Flashback: Job Hunt

When I resumed the blog last month, I was determined to start to fill in some of the gaps that had been left between October 2011 and August 2012, with my patented 'Flashbacks' approach to blogging. The 'Flashbacks' approach means that I leave a gap, then spend time writing what happened in the gap, and need a further set of flashback blogs to cover what happened when I was writing flashbacks. A mention of work on Monday's blog makes this a logical starting point.

The main thing that happened over this period was probably that I changed jobs - although this is something that was going on while I was still blogging, but I hadn't wanted to mention until I had something secured. I'd actually started my job search in August, although it properly began in September - and started my new job on return from holiday at the beginning of December.

The reason for my search was an increasing frustration at my old job - my role had changed somewhat, I had reduced input and all my potential paths for development or promotion had been blocked earlier in the year and were unlikely to be reopened. However, this had been the case all year - it took a couple of frustrating review meetings to kick me into action.

The scenario was 'you are doing the job of someone more senior as well as yours on this project and it's not being done as well as it should be' - yet this was phrased to me as 'why are you not doing as well as it should be' as opposed to 'hang on, why are you even doing this at all?'. Clear that my performance was going to be reviewed on the basis that while dragging the project forward myself with no involvement from those who should have been doing the dragging, and immensely frustrated with the complete lack of support for this scenario - this inspired me to put my CV up that evening, and it went from there.

I received a few calls the first week, about various positions. I attended a couple of interviews as discreetly as possible - including a couple of impromptu doctors' appointments, one involving a change from dress down to dress up back to dress down for an interview in the middle of the day. I also managed to arrange two telephone interviews into a single lunch break - and took so many calls throughout the day at work that it was surely obvious to eveyone around me. A colleague who I knew was also looking around seemed to be playing tag with me, as one of us would return from a more private place in the office to have a phone conversation, and meet the other heading in the opposite direction on the phone with the same purpose!

One of these that I had applied to led me into an interview, and then a second interview, at the place where I now work - and I was able to hand in my notice at the beginning of November, a little more than six weeks after I'd started my search.