It’s been another active month in the Dubea household.
Early in the month, I received a call from Ivan Crossling of Think Energy to inform me that he was submitting my name for a position in Olympia, Washington as an Engineering Manager for a company there. We had a brief discussion about the position. Afterward, I did some research and this seems like the kind of place where I might like to live. Not too far from Seattle, but far enough away where housing prices were still reasonable, H’mmm looks interesting.
Some time later, I was contacted by Laren Janky of the Select Group out of Raleigh-Durham about a position with Parada Systems in Raleigh. We had an extensive phone interview at which time she indicted that I was to be submitted with a short list of applicants to Jim Gentry, the Engineering Manager at Parada. Plans are made for a phone interview with Mr. Gentry for after I return from my trip to DC. Upon returning from that visit (more later) Lauren send me a cryptic email that our scheduled phone interview has been canceled as they are no longer interested in meeting. Needless to say I was a bit bothered by this. Laren would not provide any further details regarding the cancellation. Unfortunately, this is one of the things I dislike most about recruiters is the fact that all the information flow is in one direction. Everyone is so afraid of getting sued that they won’t tell you anything which could be of assistance in future job searches.
Anyway, on Wednesday, March 21st, I flew up to Dulles airport in Virginia to meet a gentleman about a position with a consulting company in Northern Virgina. I took a cab a to McCormick and Smick in Reston Town center for dinner and was amazed by what I saw. I used to come up here when working with SubSea some ten years ago. In those days Reston Town Center was out in the middle of nowhere. That is obviously not the case any longer.
In any event, dinner was a rather odd situation in that the owner of the company spent the entire time telling me how generous he was to his employees. After about an hour he looks at me and says, “You don’t believe me do you?”. My response was that I was a member of the “if it seems to be too good to be true then it must be too good to be true” fan club. He laughs and responds something of the effect of “you’ve been taken advantage of in the past, but I don’t do business that way”. H’mmmm, I think. We decide to convene the next morning where he shows me financial summaries for previous years which corroborate what he has told me. At first I was rather skeptical, but as time progressed I warmed up to the idea. Later I called the owner and asked if I could bring my wife and family up to Virginia for a look see. I also wanted to schedule a final meeting to discuss the details so we set a date.
The saga of Ivan Crossling and the Olympia Washington position is ongoing as his client is evidently very slow in evaluating the information sent him.
Until next time,
chris