Scored an interview!

1st of all, a BIG THANK YOU, to everybody who helped me with my "Extreme Resume Makeover" as 1 person put it.

I sent my new and improved 2 page resume to just 1 Fortune 500 company on Tuesday at 6 AM. Yesterday at 3:30 PM I got an e-mail from their HR asking to schedule a phone screening with me Monday morning.

Since it was just a screening, I wasn't all that excited yet, I figured I'd need to pass the screening before I'd get an actual interview. I replied back to schedule it. Then today I got an e-mail from the hiring manager (with the HR person CC'd) asking to setup an initial phone interview on Monday afternoon!

When I applied for the position, I thought it was going to be a shot in the dark, the listing was over 3 weeks old. However it was the only job listing I found in my casual search that made me think "Wow, I'd really like to have that job, and it matches my qualifications perfectly!" It's a huge company with over 70k employees that is celebrating their 100th year in business this year. I'm so excited! I can't believe the 1st place I sent my new resume to wants to interview me!

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instant000

Congrats.

TLeTourneau

Congratulations!

Everyone

Thanks all! Now that I'm home and went through the e-mail on my PC instead of going over it on my phone, I see my interview with the hiring manager is actually tomorrow and not Monday! I'm glad I took a second look at it. I still have to do the phone screening with the HR person on Monday, so that's interesting.

rwmidl

Way to go! Best of luck to you!

Everyone

I think the interview went very well, it was scheduled for 30 minutes, but we ended up talking for 1 hour.

The position doesn't sound as good as the job description did. I thought it was going to lean a little more towards engineering/design work. They said it's at least 70% working on tickets. The description said "Level 2 and 3 infrastructure support". They said a lot of it tends to be "Tier 1.5+" but that's something they are working on.

At first I wasn't sure how I felt about that, but they said the ticket volume for the last 3 years has been around 6,000 per year. There are 3 other people on the team spread out across the globe to help handle that load. We get more tickets than that in a month at my current job, so it actually doesn't sound that bad.

If the salary is higher than what I make now, and they let me work from home, I might take it.

Much bigger organization than what I work for now, with a much larger environment, but actually sounds like it'd be less work and less responsibilities, while still having some good opportunities, and job stability.

ITdude

Sounds great. Go for it!

Raidersfan81

Very nice, hope you get it!

Awesome! Good luck!

Congrats!!

congrats

I haven't heard anything more back from this company yet, but I am so stoked right now.

I tweaked my resume just a little more this week. I moved my certifications back to the top, and added 2 of the ones I had taken off back in, plus a non-IT cert (LEAN), then posted it to 2 other job sites that I had not yet.

I've actually sent my resume in to a total of 7 companies now, and have gotten 2 call backs. I'd say that's a really good ratio!

I applied to a recruiters job posting that had a $130k-$160k/yr salary range, thinking it was a long shot at best because they were looking for someone with a Bachelors or Masters. I figured that would be a strict requirement given such a high salary range. That was the ONLY requirement I didn't meet, I had everything else they were looking for. I sent my cover letter and resume in at 5:30 AM before leaving for work, and got an e-mail asking me to call them ASAP at 9:30 AM!

The recruiter said he may not be able to get me that high salary range even though that is what his client gave him for the position, because my current salary is less than half that, and it's hard to justify such a huge jump. However he said he'd try to submit me without giving away my current salary and see if they give me a high offer based on my experience. He also said that they had similar positions open (this one was for a Lead Architect), with a $90k-$130k/yr range, and wanted to know if I'd be interested ine one of those if I didn't get the Lead. There's a $15k bonus, plus potential for salary increases for finishing more certifications!

I also got a call from a recruiter that found my resume, claiming to be recruiting for a little company called MICROSOFT! He wanted to submit me for a Premier Field Engineer position.

Hopefully something comes of one of those 2, I know recruiters tend to hype things quite a bit, so I won't get my hopes up too high just yet.

I'm starting to get contacted by legitimate recruiters that are actually in the US and speak English as their native language. Before it was just people I couldn't understand, or people trying to get me to sell insurance or buy into a franchise.

LordQarlyn

Congrats and good luck!

Everyone

More good news... I just got an e-mail asking to schedule a 2nd interview with the 1st company I talked about in my original post!

Turgon

Let the good times roll. I would keep pumping that CV out if I was you. If you get anything from 1 - 10 interviews in a relatively short period of time that's usually enough to get a job offer, and one that is worth taking. There is a bit of hiring going on just at the moment, so now is the time..

rwmidl

Hmm...if the client told the recruiter they would pay 100k plus, I find it very suspicious that the recruiter would then try to say they would pay you "less". Sounds more like the recruiter wants to try padding their commission check...

Everyone

Turgon wrote:

Let the good times roll. I would keep pumping that CV out if I was you. If you get anything from 1 - 10 interviews in a relatively short period of time that's usually enough to get a job offer, and one that is worth taking. There is a bit of hiring going on just at the moment, so now is the time..

That's the plan. I had the 1st interview within days of starting, 2nd interview will be next week, and I could potentially have 3 more interviews within the next week. I'm still keeping my eye open and sending the resume out to anything that catches my eye, plus responding to contacts I'm getting from the job sites. This is moving a lot quicker than the last time I had to do it. I started looking in November 2008 and didn't find a job until February 2009 last time around. I only landed 4 or 5 interviews (not counting the interviews that were for my own job) in that 3 month time span, 2 of them were with the company I now work for. I don't even think I had my 1st interview until January 2009 even though I had been applying like crazy since November 2008. I was also looking all over the world back then too. Now I am only looking within reasonable commuting distance of where I currently live, and have a lot more luck.

rwmidl wrote: »

Hmm...if the client told the recruiter they would pay 100k plus, I find it very suspicious that the recruiter would then try to say they would pay you "less". Sounds more like the recruiter wants to try padding their commission check...

Client told the recruiter $130k-$175k. While that would be AWESOME, I actually think it is REALLY high for the position. My research indicates someone with my experience should expect $116k-$129k for the type of work and area it is in.

I don't think it is very suspicious, because it is hard to get people to give you a huge jump in salary like that. It's kind of my fault for telling them what my current salary is. I should have said "I'd prefer not to disclose my salary. I'd like an offer to be based on my experience and the value I would bring to the company, and not be influenced by my current salary."

Because this is a direct-hire situation, I also can't see it being padding. It would be in the recruiters best interested to get me the highest possible salary, because their commission would be based on a percentage of my starting salary.

Everyone

Had my 2nd interview with the company from my OP today, it seemed to go really well. They said they would let me know by the end of next week if they are going to bring me out for a face-to-face final interview.

Haven't heard anything more from the super high paying company yet.

I have a technical interview with Microsoft on Friday.

rogue2shadow

Everyone wrote: »

Had my 2nd interview with the company from my OP today, it seemed to go really well. They said they would let me know by the end of next week if they are going to bring me out for a face-to-face final interview.

Haven't heard anything more from the super high paying company yet.

I have a technical interview with Microsoft on Friday.

Good progress! Keep the updates coming man!

Essendon

Good luck! Hope you get that gig with MS, that would be sweet!!

ITdude

Let the good times roll!

Everyone

Thanks all! Yeah I'm really excited about the MS interview, and at the same time, really nervous! I'm used to interviewing with people who either don't know near as much as I do about Exchange, or just don't go all that in depth on it for a technical interview. I'm thinking MS may be my toughest one yet, considering the fact that they make Exchange! Plus its a very hands on Engineering role.

Yesterday's interview didn't get too technical, the questions I got were more for trying to figure out my thought process in relation to troubleshooting. I got questions like "You have a remote user connected through VPN that is complaining of e-mail performance being slow, how would you troubleshoot this?" and "You have a Blackberry user that can't synchronize, how would you troubleshoot?". Pretty easy questions for me, but then again that position is more of a support role. Although there were a couple of their Engineers on the line, and they did ask me a couple of migration related questions, since I have done a 2003 to 2010 migration, and they are currently working towards doing the same thing. That's really the only thing that interests me about this position, is the fact that I may have the chance to work on a massive Exchange migration, and possibly a massive BES migration. Well that, and the fact that I'd be working from home. Being Tier2/Tier3 support for messaging systems, but having to handle a lot of Tier1 calls as well is kind of a step backwards. $:\$

Everyone

Well when it rains it pours! I just got a call from the company with the really high salary range, did an initial phone screening. They are going to have an Engineer call me later this afternoon for a technical interview. Sounds like this place wants to move really fast.

Then as soon as I got off the phone from them, I got a call from another company asking to setup an interview soon. I am now interviewing with 4 different companies at once, it's getting crazy!

Asif Dasl

Everyone wrote: »

I am now interviewing with 4 different companies at once, it's getting crazy!

Now aren't you happy you trimmed that 7 page resume!

Everyone

Asif Dasl wrote: »

Now aren't you happy you trimmed that 7 page resume!

Very!

This is the end of the 3rd week since putting the new resume out there, so to have completed 2nd round interview with 1 company already, entering 2nd round with 2 others, and having a 1st interview with a 4th in such a short time is more than I ever even hoped for out of it. I can't thank everybody who helped me with the resume makeover enough!

Mike-Mike

congrats!

chicmagnet2k4

Damn Man I am PROUD OF YOU...

Everyone

Thanks all...

So I had to interviews today. 1 with the smaller high paying company I talked about. It was only about 20 minutes, he asked some pretty tough questions, but would be topped by my 2nd interview today. I wasn't expecting this one, I thought this company was going to schedule the interview, not just call me and hope I had time to talk. The guy ran out of time, he had to go meet with a customer, but said he wanted to continue talking to me, and would call me back on Monday. Interestingly enough, he mentioned that he had an offer from Microsoft at the same time he had an offer for this company when he started there, and he chose this small company over working for Microsoft. He explained why too. After he finished, I told him that I am in a similar situation because I have an interview scheduled with Microsoft for later in the day.

My 2nd interview was with Microsoft, and just like I predicted, it was my hardest technical interview EVER! The "Senior Premier Field Engineer" I spoke with had just finished the "Exchange Ranger" (Microsoft Certified Architect: Exchange Server) program, which for those of you familiar with MS and Exchange know are THE smartest people on Exchange in the world. Last time I looked there were less than 100 people with it in the world. I had the priviledge of meeting one that worked for Dell 7 or 8 years ago, super smart guy.

I hope that I did well, but I do much better answering these kinds of questions when I have my notes/references up and am in the software working on it. There were a few where he was like "If you could tell me at least 3 of them, I think you'd be good", where I could only remember 2 off the top of my head. $:\$

Everyone

I guess I must have done OK on my Technical Interview with Microsoft on Friday, because they called today to schedule a 2nd Technical Interview! This will be my 3rd interview overall with them. According to the info available on glassdoor.com, it looks like they typically do a 4 interview process. I guess that means I passed the halfway point!

I'm tentatively scheduled to fly out for a final face to face interview with the company I mentioned in my OP next Friday.

I turned down an offer with another company since it was only a contract to the end of the year. So that leaves 3 companies that are interviewing me for full time/permanent positions.

I think at this pace, I should have some offers by the end of the month.

thenjduke

I just had this happen to me about 2 weeks ago. I went through 5 companies interviewing while working full time. I do not know where I found the time but I think going to be happy with the choice I made. I get to go back home towards the kids and wife and where I grew up

Everyone

thenjduke wrote: »

I just had this happen to me about 2 weeks ago. I went through 5 companies interviewing while working full time. I do not know where I found the time but I think going to be happy with the choice I made. I get to go back home towards the kids and wife and where I grew up

Sounds like things worked out well for you, congrats!

More good news, the company for the super high salary range job I mentioned called today. They want me to come out for a face to face interview tomorrow afternoon! I'm going to end up with back to back interviews tomorrow. The face to face with them, then an over the phone with Microsoft.

I called the recruiter that submitted me for this one to tell him the good news. He told me not to be too surprised if they offer the job to me on the spot. I guess that has happened a few times in the past for other well qualified candidates they've sent over.

Tomorrow is going to be a crazy long day. I'm going to have to work until 2:30, drive home, get my suit on, then drive an hour and a half to this face to face, then talk to Microsoft on my way home.