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By Amber, on August 16, 2011, at 9:48 pm I’m back among the working!
The first two days have been a firehose of information, but I think I’m going to enjoy this job a lot. My last job was in a field that has an awfully large ‘black magic’ element to it, which is frustrating to a more practical person like me. So far, this new job actually makes sense!
ALSO, I am no longer living in a cube farm where ten other people can hear me breathing and can hear every phone call I make. I have an office! With a DOOR! The last time I had a door, I was a co-op student and my boss had put me there to stop the permanent people from fighting over the vacated office, so I felt like I could never close it. Anyway, this room is a decent size and I am sharing it with one other person who is close to my age and who is also new to this position (though not to the field), so it will be nice to have someone to learn with.
I got a laptop right before I left today, and my boss is working on getting me a Blackberry. My next free-time task will be looking up the internal Toastmasters club and the Spanish Over Coffee group!
By Amber, on August 14, 2011, at 11:00 pm Birch beer, that is.
Tonight Mark and I went to the home of one of his coworkers for deer tenders and deer burgers! I think I have had tiny pieces of venison at Rainbow Lodge, and I have had elk and antelope, but I consider this my first real venison experience. The hostess provided the burgers and a different coworker provided the tenders — I was the odd one out in the group as far as not being a hunter. I’m not interested in shooting anything myself, but I’m always glad to eat whatever someone else has shot! My contribution is dessert.
Anyway, the food was great and the company was great. It was a nice way to spend the last evening of my pretirement. I feel like I am going back to school tomorrow after summer vacation — I have met my ‘teacher’ once, but the school and all my classmates are new to me. Will the other kids like me? Will I be able to find the bathroom? Will anybody sit with me at lunch??
I’m actually not too anxious. The first week of a new job is usually a pretty good one, especially if you don’t know anything about the business you’re going into, because you get to start learning a bunch of new stuff, there is only so much actual work you can do, and if you’re lucky they take you to lunch the first day. Speaking of which, my new job is across the street from one of my favorite restaurants. That’s what we call efficiency!
By Amber, on July 21, 2011, at 10:00 pm  Bass Harbor, Maine My last workout at the gym. My last morning with my makeup buddies in the locker room afterward. My goodbye lunch. The last bit of work I was procrastinating. The last time I will lock my laptop in the drawer and say ‘see you in the morning’ to my coworkers.
Those were today — tomorrow afternoon when I leave, I won’t be going back. I may sound melancholy, and it surprises me that maybe there is a little of that around the edges. But I am awfully grateful for the promise of this next opportunity, and the shiny newness of a job change is always exciting — even if I am usually pretty bad at figuring out where things are in a new building for at least a week. Really — I can get lost in a rectangle. The new building will be an ‘L.’ Help me.
I am especially excited to have a week off between the end of this job and the start of the new one! So excited that I have to keep reminding myself that I’m not retiring, and that a year from now I will have a whole new daily routine that, at times, may bore me to tears or grind me down. But that’s what vacation time is for.
Tomorrow the sun sets on one chapter of my life. When it rises in the new chapter, I will be reborn in a sense. I can’t wait.
(By the way, am I the only one who puts far too much thought into what to wear on the last and first days of a job? Even though nobody will remember a week later, possibly including me…)
By Amber, on July 19, 2011, at 10:00 pm 
Here are some things I’m grateful for this week:
Okay, wait. My whole list so far is food-related. I am very grateful for food, but let me see if I can change gears:
- my last week at my current job! I highly recommend having a last week somewhere — there’s nothing like handing your least favorite tasks to someone else!
- my ipod’s sudden bad behavior coinciding with my last week of gym access at said job (it still works in the car, which is where I really need it!)
- inspiration for home projects that I’m really excited for!
- looking forward to celebrating my mom’s birthday this weekend!
What are you grateful for this week?
By Amber, on July 12, 2011, at 10:00 pm Yesterday was exciting not just because of Mark’s birthday, but because I gave notice at my current job. There are a lot of things to like about my job, but ultimately the opportunity I’m moving to is a much better fit for where I want my career to be headed.
My parents had this cake waiting for me when Mark and I arrived at middle of the night o’clock over the holiday weekend. It was red velvet, and it was delicious!
(Please don’t stalk me at my new job. I don’t want to have to send Hugo after you, but I will.)
I know a lot of people are currently in the job market, and a lot of people dread interviews. Oddly enough, I kind of like them — when else do you get to talk about yourself to an audience that’s actually interested? So below is my basic strategy for acing an interview. I’ve used it successfully multiple times, so I’d love to hear from you if you get a chance to try it, or if you have a tip to add to my arsenal.
You need a basic padfolio, in which you will be keeping a pen for taking notes, extra resume copies, driving directions to your interview, etc. The other thing you’re putting in there is your cheat sheet. The purpose of the cheat sheet is to prepare you, keep you focused, and give you a place to take notes if needed. Here is what goes on it:
- The job description
- A very high-level overview of the company history (just a few sentences; if the company has gone through a lot of changes, just the recent highlights)
- Any information you can dig up on your interviewer(s) if you can get their name(s) ahead of time (if they’re on LinkedIn, you can easily find out how long they have been with the company and in what positions, other work history, etc)
- Your answers to a few cliche questions like your greatest strengths/weaknesses — best to use an outline, not an answer that you will be tempted to regurgitate verbatim (The real purpose of this is to get you thinking/planning in the right mode and to make sure you are prepared for the kinds of questions that you can plan for, but could easily blank on when put on the spot. If you don’t have a lot of practice with these questions, do some research on the right answer strategy.)
- All the questions you can think of about the company and the work group — the corporate culture, qualities of the ideal candidate, what the successful candidate’s immediate priorities will be, what your interviewer likes best about working there, etc. Here is a good starting place. Always remember that you’re interviewing the company, too. If you get an offer, you need to have an impression of whether the workplace seems like a good fit for you, not just the other way around.
Do you use a similar strategy? I’d love to hear any additional tips you have, as I think I’ll be turning this into a speech for my Toastmasters club.
By Amber, on March 25, 2010, at 9:15 pm I’ve taken the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator three times: the beginning of high school (INTJ), the end of high school (ISTJ), and the end of college (ISTP). When I took it the last time at my college’s career center, the counselor took one look at my scores and said, “Yep. Engineer.”
It’s funny to see the little evolution there from intuition to sensing and from judgment to perception, but obviously some things haven’t changed. My introversion score is huge. A couple years ago my family got a laugh out of the Introvert’s Lexicon — the extrovert column may as well be labeled with my sister’s name, and the other with mine. My own grandmother once told me I ought to take a class to learn small talk (oh yeah?).
I like myself just fine, but let’s face it, it’s an extrovert’s world. I’ve read that approximately 75% of people are extroverts. I used to work in a government R&D lab, where people are generally happy to leave you alone with your work because they would like to be left alone with theirs, too. When I moved to Houston, I switched over to a business environment. Now I work for one of the top ten companies in the Fortune 500. Plenty of high-achieving, hard-chargers.
This year my boss is really into personal development. He decided I should take a company-offered class about the MBTI. I suspect he may be trying to ‘fix’ me, because that is what many extroverts do. I’m used to it. So I cleared my schedule for today and made sure I got to the classroom half an hour early so I could eat breakfast and check my email. Eight o’clock came and went. Nobody arrived.
I suppose an extrovert would have started walking around the floor to see if anybody knew anything, or would have made a bunch of phone calls to see what they could find out. That is not what I did. I waited all alone until 8:30, double- and triple-checking the course confirmation email and today’s date, and then quietly packed up and walked back to my office, where I emailed my HR person.
I’m pretty sure I’m not getting out of this class forever, but it should be no surprise that I was relieved to spend the day in my familiar office with my familiar coworkers, and then to go to my familiar spinning class. Where we had cake. My weekend starts now. It’s good to be me.
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