Enough time has passed that I feel comfortable relating this story (it was on my mind this morning for some reason). I’d been job hunting for a while because my previous employer had hinted at financial problems, and I didn’t feel like going down with the ship this time. I’d done it twice previously and it wasn’t pretty, and now that I have a family, I didn’t want the added complications it would place on them.
After discussing my job search with my wife, we agreed that we should start targeting other areas of the country where my career would be more fruitful, since Pittsburgh had very few leads. After some investigation, we decided that Nashville, Raleigh and Charlotte would be my target areas.
This story revolved around The Company That Shall Remain Nameless [The Company].
I received a call in late January from a company in Charlotte that had seen my resume on one of the job boards; it was the VP of Operations of The Company, the person I would be reporting to if I had landed the job. They were looking for someone to come and take over managing one of their development departments. We had a 1.5 hour long conversation on the phone that we both agreed had gone well, and so we scheduled a day for me to drive down and meet with several people within The Company during a day-long interview.
I make the 7.5 hour drive from Pittsburgh to Charlotte with guarded optimism and make it to the office of The Company at 10:00 AM the next morning. I meet with my propsective supervisor during a lunch meeting, the CTO of The Company, and then with some of the team members that I would be supervising. All in all, I thought the day went well. Everyone asked very intelligent questions, and I have them very honest answers, and we all seemed to get along famously. I lastly spoke with the HR representative of The Company who said that I should hear from them within 4 days of their decision.
After 6 days went by, I finally sent an email inquiring as to the status of their decision, and received an email via a proxy agent. To paraphrase the email, it basically said that everyone had felt the interview went poorly and that to the most common feedback was, while they felt I was certainly capable of performing the duties of the position, I had not displayed enough humility and would, therefore, not fit into their corporate culture.
This took me aback, as I had never received feedback like that in my life. While I consider myself very confident in my abilities, voice my opinions, and have leadership qualities, I am by no means an arrogant or conceited person. It made me wonder what kind of person that they were, in reality, looking for. Was it someone who would be under the thumb of the Operations officer, and simply towed the company line? I explained to them how strongly I felt about enhancing the team environment, my passion for education and teaching others, and my heavy committment to collaboration. To this day I can’t think of anything that warranted such a response from them, and, to be honest, I’m somewhat glad that I didn’t end up there; I have a feeling it wouldn’t have lasted long.
I finally ended up with a company that was looking for talented, confident and ambitious employees, and I couldn’t be happier. Well, that’s not true, I’d be much happier if Michelle and Sabrina were back home already.
technorati tags:employment, humility, job, search
4 Responses for "I’m Not Humble"
I’m not surprised in the least. I’ve worked for two companies that wanted folks to show up and do exactly as they were told and take the blame when things went wrong. At one of those places, I received a stern talking to because I was using (this is a quote) “too many functions” in my code and it was hard for lesser experienced programmers to maintain. Another time, when I confronted the IT Director and refused to allow my group to be used as scapegoats for some really bad management decisions, I was moved about as far away from technology as you could get and still have a computer on your desk.
I’ll never work at another place like that again.
you should actually think about what you said and did during the meeting.
case in point. i had a meeting with someone about 3 months ago as me and my partner were looking for an individual that could do some contract work for us. during the lunch meeting we went over the project and the person was very intelligent in their answers and was polite.
the problem was that when they asked me if we used stored procedures in our project, i just simply answered no. they pressed the issue of why and i told them because i didn’t feel that the project warranted it since we were only do simply db calls. during my answer though this person interrupts me, puts their hand on my arm and said, “i disgree” right to me. this took me back.
a simple gesture like that is all it took for me and my partner to immediately form an opinion about this person that they were arrogant. as a matter of fact it’s the only thing that we remembered and talked about from the meeting the whole ride back. a simple thing and killed the meeting.
what i’m trying to tell you is that, you have to have done something that you may not have thought was a big deal, but it was to them. something formed a negative opinion of you to them. remember that you were in a different state and people act differently from region to region. what is perfectly ok to say and do in pittsburgh may not be ok in charlotte.
Steve,
I’m really glad for you that whatever it was that happened from their perspective happened. I know exactly what you mean, too… I’m pretty much a consistent feller; that is, I’m Me almost 100% of the time. The other small percentage of the time I’m someone else altogether, but haven’t yet been able to determine who.
The mysteries of the universe will boggle even the brightest among us, after all.
Still, though… when something like that happens, when you’re just being you and someone doesn’t like it, the biggest thing to be grateful for is that it puts a quick end to what may have become a very uncomfortable situation before it has a chance to grow, blossom, wither and finally die on the vine. If I were in your shoes I’d be counting my blessings as well.
And Tony, I see your point too… but if you weren’t you, or if your outlook was different, perhaps you’d have said “Oh? Why?” and a gloriously grand relationship may have germinated right then and there. Since it didn’t, all y’all should be counting your blessings that this was nipped in the bud. I do see your point, but I also tend to appreciate the “all’s well that ends well” POV and, since Steve has a job and he’s not offending his coworkers on a daily basis, all is definitely well.
We’re doing some hybrid Cold Fusion/Java development in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Send me an email.
Thanks
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