Thanksgiving

Sorry it's been a while. With the dearth of job news and the approach of the end of November, I stopped thinking about my future and focused on finishing up at my present job. I'm trying to get a paper ready for publication. I've written my draft and am still waiting for my boss to make his suggestions for changes. It's been about three weeks now since I've given him my draft. I received my last paycheck from Northwestern, so (now that I'm allowed to find another job) it might be harder to find time to work on the paper. My boss knows this, so I guess it will all work out. It just may take longer to get the paper published. And I don't really care about time to publication, as long as I get my Master's degree before my wife gets her Ph. D.

I guess you could say that things are looking up on the job front. I still haven't gotten an offer, but the patent law firm told me Wednesday that they are still considering me; they just want to make sure that they can afford the hires they are planning to make. At least, that's what she told me. At any rate, I should now hear from both the patent law firm and the engineering firm around the same time - in a few weeks.

In the meantime, I'm gonna find a temporary job. I contacted actual temp agencies, but they don't have anything for me, it seems. Monday, after taking care of a few things at Northwestern, I'm going to walk around Evanston looking for "help wanted" signs. It won't be a sabbatical like I was describing previously. I guess I'm not planning on having to do this temporary job for long. I'll let you know how that goes.

I'm thankful that I have a loving, supportive family. I'm thankful I live in a time in which I'm allowed to decide what I want to do for a living.

No More Interviews For Now

I had my second interview on Friday (11/14) with the engineering firm. It was another of these day-long things where I met with about 9 people who currently work for the company. I think it went well, but it's always so hard to tell. I mean, I didn't embarrass myself, and I think I answered the questions intelligently. They told me I'd hear about a job within a month.

So that's it. I have no more interviews lined up. My paper is "due" Friday. After that, I'm jobless! Here's where my prospects stand:

Engineering firm: Completed second interview. Should hear within a month.

Patent law firm: Completed first interview that was a lot like a second interview. Should hear this week.

Design firm: Nothing. They seemed interested, but never responded when I tried contacting them. I'm going to try contacting them again.

That's not a lot of prospects, but I don't feel like I've been job-searching full-time. I gave my info to a temp agency last week. I'm going to call the Monday to see how long their process takes.

It's exciting to be entering into this uncertain period of my life. I don't know what I'm going to be doing for (either temporary or permanent) work in two weeks. I wonder how many times in my life I'll get to feel this sense of not being attached; I should try to enjoy it.

My older brother is looking for a place to live. He has to leave his current residence 12/1. My little brother is deciding on college. He's already been accepted to one place. I am trying to find a new job. I stop getting paid 11/30. Lots of change!

The Four-hour Work Week

This is not a recent read of mine. I read it in the summer of 2007. But you might say that this is where the idea that I can design my life came from. The guy who wrote this book, Tim Ferrell, is quite a character. He seems to be living his life more fully than anyone else on Earth: he holds a world record in Tango dancing, he is a champion Thai kick-boxer, he's learned German break-dancing in Germany, and so on. In the book, he describes how he designed his life to make all of that possible. It all revolves around passive income.

The book starts off with a description of how he began his life and what made him decide to make his life awesome. Then he lays out how he did what he did. To begin, he started a small business without much capital or intellectual property; he had a vitamin company sell a relabel of their product under his name (I'm still a little unclear how that works). Using this business, he refined his selling and advertising strategies to an extremely-efficient science. After this, he just had to hire someone to do what he was doing and remove himself from the process (while still making some money from the whole deal). Then, he moved on to starting other, more-involved businesses. But his goal is always to remove himself from the business so that he makes money by doing nothing. It seems to work very well for him.

The rest of the book is the fun part: he shows you how to do what he did. He explains how to calculate how much money you need each month (for necessities and for things you want), how to get ideas for businesses, how to automate your business, how to learn from other people's business plans, how to market, how to get cheap advertising in magazines, and more that I can't remember. He really lays out a detailed plan that I feel anyone can follow.

At the very least, it's exciting to read and imagine what your life could be like. He really makes it sound like you could do what he does. But that raises the question "If it's so attainable, have you done it?" The answer, of course, is "no". There are plenty of excuses: "I'm too busy" and "I can't afford it" are the big ones (both of which he discusses in the book). The actual reason is that it is scary and maybe I don't need all that freedom.

While I never did anything with the book, it did instill in me a feeling of power over life, that it's within our abilities to make our lives more like what we want. It taught me a little about the power of confidence and the old saying "the squeaky wheel gets greased".

Interview updates

Since going to the Career Fair at Northwestern, I've had interviews with three companies. The first was with GE Healthcare. The job I was applying for would have me in three different locations for 8 months each. I wasn't sure that I take the job if it were offered to me. I guess the first interview went fine because they wanted to do a second interview in Wisconsin. They asked if I would be available 11/5 and 11/6. I told them I couldn't leave town 11/5 (my secret reason being that I had an interview with a company I'm more interested in that day). The lady I talked to said they'd try to schedule another day for me. I recently found out that they couldn't do that, so they just stopped pursuing me for the job. They'll keep me in mind for future openings, but I'm not expecting anything to come of that.

Wednesday (11/5) I had my first interview with a small Chicago engineering firm. They said I'd know within a week. I thought that meant that I'd have a job offer within a week, but it actually meant that I'd know whether they wanted a second interview. I found out on Friday (11/7) that they want a second interview, but it's going to be hard to schedule. I learned my lesson from GE: accept whatever date they offer.

Friday (11/7) I had my first interview with a Chicago patent law firm. This interview had the flavor of a second interview, though, because I didn't sit in a room and talk to one person; in 3.5 hours, I met with seven partners and was taken out to lunch by two, more-junior members of the firm. I think it went well, though I have no timeline for when the decisions get made.

I hope to have another book review up tomorrow.

Interviews and Elections

Nothing insightful today. Just a little update.

I had an interview today with a small engineering firm in Chicago. I'm super interested in working for them. I'd be a sort-of consultant, my co-workers would be really smart people, I'd get to learn lots of new technology, and I'd get to interface with all sorts of other industry people. The interview went well, for the most part.

I have an interview of Friday with a patent law firm. They'd teach me all the legal stuff; I'd be in charge of meeting with the inventors and turning the technical stuff into legal language. I previously said that I'm not interested in patent law based on my aptitudes, but now I could see patent law being satisfying. I guess I just want to learn more about it. The interview is Friday morning from 9:30am to 1:00pm. I'll meet 6 to 8 people during that time. Sounds grueling.

Here's something: I think presidential elections are a lot less scary when you don't feel like the world is at stake. I know someone who said that if Obama were elected, there wouldn't be an America. Something about Obama socializing the hell out of everything and making much worse our economic situation. I know someone else who said that if McCain were elected, he would die in office, Palin would be president, and she would prevent all science funding because she is so anti-science. Both of these people relate very strongly with their respective political party and find it difficult to talk to folks who identify with the opposing party because it's so obvious how the "other" candidate would ruin the country. Their intense fear of a possible outcome leads to a failure to communicate with those who may disagree.

This is only tenuously related to job interviews. Getting desperate and feeling like the job you are interviewing for is your only hope will ruin you. That fear will lead to a failure to communicate. Remember that you can *always* get back out there and find someone to hire you. This engineering firm I talked with today is the only engineering firm on my radar right now. If they don't hire me and I feel like it's the sort of place I belong, I can start cold calling for leads like I did with the design firms. I find that it's much easier to believe this line of thinking having done it already. I recommend the experience for anyone thinking about changing careers.

High hopes, low expectations

If you meet with the Human Resources person at a company for an informational interview and he says he likes your enthusiasm and says that he can see you are interested and shows you around the facilities and introduces you to everyone on the team and tells you that he could use someone with your abilities at least temporarily and tells you to call the Head of Engineering in a week to continue the discussion of your possible employment with the company and makes you say to yourself as you leave "Wow, I just wanted to learn more about his job, and now I might end up working there!", it *does not* mean that anybody at the company will return your calls.

Aptitude test results

I did my second round of aptitude testing Wednesday (10/29). I also had a free consultation to discuss my results. So I learned a lot. Before I go into what I learned about myself, let me explain about aptitudes.

An aptitude is an innate ability that you have. These aptitudes are isolated and measured by tests designed at the Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation. The best measure of an aptitude is your percentile score on these tests compared to others in your age group. Your percentile won't vary as you age (which is to say that you'll always outperform the same fraction of the population of your age group). So, by construction, these aptitudes are with you for life and can't be learned or forgotten. The aptitudes fall into these general categories (I don't have my results handy, so this is from memory): Convergent thinking (purpose-driven thinking), divergent thinking (idea-generating thinking), musical, spatial, physical, clerical, and memory.

Knowing your aptitudes helps with career decisions. If you have a job in which you must use aptitudes you don't have, you will feel frustrated and bad at your job. If you have a job which doesn't require aptitudes you do have, you must find an outlet for the unused aptitudes or you will feel unfulfilled and restless. Thankfully, aptitudes have many outlets. For instance, music composition requires both all of the musical aptitudes (for differentiating and remembering rhythms and pitches) and some of the spatial aptitudes (for conceptualizing the different layers of the music).

After taking the 20 or so tests to measure your different aptitudes, you have a one-on-one meeting with someone who works at the Foundation about the results and how they can guide you in your career decisions. Again, I don't have my results handy, but here's generally what I learned: I have a lot of aptitudes. I'm not great with small tools and I'm probably not great at physical labor in general, but otherwise I'm full of aptitude.

This isn't awesome news. It's going to take some work to find a way to incorporate all of my aptitudes into my life. Work takes up a lot of our lives, so it makes sense to try to match up as many aptitudes as possible with our choice of career, but, as I hinted at above, work isn't the only possible outlet. Hobbies do just fine for aptitude use, so long as they are hobbies you take seriously and partake in regularly. So, it's not impossible to find ways to regularly use my aptitudes, but it will be hard.

They do give one personality test. It tells you whether you are an objective or subjective person; I'm 100% subjective (I didn't give a single objective response). This means I want to be a specialist, someone who people respect for my knowledge and abilities in one area, someone who doesn't separate work and life (this blog is evidence of that). They gave me some suggestions for career paths based on my subjective personality and my strong spatial aptitudes (since a job is either strongly spatial or not spatial at all). The suggestions aren't meant to be the end-all-be-all for me, especially considering that spatialness isn't my only strong suit; one of the suggestions was "research scientist". I could probably be a good research scientist in a field I understood a little better, but as it is I can't use my divergent thinking aptitudes very much because I can't understand all the possibilities.

I could go on forever about what this all means. I've said most of the important stuff I wanted to say. There is one more thing: the good news. This information does help me know, once I've looked into a career, whether or not I'd like it. Patent law, for instance, is out, since it involves mainly convergent thinking and not much else. Design in definitely still in. And so on. I have a lot more information to work with now. It's overwhelming, but I think it will lead to better results, once I narrow down the options.

Let's say I get a job in December. Am I going to keep planning my whole life, trying to find the perfect job? Is this going to stop me from ever being happy with my work? The aptitude tests aren't designed to account for interests or training. As it's always been, the decision is ultimately up to me.