The Job Hunt

Log this post under my own personal history. I had been meaning to write about this for a long time, but finding a job took me a lot longer than I thought it would. 

I think I've documented a little bit about the internship hunt, and later the job hunt. You get into an MBA program, especially when it's a pretty good one like BYU's, and you think that things will just resolve themselves. The primary reason that I even applied to the program was seeing the placement statistics: 95% placed within three months of graduation, average starting salary $90-100k a year. That all sounded great, right?

I elected the OB/HR track which has the most prestige within the BYU MBA program. I assumed that my previous HR experience as well as my additional MS in Psychology would make things easy for me. Every person that I talked to in the program assured me that I'd be fine. I ate it all up. 

The internship search was tricky, but I felt like I was able to get some traction and chose Ford. I had a great time at my internship, but Ford didn't feel like the right fit and so I decided I'd move on. 

I thought when I got back for my second year things would be easier. I had my top choices picked out, started out even before I got back from Michigan with my networking, and was sure that things would line up. 

You see where this is going, right? They didn't. HP, my favorite, fell through. Then the others did too. Microsoft, Chevron, Bank of America, Citi, all of them. I couldn't believe it. After the first semester, I thought something would open up. I knew companies came back all the time and was sure I'd be able to lock something down. 

It just wasn't clicking. I had some really promising leads. Citi flew me back. I felt like I nailed everything, but in the end I found out that a single line at the very bottom of my resume is what kept me from getting the job. That came from a phone conversation with the VP of HR. Then others came and went - Edwards LifeSciences, Disney, Pepsi, Applied Materials, DecisionWise, and some others. 

Between September 2013 and April 2014, I applied to at least 60 different positions which were all pretty similar - entry level HR positions for MS/MBA grad for large companies. I had about two dozen interviews, and several that went multiple stages, a few that went to final stages. 

But they just didn't pan out. 

The MBA job hunt was, for me, one of the most humbling experiences I have ever been through. It's hard to hear that many times that you're not what the company is looking for. I knew that I was a qualified candidate, but it just wasn't falling my way. My biggest problem ended up being the long duration that I had been in school for, that my experience was not really in business environments and what HR experience I had ended 6 years prior to the time that I was looking to start working. 

I should have realized earlier that would be as big of an obstacle that it ended up being. 

Throughout the year I had a number of waves of opportunities that would come and go, and then times when the tide would ebb and leave me far out from the shore of having secured a job. 

It was of some comfort to me that my experience wasn't entirely unique to me. Actually, just tonight I saw a list of my fellow classmates from the class of 2014 and noticed that there is still a large number of people looking - 5 months since we graduated from the program. 

My opportunity with UTC came up during the MBA Golf Scramble at the end of the school year. I was sitting in the clubhouse following our golf outing when I was looking at my phone at what emails had come in when I noticed that I had an email from UTC. 

I had applied about 6 months earlier for the Leadership Development Program, but had heard nothing back from the company. Someone from the Indianapolis location was calling me to see if I was interested in a different position, but that still had the basic components of what I had been looking for - big company, HR, grad degree, but entry level. 

It did. 

I was interested, but tepidly so, because it resembled so much the kind of role that I had turned down from Ford, and would also be working the evening from 1-10pm. I went ahead and entertained it because I didn't feel like I was at a point where I could be really choosy, so I went through the motions.

I had my phone screen interview and passed. I was told over the phone that I would be getting a flyback to Indianapolis. I flew out on May 1st and had a round of interviews with the entire HR staff, as well as dual interviews with six different supervisors at UTC-Indy. 

I thought it went well enough, but the more important thing was that I left feeling very impressed. I liked the HR folks that I met, and I thought the opportunity of working in a labor environment might actually be a good one. Before I left, Amy was hardly even thinking this might be a viable option, primarily because of the schedule, but I came back thinking very seriously about it. 

I liked the location from a cost of living standpoint. It would be hard to be away from family, but a great opportunity for us to establish ourselves on our own. We would be able to travel to a lot of nearby locations and explore a lot of the midwestern United States (although we did get a good chunk out of the way last summer). And from a company standpoint UTC would be able to offer me all of the things that I thought would be important for me to have as I get going in my career - good, big name company, get my hands dirty in some real HR work, and have opportunities to go to other locations that might also be really interesting to us down the line, namely, Connecticut and Charlotte, North Carolina. 

This might sound crazy too, but one other really big benefit that really appealed to me was the UTC scholar program. After one year of employment, the company will pay the way for any degree from pretty much any accredited university. At this point I think I've even already zeroed in on what degree I'm hoping to work on next year and have begun corresponding with the program director. 

Anyway, my interested had been piqued. This felt like it could be a really good option for me. After my flyback, I didn't really hear a whole lot, which didn't seem to be good or bad. I felt like I was still in process, but didn't really know what was going on. At the time I was really targeting an opportunity with Pepsi and was hopeful about that one. Then another wave came in - an opportunity with Goldman Sachs came up, an interesting role with Zions BanCorporation, and then one with Varian Medical Systems. I got contacted by a recruiter from Polaris, a manufacturing company that makes snowmobiles and other fun off-road vehicles. 

Things were moving again and Amy and I whimsically passed away our summer going on a number of different trips. It was about a month before I heard back from UTC and that I was in the running, along with another candidate. I had a follow up phone interview with the Senior Labor Manager, and then she said she would get back to me the next week. 

The answer came a few days after she said that it would, but it was worth waiting for. I finally got an offer. The trouble was wondering if these other lines I had cast were going to get bites or not, or if I should just cut bait and go with the first one that came. 

I got the confirmation from Jill while we were visiting with Amy's parents. We were both still a little wary about the second shift schedule, but the opportunity sounded right. Before going to bed one night, I told Amy that if we got a relocation package and if the starting salary hit a certain dollar amount that I thought we should take it. 

I heard again from Jill on Friday June 20th with the offer. It had exactly everything I had mentioned to Amy, down to the exact dollar amount. It's kind of crazy now that I think about it. I ended up negotiating a slightly more generous signing bonus and a slightly later start date and we took it. 

I can't believe it's already been two months. It doesn't seem long or short. I just can't believe that the time has already passed since we arrived. I think I've said this before, but I love it. I love what I'm doing. I love the people I work with, and I love the start that this job gives me in my career. 

It's hard to believe how things work out sometimes. I think as time goes on I'll be even more amazed at how things worked out like they did because I'll be better able to link what has happened this past year to the events in my life 5, 10, or 20 years down the road. 

But for now, I'm really happy. We are really happy. It's a new life for us, and we are doing our best to embrace every aspect of it. The job hunt in the end was really hard on me, but I did find and start a job within 3 months of graduating, got the great vacation following school that I was hoping for, and we are in a place where we feel we can both grow and develop both individually and collectively as a family. 

It's a nice feeling to feel like you're supposed to be where you are.