Ok .... Now I can whine about it.

Some of you know that I've been looking for another job. I'm still employed at my current job, so this is not as stressful as the life-journeys others have one through recently - still, it's put me on edge the last few weeks ... If I was a lesser person, I would blame this for my lack of posting since the band camp drivel. I just didn't know what to write. BB made it fair game to talk about the interview process and call it a blog, so I'll take some license here using that as justification.

I had been telling myself that the interview process was taking a long time because they had to go through the motions of meeting all the due-diligence interviewing requirements before they hired me and that might have been true. Still my first interview for the job was just after Thanksgiving and here it was half-way through January ... and no offer. I even called the recruiter to see if I had been added to the loser pile that gets called after the position is filled. She said I was their primary candidate and had told her to stop sending applicants. She expected an offer by the 20th. On the 19th I got the call.

Keep in mind that I'd been spending most of my interviews talking about how I would be able to specifically help/fix/make measurable impact to many of the major problems they were experiencing ... and correctly predicted what I expected their problem to be based on what I knew about the industry and the challenges inherent to their line of business. I positioned myself as somebody ready to take the step from leading to managing - heck, I even told them how they could hire less trainers and get higher performance results. I was the guy they were going to get a lot of bang for their buck from - little did I know.

When the call came in, the recruiter actually called me to ask if I had discussed salary expectations with them during the interviews. This is typically bad manners outside of the HR/Recruiting screenings - so no, I hadn't. She called back after re-confirming ..... with an offer more than 10k less than my current job.

I knew that I was willing to take a small hit so that I could work close to home and get a job doing what I love for a growing company that was excited to have what I was bringing to the table - the gas money alone would have been a huge savings. Still - this was way out of scope. How could these people that had all those discussions with me about business levers and learning evaluations think that I would go for something like that?

After the "your the guy" call when they told me to expect an offer, I was pumped! We were careful not to get to publicly excited (sorta like not telling friends your expecting too early); but everything was great. Having to call back and say no to the exact sort of job I'd been looking forward to for years - well, it sucked. I tried to negotiate ... I even suggested that they hire me as a manager (a position they needed to fill eventually) thinking that the position would justify the salary I needed. Not even a call back on that one.

So, now I'm mentally back to my current job and looking around for the things that make it good: like lots of vacation time and an assistant vice president title (keep in mind that in banking some guy named Leroy that used to sell used cars can be a bank president). I'll probably look again in a few weeks and start the whole thing over, but it's a jagged little pill to swallow when you find the glass in your fish tank.

On the other hand, I accomplished another record with my ongoing personal cell-phone Yachtzee challenge - the lowest possible score. I found this to be somewhat comforting; as if I was controlling how bad something could be and seeking it out with vengance. By the way, the only row that you have to score in is the "Chance". Ironically, the lowest possible score requires a yachtzee (5 ones). Even losing is hard.