The Job Search Marathon

I was looking back and it occurred to me that it's been over a month since I gave a job interview update.  I meant to write a post before we left for vacation, but when you have 4 kids the preparation it takes to vacate the premise is almost as long as the vacation itself, so the post never happened.

Joel was gone all last week on interviews, so I'm going to back up a bit and take it from where we stood when we left on vacation. 

Oklahoma City said they would get back to us within a week of our initial visit, and Joel and I both felt pretty sure they were going to offer him a second interview, but a week went by and then another and we still hadn't heard anything.  Silence had, to that point, been a very negative thing for us, so we started to doubt that there was going to be a second interview.  For that reason Joel went ahead and applied to 3 more job openings.

During that waiting period he interviewed in Columbia, Missouri.  The people were wonderful and he had a good experience, but the hospital was so tiny and he would have been 1 of only 2 oncology doctors there, so we didn't feel like it was the right fit for him or for the family.  They were wonderful and offered him a second interview, but he turned it down.  It was really scary to turn down the only second interview offer he had ever received, particularly after the continued silence from Oklahoma, but we really felt like it was the right thing to do.  It was our little leap of faith in the process.

Meanwhile, Joel submitted his CV to Ann Arbor, Michigan and within an hour the BMT director was on the phone interviewing Joel.  He told him he would meet with his committee and get back to him about a possible face to face interview.  With how slow this whole process has been going we didn't expect to hear anything for a while, but the very next morning he heard back from them on possible interview dates.

Detroit, Michigan also offered Joel an interview, and Rochester, New York finally set a date for an interview.  The real relief came the following week when Oklahoma City finally got a hold of Joel and offered him a second interview.  Scheduling was a bit rough, but gratefully it worked out, so that he could travel there the Monday after we got back from vacation.

We enjoyed our week together as a family, and then Joel left for his second interview.  He felt like it went really well, but still had a few questions about mentor-ship and exact duties.  This job is a general practice Oncology job with being in charge of the Survivorship clinic (long term follow ups for children who no long have cancer).  Joel felt pretty confident they would make him an offer, but they told him they would let him know by the end of the week. 

He got home Tuesday night/Wednesday morning at 1am, and then the very next day he drove up to Ann Arbor, Michigan for his interview there.  This is for a Bone Marrow Transplant job which is very different from the OKC job.  He's always had a lot of interest in BMT, but has lacked the experience necessary to really be considered for this type of job.  Gratefully, he had a few connections with the people here at Nationwide Children's who have a great working relationship with University of Michigan, so they took a good look at Joel's CV, liked his area of research, and decided to bring him in for an interview.  It was another round of grueling interviews, but Joel felt really good about it.  His presentation of his research went well, and he really liked the people in the BMT department there.  He was the first of 3 to interview there, so he won't know if they're going to bring him back for a second interview until the end of this week.  The other girl who is the real competition does her research in BMT, so that could spell the death for Joel's second interview chances, but you never know.  What is meant to be will happen, so now we're just waiting.

Joel drove home Friday and then that evening he got an offer from OKC!  (They email the offer).  It's a really great offer, and we are both seriously SO relieved that we know now he'll have a job!  The street corner was getting a little too close for comfort!  Joel went ahead and canceled his interviews in Rochester and Detroit, because he feels good about either OKC or University of Michigan.  We have 2 weeks to make a decision about OKC, and in the mean time we will wait to see where Ann Arbor stands.  It's crazy to think that we may actually have some semblance of an idea where we're moving by the end of this month.  Phew!  Much more of this and I'm pretty sure I would have gotten an ulcer.