Close Only Counts in Hand Grenades & Horse Shoes

I don’t think I will be offered the job I interviewed for the Monday before last. I thought Francois (not his real name) said he was going to make a decision by the end of the week and I had not heard anything so I left a message for him on Monday and Tuesday to follow up. He had specifically said that he would get back with everyone so as not to leave anyone hanging and when someone says something like this I expect them to do it. However I must have misunderstood because when he returned my call on Wednesday he said that he was in the process of doing background checks on the first candidate and he usually did not tell any applicants what was going on until everything was finalized. But since I seemed so interested he wanted to let me know that I am third in a line of twelve applicants, hence my belief that I will not be offered the job. I imagine the position will go to number one or number two, unless he discovers that one of them was an axe murderer and the other was charged with income tax invasion or something equally serious! Nevertheless, I got practice in dealing with a formal interview and built my confidence level up a bit.

So, what was the job, you ask? Well, it was officially titled administrative coordinator 2 in our civil service language. The work would have been carried out in the History Department of our local university. The head of the department is a thirty-something PhD guy who is originally from France and has the accent to prove it. It involved a lot of varied responsibilities, including keeping several young professors in line as well as a couple of student workers and keeping track of the department budget and various and sundry other responsibilities, essentially running the History Department, in the words of Francois. I think I would have enjoyed doing most of that and I would have been a good fit for most of the duties involved. However, the pay was at the low end of the salary listed and worse, it was less than I am making now. If I had been offered the job, I would have lobbied for a small raise before I took the position.

There is another opening that I will apply for and we will see how that goes. I am looking at the civil service jobs because they do have insurance benefits and retirement, neither of which my current job offers. The real reason I am looking for another job is that is has become crystal clear to me that my ethics and the ethics of the people I am working for do not align and will never align. It has to do with taxes. I have seen and heard too much that I believe is flat out wrong and I don’t want to stay. It’s not my place to discuss their business on my blog so that is about all I have to say about that.

In the meantime I will be patient and take my time looking. I will not take the first thing I am offered and I will trust that the right job is out there for me, one that I will enjoy and will pay what I need to make--one that will be a good fit for me (Can you tell I have already had a serious talk with myself about this?).