Frustrations with interviewing in this wild job market

In reply to wae :

Yep. I know a big reason I have my current gig is, now a good friend, a guy I met at my first Tech Writing job. Years ago when I was looking, he wrote me a recommendation on LinkedIN then when the manager at my current place (my friend has since moved on) saw that he had given me a recommendation and asked him to reach out to see if I would be interested. 

I know that helped me get my foot in the door and likely gave me a nice advantage against the other 12 or so people who had made it past the initial interview with in-house recruiter.

Still no job, but maybe getting closer?

The opportunity at the security company just completely evaporated.  No idea what happened there, but the posting is gone and the hiring manager stopped responding to me. 

The interview I had must have gone decently well because I was invited back for a third interview.  For that one, I was told to give a pitch on a topic that I knew next to nothing about: Palo Alto NGFW.  That task in and of itself isn't unusual to me, but I have no access to a pre-made deck, a channel SE, or a partner portal to go get an education.  So in the week they gave me to prepare, I went crazy trying to learn the technology and to put together a high level overview. 

What was weird to me was how I had all this info I was cramming into my head and none of it was making any sense.  Right when I was legitimately thinking that maybe I had just hit that age where my brain can't take in anything more, the presentation just started flowing out of me.  Just in time, too, and I gave my pitch to the hiring manager and one of her direct reports.  I can't objectively say how it was, but they complimented me on hitting certain areas that they thought were important about Palo but that many others missed and that my information was more up-to-date than others.  They peppered me with questions that I had to answer, deflect, or postpone and I did a good job of making it look like I wasn't a complete ignoramus.  Just a half-wit.

Right after that, one of my favorite people at a large manufacturer - correct that: my favorite person - reached out to me and told me that there was a position that just opened up that would be pretty good for me.  Turns out I also know the hiring manager's manager and that person thinks highly of me.  I told him that I was extremely interested - I have been wanting to work for this company for a long time now - and that I was getting pretty far down the path with this other company, so how fast were they going to want to move.

He passed my resume along and things went quiet on both fronts.  Tuesday was a rough day for me.  I was assuming that since I hadn't heard anything back by then that my pitch wasn't as decent as I thought and that door was closing.  It was basically a day on the roller coaster where I figured I was never going to be able to find another job and I was a little despondent.

On Wednesday, while I was spending MY ENTIRE FREAKING DAY at the license office so my daughter could get her learner's permit, I got an email from the manufacturer asking to set up a first interview that day.  I had my wife leave work to come and sit with my daughter and I rushed home.  With only 5 minutes to go before the meeting started, I realized I hadn't shaved, but I managed to get that done and be in front of the camera on time!  The conversation went well, although I'm not sure if it helped or hurt that I gushed and fan-boyed about wanting to work for that company.  Basically, it comes down to the fact that they do a really good job of living up to their values and acting ethically, they have an absolutely top-notch product, and every single person I have ever worked with there has been a top talent who is also just a decent human being.  Hard to find in sales, but it's what I've experienced.  Anyway, I've heard from other sources in the company that the meeting went well and as soon as schedules can be worked out - the hiring manager is out of the office for the rest of this week - I will have an invite for a second interview for next week.  Woot.

And in further good news, when I got out of that meeting, there was an email waiting for me letting me know that the other company wants to schedule me for a final round interview next week.  So apparently my presentation went pretty well.  Now what I need to do is sort of slow-roll the first place while I let the second place catch up.  Money-wise, they're pretty similar and I'd be happy with either role, but in an ideal world, I get two offers and have a chance to pick.  Which, weirdly, is not a situation I've ever been in before.

In reply to wae :

Fingers crossed for ya, options are good!!

In reply to wae :

Have you informed any of these potential employers that you successfully resurrected a BiTurbo?

AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to wae :

Have you informed any of these potential employers that you successfully resurrected a BiTurbo?

Shh, they already have CEOs, you don't want to challenge the natural order yet.

AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to wae :

Have you informed any of these potential employers that you successfully resurrected a BiTurbo?

And a modern Mercedes diesel!

I just haven't found the right way to weave that into the conversation! 😂

wae said:

AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to wae :

Have you informed any of these potential employers that you successfully resurrected a BiTurbo?

And a modern Mercedes diesel!

I just haven't found the right way to weave that into the conversation! 😂

Maybe like this???

It appears that my own saga is finally coming to a close.  I had what I thought was a successful "final round, part 1" interview with the reseller with the next (and final) step being to craft a proposal presentation and present it back.  More homework.  I decided to hold off on working on that until I had a confirmed entry in my calendar for that meeting.  That was nearly 2 weeks ago, though, and despite me sending a follow-up email to the recruiter I have head absolutely nothing.  Total silence.  Which, considering the final round was supposed to be a two-part affair is kind of weird.  I could see that they may have thought I wasn't a good fit in that last call somehow, but to make it this far in the process and get ghosted seems kind of unprofessional.  But whatever.

Meanwhile, I had several interviews with the manufacturer.  The recruiter, the hiring manager, the position's counterpart on the account exec side, one of the people that would be reporting to me, the manager of the sales counterpart, and then the hiring manager's manager.  I was told after each interview that it was going very well.  The final interview - the one with the guy who would be my boss's boss - ended with him saying that he was going to put my mind at ease and just come out and say that he was going to be sending along his thumbs-up to the recruiter and to the hiring manager and that he was looking forward to getting me on board.  I figured that was a good sign, but then things got quiet.

I let it sit for a couple days and then pinged the recruiter via email.  I just explained that I was needing to plan some time to be out of town this week because I need to help move my daughter home from college for the summer and that if we needed to schedule any other meetings I wanted to get those on my calendar so that I could plan that trip around them.  After an agonizing wait of about three hours, she wrote back and said they were working on an offer for me and that she'd have something in a day.  The next day crawled by as I was an absolute bundle of nerves, but when the email finally came, the recruiter expressed that they were 100% committed to sending me an offer, but approvals were taking longer than expected.  We had some back and forth until yesterday morning when her very first task of the day was to give me a call to discuss.

It boiled down to some back-end system issues with the whole HR process, one of which is the system that generates the offer letters, accepts the signatures, and then kicks off the onboarding process.  Since they can't do any of that, they can't generate an offer letter, but she gave me a verbal offer over the phone and I accepted.  If this were any other company, I would be very suspicious that this was a stalling tactic to keep me on the hook while they massaged another candidate, but I've worked with this outfit long enough to know that they simply don't operate that way.  Which is one of the reasons I'm so high on working there.  So while I haven't signed any paperwork yet, it's a done deal.  I was even told by someone else that they announced my hire on an internal call.

When I was a young pup, my mom and dad always drilled into me that the world was all about who you knew.  Connections were the only way to get anything done.  Never burn a bridge.  All that stuff.  This experience has confirmed that completely.  The AI-powered ATS-compliant resume builders did absolutely nothing for me.  The only thing that those got for me were rejection emails.  The resume that I paid $150 to have written for me got me two interviews, one of which was the reseller, so that was worth it.  Building up my LinkedIn network got me nothing.  The career coach that I haven't heard from in 3 weeks provided little-to-no value.  It was all about having cultivated a stellar reputation and knowing people at this manufacturer.  The job was never posted to the public, and I honestly do not think that there was ever a second candidate.

While I do sincerely hope that I never have to write another resume and that in 10-15 years, I'll retire from this company, the lesson that I'm going to take from this is to maintain a network of contacts on LinkedIn, make sure that my reputation is out there for all to see, and pay more attention to cultivating the relationships that I have and that I will make in the future. 

Also, if you know anyone in Michigan that is very technically deep on data storage and has experience working as a pre-sales engineer, let me know because I think I'm going to walk into this job with an open headcount....

In reply to wae :

Congrats. I'm in tech sales and have found many of the same things to be true. It's the Wild West at times. 

In reply to wae :

Congratulations 👏 

All these rounds of interviews. Who has time for all of that. I'm not looking forward to going through this in a couple of years.

In reply to wae :

Well done, man!!!!  Open a beer, sit down, and let those poor nerves rest.  You've done it!!

Congratulations!

Well the cutting of the education budget just got us. My fiance was laid off from her Education Tech company (Solution Tree) the week before last. 

The only benefit is that it should allow her to quickly finish her MBA as she is on her capstone. She's really bummed out because she really enjoyed the job and the people she worked with. 

grover said:

In reply to wae :

Congrats. I'm in tech sales and have found many of the same things to be true. It's the Wild West at times. 

Same. Chaos is a ladder though.