Scored an interview!

Everyone

Back to back interviews last night seemed to go well. My 1st interview ended up going an hour and a half. They gave me a 5 page written test, and made me draw out a couple of Exchange 2010 high availability designs on the whiteboard. After drawing them, I had to defend each of them. That's the 1st time I've had to do anything like that in an interview.

Just as I suspected, the salary range the recruiter had was quite a bit high. No official offers was made, but the way the conversation went at the end of the interview, I think one may be coming. Since I don't have some of the certifications they want, they can't start me out where I'd like to be. However, they offer salary increases for completing certifications, so I could very quickly get to where I want to be. It seemed like a great company with lots of opportunity for very quick advancement. The guys I interview with had just moved into their Lead roles within the last couple of weeks, and neither of them had been with the company more than 2 years.

I think my 2nd technical interview with Microsoft went at least as well as the 1st one. Some of the questions were similar, pretty close in difficulty as well. I'm sure a big part of what is keeping me in the game here is my security clearance, because this job requires one. Things could have gone better. I was finishing up my 1st interview when the guy from Microsoft called. There were some issues with cell phone signal, but he thought it was on his end. I had to pass through several tolls because I was making an hour and a half drive home. The interview lasted an hour. I apologised for being on the road and said I had planned on being home for this interview, he seemed very understanding of it.

I am going to see if the 1st company will offer to pay me mileage. I know the federal mileage rate is $0.51/mile this year, so they can write it off on their taxes. Does anyone know if that is something I could write off on my own taxes if the company doesn't pay me anything for it? At 180 miles per day, that's over $23k/yr in mileage. That big of a deduction could potentially drop me down a tax bracket, depending on the offer, and make it worth it. It would certainly be worth it if the company paid me the mileage.

I'm not used to talking to people who's knowledge in my areas of speciality exceed my own, so these technical interviews have been very challenging for me. Usually I'm explaining things to management, or subordinates, so I feel I may have a tendency to maybe not answer questions in quite as technical of a manner as may be expected. I think my communication and presentation skills are really what saves me, hopefully that is enough.

thenjduke

Everyone great going man. I know what you mean with talking to people who have more knowledge then you. I had to design a HA Citrix farm on White Board for interview I scored. They did the same thing with me in my offer letter that if I get certain certifications they bump my salary up. Good to have that in writing.

Everyone

So first bit of bad news I guess... The higher paying company for the Systems Engineer job decided to pass on me. I guess they need someone with more VMWare experience right now. The job posting I applied to was more focused on Exchange and AD, which is why I applied. I do have some VMWare experience, but not enough for this job I guess. Sounds like they may want to keep in touch in case they have more of a need for my skills in the future.

I still have a final interview with the company I talked about in my OP on Thursday. I may also still be up for the Microsoft job, but haven't heard anything from them since my 2nd Technical interview last Wednesday.

I also had a couple other opportunities come up. 1 is a 12 month contract as a Systems Architect, paying $49/hr. Just got submitted today, so we'll see if they bite. Not sure how I feel about this recruiter, can't understand him very well.

The other is for a Network/Systems Administrator job working in the FBI's Regional Computer Forensic Lab. This one is pending contract award, and wouldn't start until the end of July. The salary range I was given for this one isn't quite as high as I'd like for the area it's in, but it sounds like a really cool job.

Everyone

A company I forgot I even applied to contacted me today. I had to look in my sent items... sent my resume to them on 5/21. Went and looked up the position, it's been posted since 3/7! They want to speak with me regarding it tomorrow.

hiddenknight821

Everyone wrote: »

A company I forgot I even applied to contacted me today. I had to look in my sent items... sent my resume to them on 5/21. Went and looked up the position, it's been posted since 3/7! They want to speak with me regarding it tomorrow.

Good luck on your interview!

VAHokie56

Haha this is an exciting thread! good luck man I hope it all works out

Everyone

Thanks all.

Final interview with the company from my OP went great. I should hear something from them next week.

Phone screening with the company I had forgotten I applied to went great. I will hopefully have another interview with them soon, sounds like an awesome job!

Everyone

Everyone wrote: »

Phone screening with the company I had forgotten I applied to went great. I will hopefully have another interview with them soon, sounds like an awesome job!

Got another call from this company today. Interview with the hiring manager is scheduled for Tuesday.

TLeTourneau

Good luck!

Everyone

Everyone wrote: »

Got another call from this company today. Interview with the hiring manager is scheduled for Tuesday.

This interview went really well... for an Exchange Architect... Sounds like a really awesome opportunity. 90k+ users across multiple environments at a major global solutions provider. Work from home 95% of the time too. Comments at the end of the interview made it sound like I should be hearing from them again soon.

Essendon

Sounds really good, plus the work from home would be an icing on the cake I guess? Hope you get it!

Turgon

Everyone wrote: »

This interview went really well... for an Exchange Architect... Sounds like a really awesome opportunity. 90k+ users across multiple environments at a major global solutions provider. Work from home 95% of the time too. Comments at the end of the interview made it sound like I should be hearing from them again soon.

That would be a fantastic job if you could land it. I recommend you contact Royal on TE if you do get made the offer. The job will be difficult but having the Architect moniker will be great for your career. If you do get it expect to be spending many hours throwing yourself into learning every flavour of Exchange and quickly. Grab every book on amazon, build a lab and read all the white papers. Enterprise level Exchange work is challenging as a screw up is very visible.

Everyone

Turgon wrote: »

That would be a fantastic job if you could land it. I recommend you contact Royal on TE if you do get made the offer. The job will be difficult but having the Architect moniker will be great for your career. If you do get it expect to be spending many hours throwing yourself into learning every flavour of Exchange and quickly. Grab every book on amazon, build a lab and read all the white papers. Enterprise level Exchange work is challenging as a screw up is very visible.

Who's Royal, contact them for what?

I've been working with Exchange since 5.5, and have experience in every version of it up to and including 2010... 9 of my 12 years in IT have been working with it. All of it has been Enterprise level, I've never worked with less than 3000 users. The most has been 6000. I always have a lab, and the Exchange section of technet is my best friend.

Honestly I don't think they'd be talking to me at all if I didn't have the experience that I have. The job listing says they want someone with a degree, as well as MCITP and ITIL certifications. I have none of those.

It would be a huge jump in users for me, and the first time being part of a team dedicated to Exchange. I'm used to being the only guy working on it.

Yeah the Architect moniker is really appealing to me. The job from my OP has similar responsibilities, but the title is "Lead Analyst", and it's ~70k users for 1 global company, instead of a combined total of ~90k for multiple companies. Having the "Exchange Architect" title sounds a lot better to me.

I will probably be focusing on finishing up my MCITP: Enterprise Messaging, and ITIL v3 Foundations first if I get this job. I made it clear that these were certifications I'm working on and the only reason I don't already have them is because my current employer won't even reimburse me for them.

The interview ended with "You have some impressive experience and seem very knowledgeable. You're very well spoken, and seem like a good fit. We'll be going over our notes and you should hear from us again soon." Then they told me how the rest of the interview process should go, and that it should be moving very quickly.

Everyone

Everyone wrote: »

This interview went really well... for an Exchange Architect... Sounds like a really awesome opportunity. 90k+ users across multiple environments at a major global solutions provider. Work from home 95% of the time too. Comments at the end of the interview made it sound like I should be hearing from them again soon.

Got confirmation that it went really well today. The HR lady called to schedule another interview. She said "It sounds like your technical interview went really well, the team highly recommended you for a 1 on 1 interview with the hiring manager". She then scheduled me for that interview TOMORROW!

Essendon

Everyone wrote: »

Who's Royal, contact them for what?

royal is a forum member, the only MVP here and can be reached at his blog Elan Shudnow's Blog . I think Turgon was saying that if you needed any advice with anything Exchange, Elan (or royal) is the man to go to.

Just for the record, Elan knows Exchange better than anyone I have ever met in person or on this board.

TLeTourneau

Congratulations and good luck!

Turgon

Everyone wrote: »

Who's Royal, contact them for what?

I've been working with Exchange since 5.5, and have experience in every version of it up to and including 2010... 9 of my 12 years in IT have been working with it. All of it has been Enterprise level, I've never worked with less than 3000 users. The most has been 6000. I always have a lab, and the Exchange section of technet is my best friend.

Honestly I don't think they'd be talking to me at all if I didn't have the experience that I have. The job listing says they want someone with a degree, as well as MCITP and ITIL certifications. I have none of those.

It would be a huge jump in users for me, and the first time being part of a team dedicated to Exchange. I'm used to being the only guy working on it.

Yeah the Architect moniker is really appealing to me. The job from my OP has similar responsibilities, but the title is "Lead Analyst", and it's ~70k users for 1 global company, instead of a combined total of ~90k for multiple companies. Having the "Exchange Architect" title sounds a lot better to me.

I will probably be focusing on finishing up my MCITP: Enterprise Messaging, and ITIL v3 Foundations first if I get this job. I made it clear that these were certifications I'm working on and the only reason I don't already have them is because my current employer won't even reimburse me for them.

The interview ended with "You have some impressive experience and seem very knowledgeable. You're very well spoken, and seem like a good fit. We'll be going over our notes and you should hear from us again soon." Then they told me how the rest of the interview process should go, and that it should be moving very quickly.

It's good you have plenty of experience. Has it been mostly support or have you designed and migrated enterprise solutions? My first Exchange was 4.0 back in 1999 moving to 5.5 and the 2000 variants but I haven't had to worry about Exchange servers for a number of years now. Royal is someone who used to frequent the boards, much less regularly these days since he's been working as an Architect. Too busy to post I imagine.

Everyone

Essendon wrote: »

royal is a forum member, the only MVP here and can be reached at his blog Elan Shudnow's Blog . I think Turgon was saying that if you needed any advice with anything Exchange, Elan (or royal) is the man to go to.

Just for the record, Elan knows Exchange better than anyone I have ever met in person or on this board.

Oh, I've actually read his blog... I think I found a fix for an issue on it actually. Smart guy.

Turgon wrote:

It's good you have plenty of experience. Has it been mostly support or have you designed and migrated enterprise solutions? My first Exchange was 4.0 back in 1999 moving to 5.5 and the 2000 variants but I haven't had to worry about Exchange servers for a number of years now. Royal is someone who used to frequent the boards, much less regularly these days since he's been working as an Architect. Too busy to post I imagine.

Total life-cycle. From initial assessment, to architecture/design, then doing the implementation, then switching over into support/maintenance mode.

My first migration was a 5.5 to 2003 for 6000 users, but that was back in my early days, when I was just a young Airman. I had an "Exchange Ranger" (Microsoft Certified Architect) from Dell, and a couple of Microsoft Premier Field Engineers helping with that one. Learned a TON from them, great experience.

I did a lateral migration of 5000 users, non-clustered 2003 to clustered 2003. My most recent migration was just under 4000 users from a single server 2003 to a dual server 2010 DAG/HA setup. Both of those I did all by myself, and have been part of my post-military IT career.

It's funny you mention Exchange 4.0, I was just graduating HS back in 1999... but someone at my current employer found unopened copies of Microsoft Mail when we were cleaning out the datacenter. I have them sitting on my desk. I've been tempted to open them and try to install it on a VM just to see what it was like. Computers were still just a hobby for me, and something I only made a little extra $$$ off here and there back when that version was current. I didn't get into Enterprise level stuff until 2002.

Turgon

yes msmail was in the 5.5 mcp. i think you will do well in this role!

Everyone

Turgon wrote: »

yes msmail was in the 5.5 mcp. i think you will do well in this role!

Thanks. My 1 on 1 phone interview with the hiring manager went really well today. He said he will let me what his decision is by Tuesday. I think I really stood out with having a lot of leadership experience on top of my technical experience. He is looking for a "right hand man" to help him lead the rest of the team. We talked ITIL a little. I mentioned I had started studying for ITIL v3, but changed jobs before ever taking the test to get the cert. He told me he had just finished his ITIL v4 Foundations certification a couple months ago (sounded like a new requirement within the company) and didn't think I'd have any problems getting mine soon after starting if they hired me.

I also got an e-mail from the company I talked about in my OP of this thread, saying they are finishing up their decision process, and I should hear from them next week. I think this will end up going very well for me as I will potentially have 2 offers come in at the same time.

Thanks again everybody for all the support.

Everyone

I think there is a very high likelihood that I will receive an offer for the Exchange Architect position.

I received an e-mail from the company's internal recruiter telling me that the hiring manager was very interested in moving foward. Then a couple hours later I got an automated e-mail instructing me to logon to a secure site and complete an application form, along with consent forms for background checks and drug testing.

Essendon

Almost there! I'll stop short of saying Congratulations, until you confirm you got this gig! This Exchange position was within Microsoft, right?

Everyone

Essendon wrote: »

Almost there! I'll stop short of saying Congratulations, until you confirm you got this gig! This Exchange position was within Microsoft, right?

Nope, haven't heard back from Microsoft since my 2nd technical interview with them. The Microsoft job was "Premier Field Engineer". All of the jobs I've talked about in this thread are Exchange related. This was the one I forgot I even sent my resume to. The major global hosted solutions provider with over 90k users combined in the datacenter I'll be working out of. I'll reveal names for all the companies I talked about in this thread once I've accepted an offer.

I sent my resume to this company back in May, they didn't contact me until last Friday, had my initial phone screening then, followed by a technical interview with 4 people on Tuesday, and 1 on 1 with the manager today. Everything has been over the phone. Took a long time for them to contact me, but it's moved very quickly since they did.

Everyone

Things with the Exchange Architect position just got a little more interesting... I got a call today asking to setup a face to face interview with the Director, which would the boss of the hiring manager that I already interviewed with. She (his secretary) said he wanted to meet with me ASAP, and asked how tomorrow morning would work for me. Small problem, I have to work tomorrow, but I could probably take a PTO day... I told her I'd try to get the day off and call her back before I got off work at 2:30. She tells me she doesn't want me to have to take the day off, and they'll try to work around my schedule, so she'll call me back. Calls right back no more than 3 minutes later, and tells me that the Director told her 30 minutes on the phone would work just the same. So now I am supposed to call the Director tomorrow when I get off work.

I wasn't expecting another interview, so perhaps this call will be to discuss an offer? I'm not really sure what to expect. The hiring manager, who would be my boss if I took this job, works out of another location in another state... he is a "Senior Manager" for this team, and this Director is his boss. This Director works out of the datacenter that is ~60 miles from where I live.

I noticed the job listing for the position in my OP is no longer up on the company's website. As I mentioned I got an e-mail Friday saying they should be in touch with me this week regarding their decision. It's only Tuesday so I'm not worried yet. I figure I will follow up with them on Friday, or if I get an offer from another company, whichever comes first.

TLeTourneau

Good luck and keep us updated!

YuckTheFankees

Im interested to hear how the call went!

Everyone

Hmm, so I just got an e-mail from the hiring manager for the job from my OP... similar situation with them. He wants me to schedule 30 minutes to speak with his Director now too, for Thursday.

I'm at the same point in the process with both companies, so I'm hoping being sent past the hiring manager level to the Director level means offer time.

YuckTheFankees

Thats awesome, Im beginning my search now...your thread gives me hope lol

Everyone

No offers yet, my call with the Director for the Exchange Architect position yesterday turned out to be an additional interview. I guess he just came over from another large (and rather prestigious) company a few months ago, because he wanted to get back to this area. Sounds like he is trying to make a lot of changes/improvements, and wants to bring in some "fresh blood" to help with it. I think it went well. At the end of the call, he said I should hear from their HR today.

I also got a call from the hiring manager for the other job yesterday, giving me a heads up on why I'm talking to the Director for that one this afternoon. I guess they are a little concerned about hiring someone and having them work from home right off the bat, and she wants to speak with me directly regarding it.

gorebrush

/grabs popcorn

Very nice position to be in my friend.


Best of luck, indeed!