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After a month of informationals and interviews, I have accepted a new position with the company I've been with for 3 years. I was beginning to doubt that there were going to be any opportunities for me with the company. I honestly thought that I would have to leave to further my career but it all worked out in the end.

Unfortunately I got to experience the politics that take place at my company. Before this round of interviews, I had heard conversations regarding the office politics, but never experienced it first hand. This changed when I went to my direct supervisor with a position that I wanted to apply for. How it works with the company, I needed to have the approval of my direct supervisor to apply for a new position. This position would have been a 4 level jump. (Most promotions are just 2 level bump). Initially he did not have a response for me. All I got was "I'll need to think about it" from him, this basically translated to "I need to check with my boss".

Later in the day he pulled me aside to discuss the job that I wanted to apply for. He told me that "management" thought that I needed more experience before applying for the position. I inquired what he meant by experience. The response was vague and did not make sense to me. "Management thinks that someone at the level of this job requires more experience." I pushed further to see how much experience would qualify as enough in the eyes of management. The response was another vague and worthless reply. I questioned again if I could apply for the job and the response was, "I won't say you can't, but if the hiring manager calls me I'll have to tell them the concerns the management has." Again, a vague and non-explicit answer. I decided asking questions because none of them were getting concrete answers.

During the rest of the day and evening I thought over the discussion I had with my supervisor. I re-read the job description, requirements, and desired qualities. After careful thought, I decided to apply for the position even though management did not support me 100%. I pulled my supervisor aside the next day to tell him what I planned on doing and the reasoning behind it. My rational for applying was that I met all of the requirements and desire qualities. The only mention of experience in the requirements was to have 2-3 years with the company, I had 3. I also explained that I would feel more comfortable if the hiring manager was the one who made the decision regarding my experience. I was lying or misrepresenting myself on the application. The hiring manager could see and evaluate if my experience level was a deal break. When I told my supervisor about my decision, I met a steady flow of innuendos.
Things my supervisor said:

• It's an ambitious thing to do and ambitious is good.
  
• It's important to be able to read between the lines and you do that well.
  
• I've stated my opinion before and stuck my neck out and I got knocked upside the head.
  

Putting together all of these statements I was able to see a lot about my supervisor. He is afraid of directly telling me to apply because he will get in trouble with his boss (a.k.a. management). After the discussion, I got my resume together and sent it off to the appropriate people. I later talked with a co-worker and she confirmed he made comment to her that I was doing the right thing by applying.

With a large company HR plays a big part in the hiring process. The HR for the department called my supervisor and asked if he supported the change. His response was that he was in a tough spot because management reservations regarding my experience. A day or two later I got an email from HR saying that I was not going to be considered for the position because the length of my experience. I'm not sure if this decision was made by the HR person or the hiring manager. If I had to make a guess, I would say that HR stopped the process before the hiring manager made the decision.

It was at this point that I thought that I may need to look elsewhere to move further in my career. I never wanted to get caught up in these politics. I realized with this experience that from now on it is going to be something I don't have to participate in, but it will have some effect on me. I'll just have to keep an eye on that.

All during these on goings and discussions about experience, I saw that there was a posting for a similar job in the same department. I setup some time to talk with the hiring manager and get more information about the job and area. After talking with the hiring manager, I told my boss that I wanted to apply for this position. He was more receptive to this position because it was a "more natural fit". I interpreted this as "It isn't too big of a jump, so management will support it".

I had an afternoon of interviews and an assessment test for the job. After a couple days, I received a call from the hiring manager. She told me about different position that was going to be available in the department and asked if I would be interested in pursuing that also. I'm never one to turn down an opportunity, so I had her send me the job description. In the back of my mind I had mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I took this as a bad sign for the first job. The hiring manager was trying to pawn me off on someone else. On the flip side, this was a good thing. I must have impressed her as some level to pass my name off to someone else. I was hired three years ago in a similar situation.

Once I got the other job description, I recognized that it was very familiar. Turns out that the department recently changed the level within the area. This job was the exact same as the one I had applied to early but was told that I needed more experience. The only difference is that this job would deal with the routine processes rather than the longer and more complex processes. I find it odd how one week I'm unqualified and a little I am a great candidate for it. I'm sure it boils down to responsibilities of the job and some other things behind the scenes, but I still find it amusing and frustrating on some level.

Turns out that I didn't get the job I originally applied for. I was told that there was no doubt that I could have done a great job, but she thought that it wouldn't challenge me enough. On the upside, I got the job she referred me to. I start on May 1.

I'd be surprised if anyone is still reading this, but I hope you found it somewhat interesting and/or amusing.

All my studying paid off. I took the GMAT last weekend and scored better than I was hoping. I took one practice exam a couple nights before the official test and scored 690. Half of the questions on the practice test were the same to ones that I already worked through. The other half were new to me. I figured that my score would be lower by 30 or 40 points because I knew the questions on the sample test. The one nice thing about the test being a computer adaptive test is that I got my scores to the multiple choice portion immediately after the test. I ended up with a 680 on the multiple choice part. It'll be another 2 weeks before I get the results of the essay part of the test. I'm not really worried about this part of the test. There were two essays to write: analysis of an issue and analysis of an argument. They were pretty straight forward but I'd still like to know the score of them soon. Patience is not a virtue I have.
The next steps I have to take is to get all my application material together. I have to update my resume and write five essays for the U of M application. St. Cloud State is just an single essay, but it will cover three or four different topics. I plan on starting on the applications this weekend. I should be able to get the resume done and rough drafts of the essays. I'm still trying to get the letters of recommendations completed. I never thought that it would be so hard for people to find the hour to write the letter. Only one out of the three have done this. It was one month ago that I talked to the people. I touched base with the two to make sure I was not forgotten and they both assured me that they would get these done. I'll wait until I get my essays done before I start being obnoxious. It's always hard asking your boss to get something done for you. I can't give a fake deadline because the deadline is clearly stated on the form. I can only express my desire to have it sooner rather than later. If all else fails, I could ask a former supervisor to get the recommendation done.

It's official, I've become a married man who is dressed by his wife. I'm not saying that she lays out what I wear every morning, but she buys me clothes.
I have never been someone that people like shopping with. I am very picky about what I wear. I remember my parents getting upset with me when we would go shoe/school clothes/short shopping. I never liked any clothes with logos and the shoes had to have the right look. These things haven't changed throughout the years. I still refuse to wear any t-shirt with big logos unless it's something I like. As a result a majority of the t-shirts I wear have UW-Madison on them.
Back to my story of fashion. My job switched to a more business friendly dress code last fall. This can be read as shirt and tie required, but a suit coat is optional. I had a few button-up shirts and ties from my interviewing days so I was wearing those. Michelle would pick up ties and shirts when her work had a good sale. So over the past 4 or 5 months I have a pretty good collection of ties and shirts. It's odd because the only ties that I get compliments on are those that my wife has picked out. I don't get any comments on the ties that we picked out together, only those that I wasn't involved in.
This same thing has happened with shirts. Luckily my workplace still observes casual Fridays. Jeans and a nice shirt are all I need. Michelle picked up a couple shirts last week on clearance. I was a little leery of them but I figured that they can't be ugly if she picked them out. I like the shirts but I never would have picked them out myself. I wore one of those shirts to work today and I got a few comments. I never get comments, unless I'm wearing a tie that my wife picked out. "Very GQ" was one comment that I got and I didn't know how to take it. I think it was a compliment.
I'll continue to take the fashion guidance of my wife since a clothes designer at work said that for men a good fashion day was when no one mentioned their clothes. I guess it all boils down to; I'm capable of dressing myself so I don't look like a fool, but only my wife can make me look good.

Yet another quick weekend. It seems that the Tour de Oakdale is becoming common during weekends. Memorial Day weekend was not any different.
Michelle and I spent the first day of the weekend sodding those areas where the grass seed never took. We got up, got sod, and laid the sod Saturday morning. The weather forecasts told of storms for the rest of the weekend so we wanted to get it done before the rain moved in. It ended up being pretty nice for part of Sunday and all day Monday. At least we got it out of the way so we were free to do other things.
Sunday was one of those days were there wasn't much to do so we got bored. We ended up cleaning the house. Michelle did upstairs and I did downstairs. I was excited because I got to use the Dyson again. I'm amazed every time I use it.
On Monday was the Tour de Oakdale. We started off over to my parent's house. As usual we brought Anabelle over to run with my parents dogs. My brother also brought his two dogs, so we kept the human to dog ratio pretty close. Anabelle spent the afternoon running around like a maniac; terrorizing and trying to get the attention of any dog that would chase her. After a couple hours she was worn out and laid down. Michelle and I figured it's always a good thing to wear Anabelle out to exhaustion.
The next stop was the in-laws. We went to Petco before hand since we didn't have any toys for Anabelle. She didn't play with of the toys we bought and spent most the time sniffing the yard and trying to find somewhere comfy to lay down. I went out to the car and got the pet bed we keep in the back of the Santa Fe. Once I put that down, Anabelle quickly plopped down for the rest of the afternoon.
After getting home, I looked in the mirror and saw my forehead and neck a nice shade of red. Fortunately, it wasn't as bad as it looked and I only got one "Were you out in the sun?" at work on Tuesday. So all in all it was a good weekend. On a side DORK note, Michelle and I have fallen in love with Sirius. We took the plunge and changed our semi-annual subscription to a lifetime plan. The initial cost was high but the break even point is 3 years. The only worry I have is if they go belly up. I don't see this happening anytime soon with Howard Stern joining Sirius next year.

I can tell I'm growing up when the highlight of my weekend is cleaning the house from top to bottom. That's the task my wife and I completed this past Saturday. When I was younger the weekend would focus on what things I was going to do: go out to movies, out to dinner, driving around, hanging out with friends. We got up around 9 and started cleaning. After a couple hours of cleaning and a whining dog we had completed the house cleaning. I took the bathrooms and the kitchen while my wife took the bedrooms and vacuuming. She likes vacuuming now that we bought a Dyson. It amazes me how much stuff that thing can suck up. Looking at the amount of hair the thing picks up I'm amazed everyone in the house still has hair.
More evidence of growing up is my worrying about all the dead spots out on my lawn. After getting the soil and seed from Wal-Mart we did some digging and planting. Unfortunately, we have yet to see any seedlings come up. The bag said 7-10 days and it's been over 2 weeks without anything. I'm beginning to think that we might just buy a couple rolls of sod and fix it quick. We only dug up the front of the yard so our side yard with more dead spots from the dog still needed to be addressed. I looked around on the net and talked with co-workers to see what they did about this. I read and hear from a couple sources that raking the dead spots "may" bring it back to life or at least tell me how dead it is. I spent about an hour this evening raking my yard to pull up all the dead grass. The result of my raking is that the yard doesn't look as bad. I have until June 1 to fix the yard so I'm going to spend the next two weeks hoping and praying that some of the grass comes back.
When I was younger the only attention I paid to the lawn was the 45 minutes I spent mowing it.