Repose Was Too Small

On January 11 I wrote that I walked to Haight Street and caught a six to Divisadero. The coffee shop Repose was too small so I checked with my acquaintance and we agreed to got to to Vinyl.  We sat talking about a local politician we knew and the conversation I had had with another acquaintance the day before. I segued to what I wanted and who I wanted to emulate.

I noted I wanted to be a senior or supervising analyst and I noted that the local politician we knew was a good model. We started writing things down at this point.

I took pictures of the notes she wrote and she gave me some other stuff. She asked what I wanted to do it as a job because I explained my role as an analyst and described my commute. She asked about my resume statement. I said I wanted to be in San Francisco. She wrote down that I wanted to have more responsibility because that contributed to my long-term prospects. She noted that I didn't want to be a contractor.

I wrote these things down to but I noted her contention that I while it was clear that I wanted to be in San Francisco as an FTE, I still needed to further unpack that.

For instance she said I was a teacher, guide, trainer, advisor and liked to do research. I noted that she seemed to be segueing into a new topic. This is when she said yes and asked why I wanted a city job. Then she listed out ways that I person would work for the city. She listed out staffing agencies and suggested that there were many other avenues.

Before she started writing in her notebook – sort of to summarize – she said that yes the list of reasons/ways is long but I would also want to pay attention to benefits and opportunities. She said it was important to have many irons in the fire.

I noted yes I wanted benefits and the chance of promotion. However, benefits included remuneration and severance is well.

Here she suggested her planner friend because she was similar to our politician friend but was also more like me. She had hired a career coach that help her negotiate salary. She used to work at a city agency.

She went on to say that an informational interview was like a job interview except the questions aren't about what jobs the interviewee has but what jobs anyone has.

As a recap she confirmed from her discussion a different avenues to a city job by writing out the question, "who knows someone?” I listed out a few places and noted that her friend did 10 years at a biotech firm as a purchasing person after my acquaintance had landed her a job.

This is when we discussed the book What Color Is My Parachute which she had read. She wrote out some bullets: location, company type, the kind of people, skills and subject area.  I had noted already that I wanted to work in San Francisco and bike to work. I noted that I wanted to be at a firm that treated people well and had good benefits. My acquaintance added things like “not a start up” and said I wanted to be with people that were like the ones at the happy hour we regularly attended.

We discussed University work and our professor friend came up. I said however that the application process for those jobs (or any for that matter) were onerous. After this she suggested I change the job description in my resume to first person. I told her how it was optimized for CareerBuilder.

She started to say I wanted to second resume that had a stated objective. She said that it should be the kind of resume that describes job type, skills, etc. She said that I would want to summarize my skills – GIS, dB and research,

I noted that I would list expertise and accomplishments. From here I noted that I would list employment history but instead of what I had I would write first person. "I mapped… I research… I built utilities QA QC etc.…”

Here I shared my lifestyle ideas and said that I was kind of living it already. I also described the advocacy stuff but I had told her about this already. I also mentioned things about research ideas. I noted that I would go see a local transit advocate.

When I knew it was time to go so we said bye and she said she would email introduce her friend to me.

This series of experiences are conversations that I have had with knowledgeable people about my career or job interests. This Interview Series is meant to describe the basic elements of an interview and how I have gone about participating in one.