Job Interview Prep

I came home from work today and slept for about an hour, I was so exhausted I felt nauseous. I am so glad that my interview tomorrow is over the phone and not until 10:30am.

I've been prepping for my job interview tomorrow for a couple of hours and I've come to conclude that I really don't want this job. As a matter of fact, I'm no longer quite sure why I applied other than my angst about not applying for anything during long periods of time. One of my main criteria for a non-academic research position is that I can stay active in ways that would allow me to return to academia if I so choose. It seems that this job would not entail producing peer-reviewed publication, presentations at national conferences that would allow me to interact with academics nor does it allow any room for the person in this position to put forth some of their own ideas. From what I've read so far they want a kick ass statistician and public speaker to analyze their data and present their results to the public. Um.. yeah, this is so not me.

I am going to go through the interview, try to keep an open mind in case I'm getting some weirdly skewed picture of this job and try to seem very enthusiastic. After all, even if I don't want them, I want them to want me. :) If the job does turn out to be what I picture right now then I will probably turn down the in-person interview if they offer me one.

Still no word from job interview #1 place, which is starting to get on my nerves. Even if they haven't made any decisions, they could at least respond to my email saying I have questions about the reports they sent me. After all when they sent me the damn million page reports they said "let us know if you have any questions".

RBOC: the catching up after vacation version

• Vacation was FABULOUS. I slept a lot, even tried to sleep through thunder and lightening on the beach, my sisters thought this was a bad idea and woke me up.
• I wish I could have had another day or two, once I was done sleeping off my exhaustion it would have been nice to do something other than sleeping. :)
• The thing about vacation is that it makes me want to plan my next one. Maybe if I can get a job (or a grant to stay in my current job) DH and I can go somewhere in September. Any suggestions?? :)
• Came into work yesterday to meet our 20 summer interns. They're great but it's going to be a shit load of work to get them all trained and get our studies up and running. I've worked 10 hours each of the last 2 days, just training these guys, and I have two more days of this ahead of me.
• Post doc advisor told me yesterday that she had a breakthrough on PD MS 1 and now we have a game plan for which journal we are going to target. She's still working on it and will send it to me soon.
• Job Interview #2 is on Friday. I received an email from the director on Friday asking for a writing sample (sent MA thesis manuscript that was just published in Feb) and then gave me a question that they're going to ask all interviewees. It required reading material they have generated in the past and coming up with a future analysis plan. It's a good way to get a feel for stuff I'd be doing in this position, however I have no friggen time to deal with this right now so I've been trying to read their past materials during any and all free time.
• No word from the people from Job Interview #1. I have had a chance to skim through the 200+ page documents they sent me, and sent an email yesterday saying I had some general questions and wondered whether I should email them or set up a call. Frankly, if I'm not going any further in their interview process I'm not interested in discussing the reports. Of course they're isn't any nice way to say that so I'm waiting to see what their response is to the email. A week ago Friday they said they would contact me next week and that did not happen. However, they have been a least a little late in each of their interactions with me so I'm not yet giving up hope that I'll get the job.
• Post doc mentor has been giving me more and more responsibility lately, supervising new lab manager, training personnel from a collaborators lab, assigning me tutorials for our interns. It makes me wonder whether she's trying to entice me to stay, or just thinks I will if we get one of these grants regardless of my non-academic options.
• Speaking of the grants, no word yet but it should be VERY soon.

Ok, I have a collaborator phone meeting in 15 mintues and have some stuff I have look through. There is my update thus far, I promise to post more as soon as I hear.

It's hot...

Drove by a bank around 4:30pm, it said it was 102 degrees out. I'm pretty sure I melted a bit today.

I finally got around to writing and submitting that article review. I'll keep you guys posted on the editors response. I basically followed the advice from the comments on that previous post except I did all I could to also evaluate the science. However, I made it very clear that this article was not publishable in any journal targeting an English speaking audience. And in the anonymous comments to the editor I made it clear that I would only agree to review a revised version if the journal editor could assure me that they had read it and it was free all the earlier writing issues.

I got the supplemental materials from the people I interviewed with on Wed, it's example reports that they have to submit every so many months to give me an idea of what that part of the job would entail. I haven't had a chance to look at them yet but will do it over the next day or two.

The conference was good. It was a really small (<250 people) meeting which was nice on one hand but I'm not really interested in the specific topic the conference was on so it was a little weird for me to be there. It was sponsored by my university and I have two friends from grad school town staying with me so it was worth it to go.

I do find I make some crazy social comparisons when I attend conferences. It makes me anxious about getting my manuscripts out and doing more research. Of course, if I get one of these non-academic jobs this won't be the standard anymore... but then again will I ever be able to kick those comparisons.

RBOC: because I'm too tired to give it to you in real posts

• Job Interview #1 was actually fun (foreshadowing another bullet here!) . We were on the phone for about 45 minutes and I was so glad they called because the job is so much better than I thought. They're a non-profit research organization and the research I'd be doing for them would be right up my alley, salary & benefits rock, they're way more flexible about what I'd be doing than I ever imagined and it would be an even closer commute than my current job!

• Heard from people at job interview #1 today with additional materials, email ended with "looking forward to speaking with you next week", I think it's a good sign.
  
• Now for Job Interview #2, that's right, I have another interview, this time for a university affiliated research position. This request came through yesterday afternoon. It's a research organization established at another University out of state that is starting up a new branch here in my state so I'll be doing a phone interview with the director on the 20th and they'll do face to face interviews on July 7th for their short list.
  
• Mentor told me today that the 2 grants that I am a named post-doc on will be reviewed next week! June is a busy month for me. My worst fear is with all this job buzz right now I'll end up with nothing. Ugh, pessimism sucks! anyway... on to better things.
  
• Baseball- way overindulged in my 2 games in 2 nights. I don't know how season ticket holders do it. It was fun though, my team won both games! Can't wait to go again.
  
• Have a mini-conference this weekend (it's local) but I am exhausted so I went to the keynote tonight, I'm bailing on tomorrow and I'll go to all the talks on Sunday and see my friends present then too.
• Next week I am jam packed with participants M, T, W and leave for my sister's weekend in Florida on Thursday so blogging may be light but I'll try and keep up as best I can.

Ok, I'm going to have some pizza and hit my bed soon.

Thanks for all of your well wishes everyone! It's so nice to know there's people out there reading my blog and wishing me well.

Tired and Busy

I ran participants today, back to back with a bunch of RAs. This always exhausts me. Tomorrow is all day meetings to figure out a game plan for the summer. Then Wed is job interview morning. I'm pretty sure I'm going to take the call in my office (need to run participants in the afternoon). Nobody else will be around as they call come in really late.

The good news about the crazy schedule is no time to obsess about the interview. I'm going to spend some time tomorrow going through their website and writing out questions that I want to ask them. It's been a long time since I've interviewed for a real job? Any questions that you think one should ask at every interview, I'd love to hear suggestions?