Interviews

This has been a week for interviews. I had a head hunter give me a jingle early last week with a few positions that he felt were right up my alley. One of them is, a job in France, just outside of Paris. I am pursuing that one, a few years in France would make me very happy. I had to be on the opposite side of the table for the first time in many years. Even though it was only phone interview, it was a learning experience, I did very well and think I started to develop a good working relationship with the fellows on the other side. Other than the manager, they have all contacted me personally with information on the "village" the office is located in. I think, one of the key factors why they liked me so much, we spent about 20 minutes discussing Tom Kytes newest book and some of his blog entries, as well as David Alridge. Facts like that really impress upon you how small the world really is. I have to be on the "good" side of the table this week, interviewing for a Senior Oracle Applications DBA position, this is a new position in the company. The powers that be have decided that our oracle applications database and application deserves a lot more TLC than I am able to give it, so I pushed for a dedicated DBA. I was very surprised when they agreed, then tasked me with going through applicants to get it to a short list of 5. I did 23 phone interviews, of those, I had a list of 9 to pare down to 5. The rest... boy some of them reminded me of watching a monkey trying to get into a coconut when I was younger. Lots of noise, lots of action, lots of blood sweat and fecal matter flying everywhere, alas in the end nothing but a dent in the ground, a bad odour in the air and a hungry monkey. Some of these applicants blatantly lied on their resumes, some of these folks were easy ones to spot - they didn't know what was on their resume. Others tried to "baffle me with BS" assuming I was an HR person or an non-oracle type... even though I introduced myself as the Senior Corporate DBA, and they all received at least one email with my title on the footer. Easy way to waste few hours reading resumes. The poor unsuspecting fellow that is coming up is in for a surpise though, I have a small book of questions for him to go through and 3 brand new dry erase markers for him to write his answers out with. I even have crashed a development instance of our OA that is being retired and I will get him to diagnose and see if he can give me the answer to fix it. He is getting lunch with the department too. And a free weekend in town.