Interview (or 'a fork stuck in the road')

Last Monday July 2nd, I traveled to Denton Texas to interview to the position of IT Systems Administrator at a bank. I was very excited and still am. I was very honest and up-front with them about salary requirements, and that didn't seem to bother them, so there's a double plus.

It seems like almost all the things they want in a person, I have. I don't know much about Linux, but I can learn. I met first with the HR director, a nice lady and had all the standard interview questions. Strengths = reliability and getting the job done, weaknesses = being too busy to keep my office clean. That didn't seem to bother her too much. I enjoyed chatting with her. Then I was handed off to the guy that would be my boss. Nice guy too. We hit it off immediately. He's around my age, has the same kind of glasses that I do, and a little darker hair but his is a lot shorter than mine. Basically he's a taller thinner version of me. We had the same kind of personality too, I think. We talked for maybe an hour and a half, I guess. It was great fun. I've never enjoyed an interview so much. I've always been nervous before, but not this time. I think that's because I'm not desperate for a job. I was relaxed and enjoyed the time there. I was there for a total of two and a half hours, by the way. The whole time mom and Bren were in the car waiting for me; we didn't expect a 2.5 hr interview! :) Anyway, I had a great chat with the boss-to-be and then was handed off to his boss, the Chief Operations Officer. Oh, I forgot to mention that this bank with nine branches operates their entire IT on THREE IT staff and a summer intern. I was flabbergasted!!! That's so small. I'm used to 18 techs, all very specialized. Of course, their financial data management is outsourced to FISERV, which apparently a lot of smaller banks do. So at least I wouldn't be responsible for financial data. That's definitely good. That's serious shit, being in charge of people's financial info. I don't want that yet. So anyway, I had a good chat with the COO, he was nice and very complimentary of the b-t-b. He did mention that b-t-b had some maturing to do, which I'm not sure if that was told me me because I seemed more mature or what, but anyway, that's OK. After I finished talking to that guy, I was handed back to the HR lady. She basically thanked me and said that she had just sent me an email with a two hour test that they give to prospective hires. I said I'd work on it right away when I got home. Wow! I figure this test has to cost them money to administer, and they wouldn't waste money if they weren't serious about hiring me. So I'm excited. :) :) :)

Other things I remember now that I don't want to go to the trouble to write into the above:
1) B-t-b has a blackberry and alluded to the fact that I'd get one too. Cool. I think it was one of the AT&T models.
2) Health insurance only $45 per month for the employee, with an additional cost for the family.
3) Dental and, I think, vision included.
4) Vacation after a year. Maybe a week of it; cant' remember. 5 sick days, two personal days, and all the holidays that the FED observes. That's OK, but not as good as the Catholics. Praise god! Hehe.
5) Runs exchange (my love), BES Server (Exchange's best friend), roaming profiles (cool), group policy (know a little about), Terminal Services (dunno much about), SQUID web proxy (dunno much about), Windows 2000 and XP on the desktops (OK), some kind of tape backups (OK). They are moving from (get this) Win2K on the desktops to XP just now. No Vista there (except on my desk, I gare-on-tee that). They like stability, but I call that a tad behind. They should have gone to XP maybe two years ago or something, but I can deal. If I do say so myself, I'm a goddamn good XP troubleshooter. :)
6) Don't know if they use Ghost or what, but I need to learn that ASAP.
7) I'd be officed out of the Corinth branch, which would be OK. See? Mom, Dad, Brother and almost all my family live up near Gainesville and Lindsay.



8) It would be a nice change of pace.

They liked me and I liked them. I hope I get the job. We'd probably live with Mom & Dad for a while to pay off bills. [As a side note, I blame myself for our financial woes, but I also blame the credit cards companies for marketing so heavily to college students like I was when I got my first one.] I hate to do that, but the benefits far outweigh my dislike. Jen will have company, Bren could go to preschool at the very school I went to K-8 at, plus we'd save a ton of money. I'd have to drive about 45 minutes to work though, and I'd have shitty Internet. Doh! Lots of podcasts I guess on that drive. I suppose I could stand that, but I won't do it for more than 3 months. We will get an apartment or rent a house after that. I insist. I won't be one of those people that lives with mom and dad for a long time. Besides, there's no recycling there. I'll die every time I throw a plastic bottle away. :(

Keep your fingers crossed for me!