doin' a happy dance

Robert has been out of work for eight months. When it all happened back in April, he got a slow start, dragging through his resume, slowly working on improving it, working more at cleaning out the old office (as one of two people who worked there, there wasn't "someone else" to do it when he and his coworker were laid off).

Originally, he thought he'd take a few weeks off, and then magically get a job in our town where there actually are jobs. Hmmm. Then, he thought he'd take the summer off and magically get a job in the fall. Hmmm. Neither of those plans worked out.

One of the issues is that Robert is a programmer with experience in some popular languages. But he does not know some of the other hot languages, and there are areas of the industry that he's just not interested in. Unfortunately, it's in those areas that people are doing the most hiring right now. So there are a lot of jobs, but many of them are not good fits for Robert nor he for them.

Gone are the days when most managers will say "Gee, you don't have this kind of experience, but you're smart, hard-working, and you've learned plenty of other things. Come work for us and we'll teach you!" These days, it's expected that you're productive out of the box (like a new computer), with very little rampup time once you start a new job. That's reasonable, but it slows down the search process significantly.

This fall, Robert started networking more. He took a few classes at the Mass unemployment offices. He joined some job-buddy groups, both informal and more structured.

He got some good nibbles, went on some interviews, and most of the jobs were given to internal candidates, or the hiring people suddenly decided they wanted more of some kind of experience that Robert didn't have.

He's also been deluged with calls from head-hunters. A few have been very helpful, the rest haven't even bothered to read his resume, so didn't realize what a bad match they were making. Some have been downright silly (warm body? job opening? sounds like a good match to me!) and have left the ever-patient Robert shaking his head.

Financially, we've been fine. We rearranged a few things, his parents made a small but timely gift, and unemployment has been a godsend until last week when they sent their last check (whoops). We quickly changed some short-term and long-term plans, but so far we haven't had to change our style of living too much.

And Robert's spirits have been high throughout. One of my big concerns was that he'd start to take all the No's personally, but thankfully he hasn't.

Last week or the week before, Robert received a call from an internal recruiter in a Boston company. He went on an interview this past Thursday and apparently nailed the one "behavioral" question he was asked. Unfortunately, the hiring manager said that he didn't match as many of the technical qualifications as many of their other candidates. On the other hand, he did have more domain knowledge than other candidates. (The job is in a bizarrely similar niche to his last job.) We both knew where this was going, sigh -- it's been great meeting you, we'll keep you in mind, thank you for coming in, etc etc etc.

Yesterday, Friday, I came home from my swim and Robert was having a relaxed phone conversation. Without listening too hard, I kept thinking that perhaps his dad or his aunt was on the other end. When he got off the phone, he told me he had been talking to the recruiter, and... he has an offer, a really nice one. And he's planning to accept. And because of the holidays, he's not starting until the beginning of January. YES!!!

Just about everything's right about the company. They've been around for over 100 years and have kept up with the times, morphing to fit the needs of customers. People work hard there, and the company makes them feel important and valued. Turnover is low. The company is big but not huge, so you're not stuck in one place. The one drawback (so far) is the commute. By miles, it's not far, but it will be tough getting through the traffic. So he might commute by rail. We're talking about getting Robert some kind of smallish laptop so that he can do some of his work on the train.

I couldn't be happier, and I think Robert is pretty darned happy too. This is indeed good news.