The last time I interviewed for a new job was 2001. That’s when I started working for FCS. Since then I’ve had two internal interviews – 2002 when I transferred to Carthage and 2009 when I came to Mt Vernon. So it had been a long time since I’d put a resume together or thought about my strengths and weaknesses or references or any of that stressful junk you deal with when switching jobs. The beauty of this process though was that I did not care about getting the job. I already have a great job that I like (most of the time) so it didn’t matter one way or the other to me. I also knew I wasn’t budging from my spot for one penny less than what I make now. It was different having the tables turned….instead of me selling myself to them they essentially had to sell their business to me.
I don’t say that to sound snotty but this was a bank starting to get their fingers into Ag loans for the first time. I have 12 years of experience doing exactly what they would’ve wanted me to do in this new position. One of the questions they asked was how much of a workload I could handle. This was after they told me that when they bought out this bank they were left with 5 loans. Five Loans. I told them I’m used to $60 million. So you can see the tables really were turned…..
The other thing that was different was that I’ve never switched jobs while having a family. Jay and I had been married 15 months when I started at FCS. We didn’t have kids, we didn’t have established doctors, we weren’t even living in a permanent spot. Jay was still teaching in Richland and we knew he was going to look for a different position that spring. 12 years and 6 months later…..we’ve been married almost 14 years, we are in a permanent (or at least we hope) spot, we have 2 kids, we finally got everyone established at the same doctors office that is just down the road, I’ve earned quite a bit of vacation and sick time, etc. There was so much more to think about then just how much I would have made – which was what Jay kept asking me.
So here were the factors that kept me from leaving….
• Vacation and sick time. I would have lost the equivalent of my sick time here. After taking off their required number of vacation days it wouldn’t have left me many for sick days. I could have wiped them all out in one of our normal months of March.
• The hours – I would’ve left 30 minutes later in the evening.
• The insurance – complete opposite of what we have now. I did not want to change doctors.
AND this seriously was one of my biggest reasons…..
I didn’t want to dress up that much!!!
Not that I come to work in dirty jeans and coffee stains down my shirt front, but I didn’t want to go back to the super professional dress. Isn’t that ridiculous? All I could think during the interview was “I’m going to need some new clothes…I hate buying dress pants…I don’t want to shop for new heels…I can’t wear heels because of my bunions….dress skirts don’t look right without heels….” So there is how I came to say no to a potential life altering choice….I didn’t want to give up my mustard colored skinny jeans (actually they are more like pants then jeans) and boots this fall.
And much to Jay’s disappointment I never even got to the salary part. The supervisor called to see if I was still interested because they were going to have to do some work to get me the same salary. I told her it wasn’t going to be a good fit for me…like literally because I hate shopping for dress pants because it is hard to find a good fit. Now if it had been a completely different career change – like jewelry making or basket weaving I would’ve been more interested…but why change jobs and do the same thing but have to wear uncomfortable pants and shoes while doing it??? Yeah, it didn’t make sense to me either.
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