Phone calls, bus routes, and crash courses

Well. After weeks and weeks of nothing at all, it looks like the job search may be getting somewhere! How exciting! I think most everyone who reads this has at least a bit of personal interest, and I know that quite a few of you have been praying for us as we get settled here, so I'll give you the whole long story.

A couple of months ago, I got an e-mail from my cousin David, who does something or other at Microsoft. He doesn't park next to Bill Gates or anything (mostly because he lives in Atlanta), but he's been at things for a little while, and he oversees projects of various sorts. He's associated with some people who developed a sort of training program a little while ago. A few of Microsoft's partners, project managers, etc. got a hold of this program and liked it, so David and the Adventos crew wrote version 2.0. Four hundred and something people at Microsoft started using the second version, so Microsoft bought the whole package and commissioned the creation of version 3.0. David contacted me to see if I'd be interested in editing the documentation for the whole shebang. It's great experience on my resume to have Microsoft contract editing experience, and it's also helpful for me to learn a lot of terminology and technology that's in use in the IT world. I barely understand all the concepts myself even after editing and doing rewrites on the whole thing --actually, I don't think I've got quite all of it-- but if you're more technologically inclined than I am, or if you're just curious, you can go to the website at www.sdlcinabox.com to see information on the program. It really is pretty interesting, I promise.

Fortunately, it looks like these lines on my resume worked the magic that my other experience couldn't quite do. I got an e-mail last week from a job I didn't even remember applying for. (Not really saying much; there have been time since we've been here that I've put in five or six resumes a day for a few days at a time. I lost count ages ago and lost track of specifics before that.) Siemens IT Services does consulting work for Microsoft in Redmond, and I've been told that I applied for a Technical Writing position with them. The recruiter sent me a preliminary interview questionnaire, which I filled out (and edited for typos, grammatical problems, and formatting issues) and sent back with an updated resume, and then the next afternoon, I scheduled a phone interview with the hiring manager. Went through that phone interview, sent writing samples that the hiring manager asked for, and then today, got another e-mail requesting a face-to-face interview at Microsoft in Redmond this coming Tuesday. Sweeeeet... It's all gone pretty quickly up to this point, which makes me think that there aren't loads of other people in the running. All the same, though, I need to make sure to go in and really impress them. The job is in Microsoft's offices in Redmond, and the position would be working with a team of Microsoft employees under Microsoft managers. So I'm guessing that the interview process might just be similar to Microsoft's infamously grueling process. I don't think it'll last eight hours like Microsoft's typical interview, but I'm preparing myself for difficult questions and a lot of thinking on my feet.

I'm also preparing myself to back up my claims of basic reading knowledge of XML, JavaScript, and SQL. I think I know the basics pretty well, but my idea of basics may be a little different than theirs, so I've been looking up tutorials and practicing my coding and basically devouring every reference source I can get my hands on. By Tuesday, I'd like to be able to see my skill as thorough reading knowledge and passable practical knowledge. That's my biggest item of homework over the weekend. That and figuring out exactly which bus(es?) I need to take from Seattle to Redmond to avoid walking several miles. Can't show up late, you know.

The job itself is pretty nice. The team that developed the Xbox is basically a collective of some of the brightest minds at MS, and the complex technical issues of system and software development for the system are almost entirely in the heads of these programmers and engineers. Microsoft needs a technical writer to take this stuff out of a bunch of heads and put it into deliverable document form, so that's what I would be doing. It probably wouldn't be too tough to transition from a Siemens contract job to a full-time job at Microsoft, and from what I hear, it seems to be an exceptionally great place to work.

Between the first contact on this job and today, I've had one and a half other interesting contacts. The first is with a company called Attenex. They do some sort of document review and capture software that I didn't take a long enough amount of time to really grasp. (Not that I think it would take long. It just looked wicked boring.) They're looking for a technical trainer to go places and teach clients to use their software. The job would pay very well, but I think that the amount of travel would make it less than desirable. I went ahead and replied to the recruiting e-mail by applying, and I'll see if I can get some more information, but I just get a little too much of a marriage wrecker vibe at the moment.

The second contact was from a tutoring company that is recruiting new tutors. It also pays well, and I'd have the option to work as much or as little as I like as well as doing house calls or working online. If it's legit, really pays what they say it does, and has enough demand out there, I may even do it a few hours a week from home. If any of you out there want to check it out, maybe even apply to do some tutoring yourself, the web site is www.goodgradesnow.com. We can keep each other informed on the whole thing.

OK. So, not a lot of entertainment this time around, but there's some news for you. Thanks SO much to all of you who have shown an interest, prayed for me, asked about how things are going, or just stayed where you are instead of moving out here and clogging up the job market even more. (Of course I'm joking. You should all move out here so we can see you.) Thanks for reading this too. Amanda told me that she follows the news closely, and I told her I would give her a shout out for it. So... Hey Amanda! Thanks for reading. Express your devotion, kids, and you could get your fifteen seconds of internet fame next time. Cause blogs do LOVE comments, for serious.

I'll try to remember to get back on here Tuesday soon after the interview and let you know what happens. In the mean time, if you have any interviewing tips for me, by all means, send them along.

Love you all. Take care of yourselves.

Kent