 at 10:19 PM [permalink]I completely agree--the people you work with and the atmosphere make all the difference in the world.
posted by: Anne on 12.09.07 at 08:28 AM [permalink]