Gee whiz, where does the time go when you’re laid off and have an extra 8-10 hours a day??
Well, it’s been a bit more than 2 months since my last “blog” entry regarding Unisys/unemployment/etc. Not much to update, getting a tiny bit discouraged now since my severance “pay” was up a week ago (due to my leaving for UHG in ’95 for those few short months before being ‘outsourced’ directly back to “U”).
Have had interviews with 5 companies, including one that hired me as a temp employee for a week’s worth of part time work while one of their people went on vac.
Rule of thumb that I’ve always gone with, for every 100 resumes sent out, you’ll get 10 interviews, and, one job offer. It’s all in the numbers.
Never received a follow-up call/email from St. Jude Medical, you would think HR could at least send out an email saying “Sorry…”.
I was apparently in second place (out of 4-5 candidates), for the job at Express-Scripts, having gone thru a 3 person panel interview (twice).
Didn’t get an interview with General Mills – them basically telling the recruiter that I was “over-qualified”.
Met with 2 guys at Robert Half (the placement firm), for a short term contract position at Eco-Lab. Their (RBI, not Eco-Lab) offices are on the 27th floor in the USBank building in downtown MPLS – what a view, overlooking the Foshay Tower. Wow.
My latest interview (this week) was with Boston Scientific with 6 people interviewing me from 10 am till 1pm. Whew. It’s a good fit, hoping to hear from them in the next week or two. I’m apparently 1 of 4 candidates.
Been in contact with my former work buddies (at Eagan and Plymouth) and they say it’s getting worse at “U”, with more and more getting laid off as each month goes by. I wish them well. Heard that more of my former co-workers at RSVL had been laid off.
Had lunch with SD again, good to see him again. He’s always so “up”. He amazes me. Got together with KL a few weeks ago, and helped them with some “techie/geek” stuff on their new laptop.
Keeping my friends SK, BB, SH, KL, and LD in my thoughts, hoping that they have found jobs or will be finding jobs soon.
Had a list of stuff I wanted to do during this time off – getting some of it done, but not as much as I had originally hoped to get accomplished. Painted 3 walls in 3 rooms. Still have 3-4 more left to do. Working on building some built-in book cases for the den (having never done a wood-working project before). It’s about a third done, with the den being a mess since I had to take out the “walmart/k-mart” cheap bookcases before I install the new (fancier) ones. OMG, you never know how many books you have until you box them up – the boxes are now sitting (patiently) in the way of everything, waiting for the new book cases to “arrive”. Some of them are whining: “Let us out!”, and “We need some air in here”. Done some geek/techie stuff these last 3 months, such as finally getting my home PC to work after it crashed 2 yrs ago, installed Win7 (nice!), installed Remedy 7.5 to learn the new Developer Studio” interface (really nice!), installed RAID hardware that still isn’t working, and probably lots of other stuff that I can’t remember.
Like I said, in early summer, had this huge list of things to accomplish, like taking a walk each day (didn’t happen), starting/continuing to build the MRR (Model RailRoad for the un-initiated) – that’s next after the book cases, taking classes to learn new tools/applications – didn’t happen, but have signed up for a technical class (“CR”, in case you’re wondering Shae), starting in December, etc.
I know what some of you are thinking: Stop FBing so much. I do limit myself to about 15 mins a day…There was a news story this morning, regarding a survey taken of employers, asking if they allow their employees to FB while at work – it was over before I could write down the numbers…seems like some companies limit/restrict their employees from using FB at work…
Ok, enough for today, got to get back to work on the book cases. Cut the shelves yesterday – all 32 of them (4 book case units with 8 shelves per case – it’s really nice haivng 9 foot ceilings, gives you one or two more shelves per book case), they still need to be sanded, and stained, etc. I should put a pic on FB of the completed book case and/or of the pic of bookcase from the wood-working magazine article (the one from the article looks a lot better than mine! – so far). LOL.
Will try to update this thing more often, I’m sure EVERYONE is so engrossed by what I’m doing during my time off. (JK).
Again, for my out of work friends, you guys are in my thoughts.
