Chad: How's the search going? Hopefully some of those jobs work out.
Thanks for asking. Nothing signed yet.
Back at the end of August I had a recruiter screening interview with a company and the guy mentioned he would get me in the queue for the next steps. Nothing happened. A couple weeks later I replied to their system's email to me which set up the interview since I did not have a contact for the guy I had spoken with. The system replied that it was forwarding my request to someone but I never heard back. Imagine my surprise when the middle of last week I get an automated email from their system, saying they were scheduling the first round and would I please use the link to choose a time that best fit for me. It looked like another recruit screening and the guy's name was the same. I scheduled one and it was yesterday. So I hopped on to the interview and it was the same guy and he started going over what the position was and stuff -- typical recruits screenings where they ask some basic questions of you to confirm things from your resume or technical points they need to confirm and then they review the job description, company, culture, ways of working, etc to see if you're till interested. He then asked about where I was salary expectation-wise. That's when I told him -- "dude, we've had this discussion already -- about a month ago". (And yes it was about like that -- he is a young guy in a t-shirt and looks like an engineer despite being a recruiter so I spoke to him that way -- besides we're already spent 30 minutes a month ago speaking). He then said that he thought I was familiar in the back of his mind and apologized and said the job had been on hold a few weeks while they figured out which manager was taking over the team and stuff like that and that their automated system was kind of disorganized. He had gone back to the list of applicants and found the ones he thought fit and contacted them which is why he had come back to me with the invite. He said he would send me on to the next level and also send me his personal contact information through email in case I needed to follow up. And lo and behold, a little later not only did I get an email from him but I got anther email from their system to schedule what I assume is the next level -- 45 min this time -- but it still has his name on it for some reason. I need to email him and ask but I did schedule it for Thursday afternoon.
At the beginning of September or end of August (or beginning of middle of August) I had also spoken to another two companies. One was back in August when I spoke to their recruiter and he was going to send me to the next level, which was with the hiring manager. The team is "local" to me -- about 30 min away -- though the company is a national company. The manager was on vacation so he said it m ight be a week or so. But I heard nothing. I tried to follow up but didn't get anywhere when after about 3 weeks I had not heard back. So I figured that was over but then a week or two later I got an email asking to schedule an interview with the manager. So I did and I had that interview 2 1/2 weeks ago. Actually it will be 3 weeks tomorrow. It was with the hiring manager but was mostly just going over the job description, some questions about me, and then the guy explaining the team culture etc, all of which meshed with how I work. He said he (or someone for him) would get back to me "next week" about scheduling an onsite interview with the team etc. I've heard nothing since. This last Friday I emailed the recruiter admin assistant who had scheduled me and Monday the guy got back saying he was forwarding it to the actual recruit I had spoken with originally but I have not heard anything.
About the same time a place local that I had also recently applied at contacted me. It was like a little over 3 weeks ago I had a phone screen call with the actual hiring manger. No recruiter in between. He said he would then set me up for a short initial technical interview and indeed we scheduled that for a couple days later. Incidentally this second interview was on teh same day as the one with the other local manager I mentioned above. He was not an iOS engineer but managed their engineers and had me work through some small puzzle type things online where I told him what I wanted to do and he put it into the screen to test and run it since it was in JavaScript, which I don't do. I solved all the problems and he said I was pretty good as I had chosen a solution which was different than most and in my opinion a much better one as it was simpler, less "dangerous" and easier to understand. (It involved looping over the data from the end to the front instead of the front to the end which is importat as it was a test of changing / deleting data in place in a list (array) and going forward opened up a lot more problems.). He too said I would hear "next week" but I've not heard a thing. I also pinged him by email last Friday afternoon but have not heard anything.
A couple weeks ago I applied at one job and like a wee later, ;art week, I got an email thanking me for applying and that they were starting to process the applications and they would get back to me. The next day I had an email from the recruiter asking when I was available for a short talk. I mentioned some times and he emailed me back and suggested one. This first one was just a phone call. That was yesterday and though scheduled for 30 minutes lasted only 15. He explained the company nd how they work and what the job was and asked me a few questions and said I would hear back for next steps. He emailed later that day asking when I had an hour to meet with teh managers and senior engineer he had mentioned and I emailed him a list of times I had available starting Thursday. I have not heard back from him yet but I think he's trying to match their schedules since there were two higher level managers he mentioned and one senior engineer so I expect to hear back tomorrow or the next day. We'll see.
Finally, I applied at one place tonight and shortly thereafter got an invitation to schedule 1 hour 45 minutes for an online technical evaluation. They either have a guy watching you or an automated system recording you on camera and your screen and they have you download a project and then work through some changes or whatever to see how you approach the problem. They gave a long description of it. I have not scheduled it yet but will take the next few days to really pound the technology they mentioned they were look at in tis evaluation because it is the weakest one for me but the one I've ben working on improving and am the most excited about anyway, but have not had a lot of time recently to work on. It's the one I've been converting my DCC train throttle project to for the user interface part anyway but I've just been super busy with teh house and job search. So I'll be working that for a couple days as well as reviewing tutorials and a prior project I did in it for this technical evaluation. I'll pick their link tomorrow to see when I should scuttle it. Its as late enough today that waiting until tomorrow should be fine...
So there are potentially 5 things that could be interesting or where I have had or should have further interviews. But who knows how they will work out. I've been interviewed by several places including through their whole process and not been successful.
Sorry for the long answer to the short question.
