More Happenings

Here are a few things that have been happening behind the scenes around here. September 4 was the day I got laid off. September 11 I had my first job interview, with company A. I thought it was just going to be an HR screening interview, but it turned out to be a full interview with 3 managers (it was over the phone, so I wasn't sure what to expect). It was only about 25 minutes, and at the end they said they were 2-3 weeks out from making a decision. I felt like it had gone well, but 2-3 weeks is a long time to draw out a decision, so I thought that maybe that was their way of telling me not to hold my breath. Over the next month I had several more interviews with lots of other companies. On September 29 I got a call from a recruiter at company A telling me they were going to make me an offer. He said it had to go through HR and they had to work out all the details, but he double checked that the salary expectation I had given them during my interview was still good, I said it was, he said great, and then he said it would be about a week but he'd be in touch. Yay! After that I kind of quit worrying about finding a job and just started enjoying having a lot of free time. It was great. One week to the minute later, I hadn't heard anything yet so I emailed the recruiter and just asked if he had any updates. He responded that it would be a few more days. That was a Monday. On Friday at 5:30 he called and gave me all the details of the offer. It was a really good offer and I was pretty excited. He said he'd email the formal offer the following Monday and I'd be able to start working 2 weeks later (they only start new people every other Monday). Monday came and went and I started wondering if I was part of an elaborate prank. I emailed again on Tuesday and he said that the managers and VPs who needed to sign off on the offer were out of the office, but he'd have it to me by Thursday for sure. Thursday came and went. The next week, it turned out that the last VP who had to sign off on it didn't think I should be hired at the level they wanted to hire me at. The salary and benefits and everything would be the same, just my title would be different, but they spent another couple of weeks going back and forth on that. In the meantime, I had interviewed with a couple other companies. One of them interviewed me on October 19. It was a very similar company and job to company A, and they told me from the very beginning that they were going to hire me at the lower level and my salary would be less than what company A was offering me, so I wasn't too interested. They ended up sending me an offer on October 26, and it was a way better offer than they had first told me they would do. They're much closer to home (15 minutes, though I'm not totally sure where it is because everything has been over the phone and I haven't gotten an address yet), and are in most other aspects pretty much the same as company A as far as perks and benefits go. Company A finally sent their offer on October 27. When the recruiter called that morning and told me the offer was finally ready and would be coming through in email in a couple of hours, I said, "well...I actually got another offer yesterday so I'll need to decide between them." He was really nice about it. We'd talked a lot by this time over the weeks as he'd been giving me updates and he's a really nice guy. He said his HR team had been yelled at that morning for how long my offer had taken and it was super ridiculous that they dragged me along for so long. He told me he was a nonpartial party and I just had to do what was best for me. I eventually chose the other company, and when I told him, we emailed back and forth a few times. He told me his company really wanted me and asked if there was anything they could do to get me. In the end, it really came down to location. Company A would have let me work at home, but with two 3-year olds, I can't imagine trying to learn a new job at home. So being close to home but not actually at home is kind of key for me. Anyway, the past 2 weeks I've been doing all the pre-work stuff: paperwork, drug screening, background checks, I9 processing, etc. I finally got cleared Monday afternoon. So...starting November 30, I'll be a Principle Financial Analyst for Northrop Grumman on their GBSD project. I think that's their new ground based missile program. I'm not really sure though. It's a new program that they're hiring like mad for and they've built a brand new building for right by Hill Air Force Base. It's so new that the people who hired me had only been in the job for a week when they interviewed me. During the interview, I asked a few questions about the processes they use and what a day on the job is like, etc, and they couldn't answer those questions because there aren't any processes yet and they don't know what a typical day is like. I asked what the month end close will be like. They said there will be a month end close, but they've never done it in that program so they have no idea. So I don't really know what I'm getting into. Hopefully it's good. If not, the recruiter at Company A said their door is always open to me if I want to try them again. Sidenote- the next day, my coworker from PCC texted to say she missed me. That's when I remembered that she was in the middle of month end close and having to do it all on her own. That would be horrible. We texted back and forth a bit. She said they've had another couple rounds of layoffs, including all the supervisors in the steel plant (some of my favorite people there), and there was another layoff coming later that week. I can't imagine how that place is still standing. I don't know who's left to do anything. It must be pretty rough. I'm VERY glad I'm not left holding any pieces there.