I'm FINALLY getting around to writing this thread. Sorry about the wait. It's been a crazy couple of weeks and I was dealing with the flu and bronchitis at the same time so I didn't really have a lot of energy to write a long thread.
As many of you may know, I've been working two jobs for the last two and a half months. I was giving a new job for a cloud provider a trial run for three months to find out if it was a good fit while I worked my old job as a security analyst during the night. Both employers knew the deal and both knew I could leave either one at the end of the three months.
Working for the cloud provider was a great opportunity and if I was more of the "system administration" type, I probably would have left each day feeling more satisfied with my work. There were some other things that made me hesitate. After 2.5 months, there were some issues that came up and some things that REALLY made me question if I wanted to continue on with them or not. After thinking about it for some time, I made the decision to quit the cloud provider last Monday night. Unfortunately, the flu and bronchitis had other plans so I couldn't go in on Tuesday to quit and I was sick for the rest of the week.
I've known for awhile now that I really love networking and that's where I want to be long-term in my career. For the last few years, I feel like I've been passing up a lot of opportunities for advancement so I could finish school, establish experience, etc so I made the decision to actually start pursuing what I want to be doing. On Wednesday night, I decided to be productive while I was coughing my lungs out and updated my resume on Monster, Dice, Indeed, and Hotjobs. I also asked a friend of mine in San Jose to pass my resume on to his manager since he just moved up there for an entry-level network engineer job and I knew they were still looking. By Thursday morning, I had 7 calls on my cell from my updated resume and an email from my friend's boss.
I weeded out most of the callbacks as jobs I didn't want (Too little pay, terms didn't sound good, etc). One of the ones that REALLY stood out to me was this contract job in Los Angeles. The recruiter that called me knew my minimum hourly rate from my online profile ($50/hr) and was completely fine with it. He explained to me that the company where the position was open was looking for someone fresh out of college, who loved networking, had CCNA-level knowledge, and willing to learn. Of course, I immediately exclaimed, "THAT'S ME!" (Ok, I was a little overzealous sounding on this call but I blame the cough meds). The recruiter asked me why I would leave my solid long-time job with benefits to pursue this opportunity that would likely end in the middle of next year. I explained my circumstances honestly: I am dating a med student who will graduate next year and we will have to locate to wherever she gets matched for residency. Since I will likely have to move, having a temporary contract that allows me to acquire enterprise-level network experience would be perfect for me.
He said he would pass this information along to the IT director at the company. He called me back to let me know that the IT director was very skeptical given my credentials and my experience and the fact that he thought I would get bored in an entry-level network engineer position but since the IT director was stuck in traffic on the 405 at that moment, he would give me the chance to give him a call and do a pre-screening interview over the phone.
So I call the IT director and the conversation starts out well. I explain to him my circumstances and how passionate I am about networking. During this part of the conversation, I'm getting a pretty good vibe from this guy. He seems extremely intelligent. He starts throwing some technical questions my way to establish that I understand basic networking concepts and I went through them easily enough. He threw a few hilarious trick questions in there thinking I wouldn't catch onto them or to figure out if I was googling or not (I.e. "Please explain a 3-way UDP handshake to me," "List some layer 8 protocols," etc). Those questions had me cracking up and it broke the ice a little that I wasn't phased by them. So he then asks me if I have any questions for him and with my best serious voice: "To determine if you would be a good fit as an employer for me, I need to gauge how nerdy you are. Please list your ten top nerdy qualifications. Seriously, if you like sci-fi, role-playing games, or whatever, this is the time in the interview where you would bring that up." (I'm still blaming the cough syrup on this one!) That turned into a 15 minute conversation on Star Trek, gaming, and BSG and ended with having an in-person interview with his three network engineers the next day.
(Sidenote: I have to give this guy an ENORMOUS amount of credit for completely ignoring me hitting mute on the phone every 5 minutes so I could cough up a lung and not mentioning the fact that I sounded like I had bad smoker voice
Crystal smokers voice - YouTube)
So the next day, I medicated myself, put my interview clothes on, and made my way to Los Angeles bright and early. I ended up doing a phone interview in a random parking lot for the San Jose job about an hour before the interview (which went well) and then made my way up to the interview. The interview with the IT director went well. He showed me the kind of Visio documents and SOWs that he would expect out of someone in this position and I was honest about the learning curve I would have. He then asked me if I had a choice, what would I pick to work on: Data, VOIP, or Video over IP. I, of course, said that I would love to get my hands on ALL of them but if I had to choose, I would go with data. He said that was the right answer. We talked about our CISSP exam/certification experience for like 20 minutes. He then called his network engineers in to interview me on their own and left the room.
They grilled me on some technical questions but that wasn't really the important part of that interview. They asked me about my willingness to learn, how much I wanted to learn, explained the job, etc and seemed impressed by my eagerness. I also asked them if this all didn't work out and I didn't get the interview, I would love to have them add me on Linkedin so I could pick their brains on how they got to where they are now (I definitely NEVER say anything like this on interviews usually. I pretty much did everything you shouldn't do in your interviews in these two interviews. Do NOT do this!!) We wrapped things up and they told me that they would let me know by Tuesday.
Within 60 minutes of walking out, I get a text message from the IT director saying "Are you sure you want to work here?" to which I replied "OF COURSE!" He replied "Welcome aboard. BTW, since you're into gaming, would you like a free Diablo 3 key?" Of course I said yes to that!
So, in the end, I was completely unorthodox in my interview, sick out of my mind, and ended up with a job and Diablo 3. Huzzah!
The San Jose job is still in the air. I'm supposed to fly to San Jose on Saturday to do an interview but I'm not sure if that one will even pan out or not. I'd like to give the interview a shot since my buddy did put himself out there. While it's a great position with a pre-IPO company that's going public next year, I don't even know if my SO is going to get a residency in San Jose so getting a job that I will have to leave in a year might not be the best thing for me.
Yesterday I quit the cloud job and I put in two weeks notice at my security analyst job. I'm going to spend the next two weeks restudying my CCNA material and trying my hardest not to play Diablo 3 (It's like CRACK!)
