A cautiously optimistic forecast

Greetings from my hotel room in outside of the “Atlanta beltway” in Marietta, Georgia. I left Chapel Hill much later than anticipated yesterday and barely got into the hotel room on time to watch the Republican presidential debate on the Fox News Channel. Of what little I saw, I thought the best line was from Congressman Tom Tancredo. He was responding to Brit Hume’s question about how as president he would react to a hypothetical terrorist attack on American soil and he said “instead of asking X (I don’t remember what X was), I would ask ‘where’s Jack Bauer?’” That line drew a laugh from the audience of one in my hotel room and from the live audience at the Kroger Center. After the debate I was watching Hannity and Colmes broadcasting live from the spin room at the debate site and spotted a Kenan-Flagler first year (actually, he’s a second year now) in the background.

I thought this afternoon’s interview for the product analyst position at the internet division of a cable television network went very well. I arrived early and waited in the reception area. While waiting, I overheard the receptionist taking a call from a viewer who was upset because he recently switched to satellite television and the new provider was unable to supply a particular channel he’s been used to watching. She politely explained that this was the fault of the provider and that in the five years she’s worked there, she’s received countless of such calls from viewers who were getting “the run around” from the satellite providers. I also had the chance to check out a giant flat panel television on the wall showing what’s currently shown on the television network and what’s on the internet web site.

The first interview went well. The interviewer was a data analyst and asked me questions about my experience with Excel and comfort with using and manipulating data. I asked a lot of questions about the company’s web site, which is one of the most visited internet destination in the country. Asking questions is tough because you want to show that you have thought about the position but you don’t want to ask questions as to make your interviewer think that you don’t have a clear idea of what the position is about. In this case, the interviewer’s answers made me realize that the division was mainly focused on desktop products and I made a mental note to not ask anything related to the web site. The second interviewer was a product manager and he began by asking me what I see myself doing three years from now. He then gave me a case question about how I would estimate the amount of gratuities given on a day in Las Vegas knowing that there are 300,000 hotel rooms in that city. The third interviewer was the director I interviewed with on the phone last week. We made small talk about my trip, talked about the four computers she had in her office, she showed me the diagrams on the wall showing the designs for what the next version of the software will look like. She asked me about the three things I wanted in my next job, a behavioral question about a time when I worked with difficult people (when I heard this question I had to momentarily suppress the red warning light that lit up on my mental dashboard), and I believe she also asked about my familiarity with the Microsoft Office suite and about where I see myself down the line.

After the interview, I went to the hotel, changed, and drove out to Buckhead for dinner. I changed into business casual clothes instead of shorts and a T-shirt because I wanted to mentally keep myself in a professional mindset. And I am glad I did this because judging by the number of Mercedes Benz I saw along the way, Buckhead is a pretty ritzy place. I think the interviews went very well. But I don’t want to become too optimistic because I have been disappointed by this company before and getting your hopes up (or down) will have no influence on the decision.

I have an informational interview tomorrow morning with a recruiter at an internet company and after that I will make the six hour drive back to Chapel Hill. I look particularly forward to driving through South Carolina again but this time, I will remember to slow down a bit. When I drove through it yesterday, I had to dodge more road debris in the first hour than I did in all the driving that I have done this year so far. Between these road hazards and the billboards advertising sex shops, cigarettes, and fireworks, there are enough distractions to make me wonder if I am carrying enough auto insurance.