Job prospects, new job, 750 words
Aug. 1st, 2010 03:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sparrToday marks the beginning of the 750words.com August challenge. I am committing to writing 750 words (or more) each day. There is no specific topic or theme, the idea of the site is simply to promote writing, in general and on a regular basis. My friend ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kdsorceress has been doing it for a while now and she puts out a lot of good work on her various blogs and fiction works and such. Her use of the site has prompted my attempt to get into the habit of writing more.
So, with that said, this is my first post that originated as a 750w entry. I am going to cover all sorts of topics over the course of the next month, and I don't use LJ filters, so if there is something about me or my life that you don't want to know then you might want to take me off your friend page or rss feed or however you are reading this post. I will be covering my new job, which starts on Monday, my hobbies, many and varied that they are, and all the sundry things that go on in my life, from the mundane to the explicit.
Speaking of the new job, here's what is going on with that... I have been unemployed for about 3 months now, and squeaking by with the help of some good friends, some of whom I did not know were so good (thanks guys!). I put in a lot of applications and sent out a lot of resumes, mostly to no avail. My 4 big leads were with SecureWorks, a managed hosting and security services company in Dunwoody, Peer1, a managed hosting company in Midtown, the InterContinental Exchange, a commodities exchange with offices on the northwest side of town, and at Georgia Tech. All of them are various sorts of IT, dealing with servers and such, from helpdesk to systems administration duties. Taking those opportunities completely out of order...
ICE eventually called me back after an online skills assessment but the other opportunities looked good enough that there was no reason to pursue a job that would involve a 90+ minute commute (the NW perimeter is the worst part of town to try to get to on MARTA, because both MARTA and CCT have buses that go THROUGH it on express routes but very little coverage for regularly running buses).
SecureWorks gave me a couple of phone interviews, with HR folks and technical folks, then brought me in for a real interview. I felt like I did well there, they were really impressed with my technical knowledge and I definitely aced all the whiteboarding questions, but they never called me back.
With Peer1 I was dealing with a recruiter, so that helped some since he has a vested interest in getting me hired (to the probable tune of a few thousand dollars in commission), and his partner was an ex-manager at the company. I got through their many phone interviews in good shape and had an in person interview with my to-be-boss and another person involved with the technical side of things. I did pretty well there and they finally made me an offer. I'll be making $53k plus a probable 5% shift differential. They are bringing me on during the daytime for training, then moving me to a 4-day weekend shift for some short amount of time, then my final shift is to be Sunday through Thursday, 5PM to 2AM. This is a pretty awesome schedule for a night owl like myself, and leaves plenty of open time for attending parties and conventions. I won't need a single vacation day for a local 3-day convention, and will likely only need one day of vacation for local 4-day or out of town 3-day events.
That leaves Georgia Tech, the last company to offer me an interview. They have a rather long hiring process, leaving me up in the air for weeks at a time. I did pretty well on the in-person interview, but hit a lot more "I don't know"s on their technical knowledge probing questions than I did for the other positions I've considered recently. The last thing I heard from them was that I was a leading candidate and they wanted some references, which I provided. My references tell me they all got called, and nothing else has happened since then. Since I'm starting at Peer1 this week I don't expect this opportunity to go anywhere, even if they do ever call me back, but it's an iron in the fire just in case things go wrong fast.
So, that's 750 words, and the site gave me a little 'Congratulations' for writing my first entry. Future entries will be less mundane (or not!) and probably contain more footnotes and less parentheticals. That's all for tonight, see you all soon or whenever!
kdsorceress has been doing it for a while now and she puts out a lot of good work on her various blogs and fiction works and such. Her use of the site has prompted my attempt to get into the habit of writing more.So, with that said, this is my first post that originated as a 750w entry. I am going to cover all sorts of topics over the course of the next month, and I don't use LJ filters, so if there is something about me or my life that you don't want to know then you might want to take me off your friend page or rss feed or however you are reading this post. I will be covering my new job, which starts on Monday, my hobbies, many and varied that they are, and all the sundry things that go on in my life, from the mundane to the explicit.
Speaking of the new job, here's what is going on with that... I have been unemployed for about 3 months now, and squeaking by with the help of some good friends, some of whom I did not know were so good (thanks guys!). I put in a lot of applications and sent out a lot of resumes, mostly to no avail. My 4 big leads were with SecureWorks, a managed hosting and security services company in Dunwoody, Peer1, a managed hosting company in Midtown, the InterContinental Exchange, a commodities exchange with offices on the northwest side of town, and at Georgia Tech. All of them are various sorts of IT, dealing with servers and such, from helpdesk to systems administration duties. Taking those opportunities completely out of order...
ICE eventually called me back after an online skills assessment but the other opportunities looked good enough that there was no reason to pursue a job that would involve a 90+ minute commute (the NW perimeter is the worst part of town to try to get to on MARTA, because both MARTA and CCT have buses that go THROUGH it on express routes but very little coverage for regularly running buses).
SecureWorks gave me a couple of phone interviews, with HR folks and technical folks, then brought me in for a real interview. I felt like I did well there, they were really impressed with my technical knowledge and I definitely aced all the whiteboarding questions, but they never called me back.
With Peer1 I was dealing with a recruiter, so that helped some since he has a vested interest in getting me hired (to the probable tune of a few thousand dollars in commission), and his partner was an ex-manager at the company. I got through their many phone interviews in good shape and had an in person interview with my to-be-boss and another person involved with the technical side of things. I did pretty well there and they finally made me an offer. I'll be making $53k plus a probable 5% shift differential. They are bringing me on during the daytime for training, then moving me to a 4-day weekend shift for some short amount of time, then my final shift is to be Sunday through Thursday, 5PM to 2AM. This is a pretty awesome schedule for a night owl like myself, and leaves plenty of open time for attending parties and conventions. I won't need a single vacation day for a local 3-day convention, and will likely only need one day of vacation for local 4-day or out of town 3-day events.
That leaves Georgia Tech, the last company to offer me an interview. They have a rather long hiring process, leaving me up in the air for weeks at a time. I did pretty well on the in-person interview, but hit a lot more "I don't know"s on their technical knowledge probing questions than I did for the other positions I've considered recently. The last thing I heard from them was that I was a leading candidate and they wanted some references, which I provided. My references tell me they all got called, and nothing else has happened since then. Since I'm starting at Peer1 this week I don't expect this opportunity to go anywhere, even if they do ever call me back, but it's an iron in the fire just in case things go wrong fast.
So, that's 750 words, and the site gave me a little 'Congratulations' for writing my first entry. Future entries will be less mundane (or not!) and probably contain more footnotes and less parentheticals. That's all for tonight, see you all soon or whenever!
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no subject
Date: 2010-08-02 06:15 am (UTC)Job good. Glad you got one you like.
And congrats on words! <3
~Sor