Psychic powers:1 Cynical disbelievers: goose egg Aug 08, 2007 - 07:26 AM
Well, played dress up and rehearsed my lines before the interview. I was playing Sinead O'Connor's song "Daddy I'm fine": Want to stand up tall with boobs upright
And feel real hot when my makeup's nice
I get sexy underneath the lights
Like I want to fuck every man in sight ... And I'm just going - YEAH! YEAH! YEAH! BRING IT! OH, IT IS SOOOO BRUNG! I go up to the 26th floor and wait like 10 minutes. This sort of softish looking guy comes up and we drop a few floors to his office. Apparently they take up 6 floors of this downtown highrise and there are like 900 employees. A web developer calls in and they start in on the technical questions: 'Describe to me your web server hardware setup?'
'Are you familiar with http response codes?'
'Have you ever worked with Linux command line?'
Whoa, where are all the questions about html and cascading style sheets? I was fully prepared to make up something regarding AJAX (not a cleaner anymore, heh...Um, that was a joke...), but not all this system admin stuff. I give some lame answers and at the end he says, 'It doesn't seem as if there's a good fit here.' You think? I walk out of there in a daze. Yes, the first line of the job description says "Network administration experience helpful" but the rest of the description didn't support that statement, so I took a shot. They were impressed enough by my resume that they scheduled an interview, but what the fuck? I just remember the guy on the phone after my response that I've never worked with Linux coding, just ASP, ColdFusion and PHP, he did an "Ohhhkayyyy..." And I went, 'don't feel humiliated. Just because you have zero knowledge of what they are talking about has no bearing on your knowledge of other things. You can run circles around these guys with your other skills. It's just not the skills they are interested in.' So, I buck myself up and order an italian sub since it's near lunchtime and ruminate. Chew the cud, as it were. Ponder. Call the recruiter: Hey, the whole thing was a cluster. They asked me all sorts of sysadmin crap that I was unqualified for. It went from awful to stupid and back again. And I thought, wow, the psychic was wrong. There is no possible way I'm getting that job. So, I go back to the job boards, respond to other recruiters and figure out my next move. My cell rings, "Hey, they are interested in bringing you in for a second interview. They know you have some holes (I'm thinking uncrossable chasms) in your knowledge, but they liked you and are willing to train you. What do you think about that?" I'm thinking, how desperate exactly are they? I'm thinking, sure, if they want to pay me to train me, fine. I think those are great skills to learn, why not? I'm thinking, could the psychic be right? Against all odds it is pre-ordained. Now it's up to me whether I want it. 
Faith and Courage
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