After being as patient as a firecracker can be, I chose to send follow up emails to a recruiter and two of four people who interviewed me during the previous three weeks.
For the second time this year, I’m up for a position at one of the largest employers in my area.
My interviews went well.
My thank you emails were specific, detailed, and flawless.
But, I couldn’t be patient and wait to see what was next. I had to send follow-up emails the following week to ask where they were in the hiring process and reinforce my interest in the position.
Two of the three emails were pitch perfect. The third contained the following line: “Please let don’t hesitate to ask.” (Originally, I had written, “Please let me know.” And then revised it to read, “Please don’t hesitate to ask,” but failed to revise fully.)
The lingering let.
What has me stuck on this typo (besides the obvious–that it may have cost me further interviews or even a job offer), is the inclusion of the two words standing so closely together. Let. Don’t.
Let me have a new career. Don’t let me have a new career.
let don’t let don’t let don’t
I turned loose my internal conflict right smack in the middle of my follow-up email. Do I want to transition from my current part-time role as a consultant into a full-time, full-fledged, 40-hours a week (if I’m lucky) employee?
Was my unconscious asking my interviewer for her opinion? Did she pick up on it? Will she help me out? “Do I want to leave this dream schedule for what I am currently imagining to be a dream career? Do I? Please, tell me!”
Right now, I am a consultant for an organization where I was a full-timer up until last year. I have a schedule anyone with kids would kill to have, combined with a paycheck that stretches well enough. I don’t spend hours in a sweatshop. I don’t punch a time-clock. I don’t deal with unruly customers. I don’t have to taste-test processed foods or take experimental drugs.
What’s missing? An actual career. I’m free-floating. I want the schedule I have now with better pay and a smarter boss; but, I also want career opportunities. Really, I want structure. I want to go on vacation for a week and not worry about cash flow the following month.
On this most sacred day of freedom, I’m having a serious discussion with myself about my own. Has it come to this? Do I want to let go of so much freedom to feel like I am doing something?
As soon as I’m ready to buy my ticket on the full-timers train, I see quotes like this spread across my television first thing in the a.m. by way of MSNBC’s Morning Joe (from Tim Kreider’s NYTimes article, The Busy Trap):
Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day…I can’t help but wonder whether all this histrionic exhaustion isn’t a way of covering up the fact that most of what we do doesn’t matter.
Is that what I am doing? Giving up boatloads of freedom to…hedge against emptiness?
Yes, I can schedule my days as I want, but my job satisfaction is nearing a negative number so low I can’t even count backwards to it. Do I feel grateful to have what I have or do I jump on the job search wheel, spinning my tires and begging my interviewers to give me a clue by sending them typo-ridden follow-up emails?
Let me? or Don’t?
I hear you. I’ve got a good job, decent salary, family insurance, seniority . . . And I’m thinking of applying for another job without most of that because there’s something missing. I can’t define it, but it’s definitely not there . . .
apply, apply…you never know where it may lead–good luck!
We all need challenge. As soon as life gets too easy, we will figure out a way to make it harder, more uncomfortable or frightening or exciting, because without those sensations, life is not worth living.
agreed.
i haven’t been challenged on the job front for years now.
As a woman perpetually unemployed, I’m no longer qualified to weigh in. But wait, was I ever really qualified to weigh in??
That said, I read this post through the first time. Then I went back to the top and read it through, slower, a second time. I keep thinking about that damned cliche —- we make a change only when making that change becomes less painful than staying where we are.
Where are you on the pain threshold?
you are always qualified to weigh in here, no matter the topic.
my pain threshold goes in and out when it’s low, my boredom threshold takes over. when its high, it’s all i can do to bite my tongue and nod my head in agreement until i’m afraid it’s going to fall off my neck.
A hedge against emptiness…that sounds exactly like what we’re doing. I wonder how many people work jobs that enrich their lives rather than for the usual reasons. I’ve always fallen into the money or time dynamic, you can’t have both in droves.
Teri (who pushed me forward) makes such a great point: When the moving forward is less painful than the staying put, it’s time to go. I’d like to add that most men move forward because a better opportunity arises. Sometimes just knowing that, knowing the gender disparity exists is enough to propel me forward.
Also, from a business front, don’t send too many follow-ups close together. You want to have your resume stay in the forefront of their mind, but you don’t want them to think you are high maintenance or a nudge. Thread that needle, dear Josey.
“When the moving forward is less painful than the staying put, it’s time to go.”
Well put, Lyra.
The “don’t” “let” typo won’t be registered, however, so worry not. We always obsess on our fuck ups, but they’re rarely noticed.
Good luck with this one, Josey. And by “good luck” I mean, I hope whatever the outcome is, it’s the one that makes you happiest.
I think about the gender disparity too, Lyra, and it also pushes me, both in my professional life and my writing life. One of my writing groups is all women except for one man, and it’s amazing how different his perspective on the writing world (and submitting to the top markets, etc.) can be. It’s so helpful to see that other perspective.
yes–i should have simply waited. this company is famous for an extended hiring process–i really just wanted to see if i was in the running. no one has said i’m not so there’s that. but now after all these typos and blog posts and back and forth and now that i’m on my way to the beach today, i can’t help but think it won’t be so awful if i’m not offered a full-time position that will suck up a lot of the time i spend doing very little. just staring. thinking. (i just read ann patchett’s “what now” and she talks about how a writer needs plenty of time to do nothing but stare and let the store come to her. maybe that’s what i’ve been doing for the past year?!)
At first, as I read this, I was jealous of your time and wanted to shout “Don’t give it up!” But clearly you are missing something, and strive for me, and you know it. So go for it. And good luck.
Um, “striving for me” should be “striving for more.” Talk about typos!!
Like Teri, I hate to use an old cliche, but the fact is the squeaky wheel gets the grease. I don’t see an issue with checking back in with potential employers. If you weren’t a contender, they’ll just dismiss your reminders. If you were already one of their top picks, it may push them to decide they love you as much as we do. Good luck.