Well, I temporarily have a job! Short version – I’m doing some programming full time (or as close to it as our schedules will allow) from Wednesday to the end of May. Hopefully it will continue beyond that or there is also another job that my chances are looking good for.

Longer version – in my wave of interviews recently (including having 4 interviews for 3 jobs in just over a week) – all of which were at MSU, the results are:

• Programmer at Library – Interviewed – but after 2 weeks they decided no
• Programmer at Vet School – 2 interviews so far, and looks pretty good, but we will see. Down to only a few candidates. They said the process can be slow, but hoping to update me by the end of this week or beginning of next after the finish their 2nd interviews.
• Clinical Research Informatics Technician – This one needs some explaining (see below). 🙂 But summary – they cancelled the job posting.

The other jobs are “Information Technologist” or some such, but are basically computer web programmers much as I have done for years. The last one is more complicated. It was technically 2 jobs combined into 1 since they weren’t sure they had enough work for one person to do either full time. Well, after 3 rounds of interviews, they decided that it really was two jobs.

One job is somewhat computer programming, but more data management and report generating. But still, nothing that I haven’t handled before. The other job is more or less a sales position, selling their products to other universities and research groups. Basically, this group provides database and software work for clinical trials. When I was first hired at Radiology, I worked on that autism research project, and it was a joint effort between Radiology and this group.

In the end, they decided to make the “New business” portion of the job a 65% part time position and re-list it. As for the data management side (which I’m pretty sure I scored highly on), they are waiting to hear if a grant is approved to see if they can fund it.

In the interim, however, they have until the end of May to complete work on the latest round of that autism project, but they have a heck of a lot of work to get done before then. Since I showed up on their doorstep looking for work, they jumped at the chance and offered to pay me hourly at least until the end of May to help them wrap up everything that needs to be wrapped up before then. As long as my criminal background check came back ok (more worried about it getting done than coming back with my bank robbery charges showing) 😉 I should start Wednesday morning. Overall, it came together really fast.

No benefits, since it’s hourly, but the pay works out to be about what I made at Radiology before I left. Plus they want me up to 40 hours a week, so depending on how Diana’s and my schedules work out with getting Ella to and from school, I should get in plenty of work over the next several weeks.

Beyond that depends on the grant being approved and how much it is approved for. Hopefully, something full time works out – although they did hint that if they brought me on full time, it would be at a lower pay because of benefits which means I will be making less than I did at Radiology a year ago, but it still beats unemployment, and nothing is official yet anyway. Since it would be much cheaper to them, there is a greater chance of being able to stay on hourly, but that’s only an option if we get health insurance worked out.

Overall, however, I am hoping on the Vet School position. It’s is literally almost exactly what I did at Radiology, just with animals rather than people. They offer enough flexibility that if I want to finish up school,  I can. Plus, we haven’t talked numbers but they understand the interest in wanting to be paid more than what I made previously as reasonable (you know, that whole forward momentum in your career, not slipping backwards) and quite understandable. The interviews have gone well (including losing track of they questions with the Director when we started talking about our pets for 15 minutes). But we will see. There are other candidates who may be doing very well as well.

However, at least tomorrow, I have to get the kids off to school and then head off to my new office (actually shared offices since they are located in 2 buildings and I will have to do work at both). On top of Diana getting worked to the bone with 44 hours this week between Macy’s and setting up the new Meijer, at the absolute very least we will have a brief period of real income again. It will be nice if it lasts past that, but I’ll be sure to be happy with whatever we can get at this point.

And yet again, we see that it is impossible for me to write a short blog post. Gotta get info out more often. Sorry!