What Recruiting Has Taught Me

Having made the decision to leave my job at the end of May in favor of what's next in our lives, my boss tasked me with writing my job description and managing the hiring process.

It has been very enlightening.

• You should do what the job description says (what documents they want, where they want you to send it, etc.) It may be clever of you to track down the head of the department (in this case, my boss) but odds are that, even though they make the ultimate hiring decisions, they aren't the one coordinating the details. So it makes you look stupid to send your application to him, instead of the e-mail listed.
• It is very, very easy to make snap judgements on resumes. I had my top candidates ranked after a very brief scan; a lot of this is from poor formatting (huge blocks of text, etc.).
• Say why you'd be good at the job you applied for, specifically, not why you'd make a great employee in general. It's really obnoxious to have to dig.
• The company may already have an idea in mind of what type of person they want to hire, and will rule out others accordingly, even if there's nothing inherently wrong with their application or experience. (I need to remember this when applying for my next job...)
• Don't (PLEASE) track down the person who sent you an e-mail of receipt on LinkedIn and attempt to contact them through a chain of connections. This puts that person (again, the person coordinating the details, not the person responsible for hiring) in an awkward situation.
• E-mails matter. Make yours something that is just your name, simply, not something that involves lots of random letters or numbers. 
• Pictures on resumes = awkward. 
• When it says "do not call" that really means "do not pester". This includes e-mails.

Overall, it's been an interesting experience being on this side of the fence. It turns out that phone interviews are just as nerve-wracking for the interviewer as the interviewee.  Who knew.

So close, yet so far away

AMU Graduation, a few years ago. Photo by Deacon Wallace

This is how I feel right now--graduation is SO. CLOSE. Yet there's so much more to do before it's here. For Brian, his thesis defense (Friday) and finishing a final project for his independent study; for me, Senior Awards (tonight), interviewing replacements for my job, proctoring exams (starting Saturday), an always laborious and seemingly-endless process, and cleaning the entire house before his family arrives next Thursday.

And then...I just don't know.  Brian got accepted to SLU but as yet hasn't been offered any money and we're reluctant to go any further into debt, especially in this economy. We're pondering a deferment and a move back to Raleigh (a prospect that excites me to no end; 2 years away has taught me just how much I miss it). In the meantime, we're going to visit family and figure things out from there. Which means that being settled and figuring things out is so close...yet so far away.

Gators'll getcha

It's springtime in Florida, which means...

I see you trying to break your Lenten fast

Sometimes I wake up and think..."how am I living in southwest Florida???". We have gators, owls (a coworker had a nest of baby owls on her window sill last week), wild boar, bears, hawks, eagles, vultures, and ENORMOUS locust-like grasshoppers, and panthers. If I'd had to think about it, I probably would have assumed we would live in NC, pretty much for ever, if not in our hometown. Southwest Florida was never on my mind. As we wrap up our time here (the ad for my job went up today), I'm trying to appreciate the very unique (if dangerous and frequently frustrating) experience of living in the Everglades. Not every neighborhood has its own resident gator. Plus, you can't beat the views from our windows:

I suppose that's always the way: appreciating something just as it's ending. I'm looking forward to the next chapter in our lives, whatever that may hold (even as I'm frustrated by not knowing), but I'm trying to spend these last 2 months be grateful for what we've been granted while we've been here. A great community of grad students, egrets flying outside our bedroom window, and the excellent icebreaker of "I used to live in the Everglades. No really, IN the Everglades."

Happy Holy Week...I'm looking forward to Easter and being able to eat chocolate again like nobody's business.