The day before the layoff

Phrase of the day: "The rain falls on the righteous and the wicked."  This was meant to be a thing about blessings, I think, since rain was scarce in that place at that time, and it makes things grow and keeps things alive.  In the Midwest, we act like it's a negative: sometimes it pours when you don't have an umbrella, and the rain that's soaking you doesn't care if you're good or bad: it just falls.  And that's the thing.  Whether you look at this as something about blessings or curses, things happen to people, and you don't get to control them.  This is life in a fallen world.

The week before the layoff: Tuesday

I wonder if this is the last Tuesday I will take this route to work past the half-dead, half-alive tree and the marsh.  Will this be the last Tuesday I do work at this desk surrounded by this three-sided view of clouds watching this plant shiver as heavy machinery moves the floor?  Will this be the last Tuesday I go to this store and then that store and get gas at this gas station and then go home? 

I pray it will be the last Tuesday I ever have to do research on hip surgery (while contemplating potential job and insurance loss). 

Will tomorrow be the day that everything falls apart for me like it did for my cube-neighbor today?  He was one of our managers, an irreplaceable expert.  But they did tell us that this lay-off had nothing to do with how good we are.  It is a thing of cold, hard numbers, HR and finance, not our bosses or those who work with us and give us performance bonuses. 

Now I wish again that I had maintained my goal of only achieving expectations.  Who knew that exceeding them would have the consequence of making me more attractive to a cut based on numbers?

When the storyline diverges

Did you ever read Dune by Frank Herbert?  It's kind of a sci-fi classic, but I never finished it.  I got stuck in the part where the main character started to see all these diverging futures, and it made him a little insane.  I can kind of understand that because I'm dealing with no more than three, and it's wearing me out.

In one most likely future, I stay here with my current job but purchase a decent condo or townhome to move into when my lease expires this summer.  (Other variations involve extending my lease 3-6 months and going after the perfect short sale home and possibly getting a roommate or subletting from someone else/moving in as someone else's roommate while looking for that short sale home, thus necessitating two moves in the space of a year, which is . . . problematic.)

In the other future, I get a job elsewhere, and I have to purchase a condo or townhome in another state to move into this summer at the same time as I start the new job.  House hunting from afar is . . . difficult.

The timing is bad/good because I think I'll likely end up moving at the same time either way, so there will definitely be packing, and I can get a head start on that.  See?  I can be positive!

The closer I get to the divergence, the more I feel like I'm living two lives.  I have to put all my eggs in both baskets because there will be serious repercussions and difficulties if I neglect one or the other.  I thought I was having enough trouble trying to fully commit to one life.

Well, Paul (if that was your name) I think with your tons of future vision diverging paths, you were entitled to a little bit of insanity.

Your reader/writer advantage in job interviews

While preparing (for over 30 hours) for this job interview I just had, I was able to experiment with using stories for job interviews, and it was a unique challenge.

The idea is that if you can come up with maybe 10 stories to tell, you'll be more impressive, interesting, and memorable in your interview.  Each story should cover multiple areas they might ask about in an interview, so they can be adapted on the fly.  You can even use the same story to answer more than one question, and you won't have to spend time on the background/setup, so even the way you answer the questions shows organization and efficiency. 

All four of those interviews went very well, from what my friend at the company was able to find out, so I decided to write a little bit about the process in case it can be of any use to you as writers and readers of stories.

1. Research questions asked at interviews.  Read books.  Especially helpful are books that provide examples of answers that show what information the interviewer is really looking for when asking certain questions.  I was shocked when one of my interviewers asked me a really off-the-wall question and then said, "What we want to learn from your answer is how you use skill X."  I want to work for that interviewer; he is way better than any book.  Anyway, the more questions you can see, the more ideas you can get for good answers. 
2. Take lots of notes.  The more notes you take about good ways to answer well, the more you will have learned those phrasings for good answers.  Mark questions that you really don't want to answer, ones you read and immediately pray, "Dear God, please don't let them ask me this," or ones that you think you'll likely be asked because of the kind of job you're interviewing for.  Basically, you're leaving a trail in your notes of questions you'll want to revisit and be sure to be ready for.
3. Start thinking about the stories for questions you least want to answer but know they will ask.  (Ex. "Tell me about a weakness" or "What is one thing you need to improve" or "Tell me about a time you made a mistake and how you handled the situation" or "Tell me about a time you were working for someone you really couldn't get along with")  The books are not kidding when they tell you that kind of question will come up more than once in every interview.  Some strategies for dealing with these questions are as follows:
   
   • talk about a weakness that has nothing to do with the job,
   • talk about an aspect of your personality that is both a strength and a weakness,
   • talk about a weakness you had and how you overcame it or compensated for it so that it is a strength now,
   • talk about a problem briefly and spend a lot of time emphasizing what you learned from it and how you prevented it from happening again.
     The latter two strategies make you seem smarter to the interviewer. 
4. Brainstorm story ideas.  Focus on ones that star you (alone and part of a group), have happy endings, or taught you valuable lessons.
5. Draft stories.  Using a format like SAR (situation/action/result) can help you keep things focused and concise, but there are so many structures you can use.  Check out Tell Me About Yourself: Storytelling to Get Jobs and Propel Your Career for great lists.  Anyway, keep it under 350 words.
6. Talk through these stories out loud.  Some phrases that look spiffy on paper just don't work aloud.
7. Title your stories.  You don't get extra points for cleverness here.  Just use 1-3 words that instantly identify the story in your brain.  You may have to remember the whole story based just on these three words, so don't make it hard on your brain.
8. List kinds of strengths/traits/topics each answer shows. (Ex. organizational or interpresonal skills, problem-solving, logic, patience, respect of colleagues, project management, handling failure, flexibility, task-orientation, etc.)
9. Have someone who can be objective read the stories and give you feedback about where you may be saying something you don't intend or when a particularly evil follow up question could arise. 
10. Revise your stories until you're satisfied with them.
11. Cut your stories down to key words and phrases for notes.
12. Talk through the stories using only those notes. 
13. Repeat.  This part is hard if you are not a good public speaker, so the more time you leave for practicing here, the more natural you will be able to sound when you're in an interview.  You are not memorizing a script; it's more like you're programming your brain with keywords and then speaking extemporaneously.  Since you don't have it memorized, it doesn't sound memorized.
14. If you can cut your notes down further here, do it.  You never know if they will even let you have notes, so if you can get everything typed onto one piece of paper, do so.  Half a sheet would be even better because then you could actually attach it to the notebook you brought along to take notes and be able to use it really unobtrusively.
15. Practice with someone.  Use only your notes.  Yes, it is way harder to answer a question someone just threw at you, and you need to practice accessing the info you've stored on your notes and in your head and adapting it to fit questions you're unprepared for.  You will probably be terrible at first, so you should do this a lot.
16. Make sure you are up early enough that you can talk through each of your stories clearly and intelligently with very little use of the notes before you even leave for the interview.  You can keep doing this on the way to the interview (unless you are on public transportation because people will look at you funny).  Read through some of those questions you marked in your notes all the way back at step 2, and practice connecting your stories to them.
17. Be sure to get there so early that you will be able to be calm and rational.  Review your strategies, questions you have for the interviewers, and interview etiquette.
18. Pray.

I can't say it worked for me since I probably won't get the job due to lack of experience, but it does feel good to have given the best interview I could give.  Don't let the interview be the thing that disqualifies you.  Use your natural affinity for stories to your advantage!

Teaching yourself things you don't know

Wow, have I been reading a lot of nonfiction lately.

• 101 Smart Questions to Ask on Your Interview: This is a really excellent book if you didn't know what you were supposed to do in a job interview when they ask if you have any questions. There are so very many great questions to ask (and many not to ask). I can't wait to ask some of them (the ones you're supposed to ask, not the ones you're not), so I want to get another interview soon.  Preferably before I forget or finish this notebook.
• XML: My head hurts. I learned HTML coding the old school, HTML-editors-are-for-wusses way. In some ways, XML using an editor with pre-formatted tags should be easier, right? Now if I could just figure out what they mean when they say XML doesn't do anything, but it carries data. Carrying data is doing something, right? Wrong, apparently. I think I need to see it in action because the descriptions just don't make sense. (None of the eight I've looked at so far . . .)
• JavaScript: Same thing with JavaScript; I think I need to actually play with coding it myself, so I can understand it. I keep reminding myself that Flash was a total enigma, too, until I took a class and did it myself. It was very ugly at first, but I learned.  Eventually.

Any nonfiction you're slogging through to learn something from right now?

Is lack of rejection similar to acceptance?

At this point, I haven't heard back from any magazines or journals I've sent work to.  Right now, I'm fine with that.  If they haven't actually sent me a rejection, then it's as if I haven't been rejected.  Even if I sent them a self-addressed, stamped envelope.  Seriously.

What is with this trend of rudeness, I wonder?  I've encountered it a lot as I've been searching for jobs.  They don't even bother to tell you to give up hope.  It's probably because they're too busy sorting through all the applications they're inundated with because of the high unemployment rate, but I still feel like there are standards of common courtesy.

Oh, well.  There's not much I can do about it except keep sending out work and hoping that someone will send some acceptances instead.  :)

Someone else's good rant for anyone with a job (dreamy or otherwise)

Well, Patrick Rothfuss is still at work on his next book(s), for which I am happy!  He recently posted this bit about being a writer.  It made me laugh.

"But the gist of my theory is that, in general, people think of writers as a different sort of person. And by extension, writing is a different sort of work. It's strange and wonderful. It's a mystic process. It can't be quantified. It's not chemistry, it's alchemy.

"While some of that is true, this belief makes it really difficult for me to bitch about my job."

Ah.  It is indeed "an inalienable right," in my opinion, to complain about one's job.