Keeping my emotions in check

This past Tuesday was the six month anniversary of my MBA graduation. It has been more than six months since I received my MBA and I have still not managed to find a job. Tomorrow I am leaving for a trip with my parents and in all likelihood, I will not return to North Carolina until January.

 

This is certainly not the ideal situation to be in. About three weeks ago I had two interviews, one was a preliminary phone interview for a business intelligence position with a computer hardware company that I very much want to work for and the other was for a product manager position with a company many have never heard of. I sensed that the company that I did not want to work for as much was on a much quicker decision schedule than the one I had the phone interview with, which told me that it would require two weeks to decide which candidates to bring in for a company interview. Right after the two interviews, I remember thinking that both went well and worrying about getting the offer from the one I was not as interested in and having the offer force me to make a decision to possibly forego interviewing with the hardware company. I even wished that the manager would take his time in making the hiring decisions so I would have as much time and opportunities to interview at the other company as possible. In the weeks since I have heard feedback from both companies – the one that I wanted to work for has decided to not offer me an interview and the manager from the other company has decided to wait until he moves here from Utah before making his decisions. In a way I got exactly what I wanted – the company I did not want to work for as much has decided to take its time in making a hiring decision and yet I find myself wishing I had received an offer so I would at least know I would have a job comes 2008. This experience goes to illustrate just how emotional this job search process has been and how easy it is for my emotions to overwhelm my decision making process.

 

Last week, the same week I heard the decisions from the two companies, was a rough week. I looked at the calendar and really began to worry about this job search. I worried that when I come back from my trip, my credentials would “expire” when recruiters look at my resume and realize that I have not worked in six months. It was the type of week where I had doubts about myself, about my faith in God and about His faithfulness. I felt as though God was “playing chicken” with me – to drag out this job search as long as possible to see if I would swerve off the road. I remember praying for some kind of sign that He was still with me and got my answer on Sunday in church. The title of the sermon was “How much time do you have?” The speaker talked about how we should not view time as a threat but as … I actually don’t remember what the rest of this line was and will have to check the audio tapes for the actual quotes. But it made me realize that instead of questioning God’s faithfulness, perhaps I should be questioning my own.

 

On a programming note – I mentioned that I will be leaving the country for a trip with my parents. I am not going to reveal our destination just yet except to say that we are scheduled to land around 7am Monday (all times Eastern) and I will try to update this blog around Monday night or Tuesday morning.