Jam-Packed Day

Today was definitely a better day than I had yesterday, but let's start with yesterday. I had my first of, it turns out, 4 interviews in the afternoon with a company based out of Utah. While I thought the interview was going to be a simple introduction, get to know you interview, it turned into a full-blown technical interview. Which is fine; I don't think I would have prepared any differently than I had, and I was as ready as I'll ever be. Nonetheless, I feel like I bombed that portion of the interview altogether. I had some really good answers, and then I had some questions that completely stumped me to the point of not even being able to come up with an answer. It was slightly embarrassing, and I was disappointed I wasn't able to come up with anything better than I did. In retrospect, this was just a very difficult interview; he wasn't lobbing gimme questions at me and he spanned a large area of material. He asked if I would complete a take-home assignment, and I was relieved I would have the chance to redeem myself with this. This was a premature reaction; the assignment was ridiculously hard. I was up until nearly 3AM last night trying to figure it out, and while I did end up making a little progress, I still have a long way to go.

Luckily, yesterday came to an end and I had a fresh day to work with today. It started off with being woken up by a phone call from a local company, asking me to come in for an interview. I had submitted an application through ZipRecruiter with them sometime last week, and I guess I piqued their interest. I set it up for 3:30 today, and started getting ready for another interview I had at 11:30 this morning. This company is based in Austin, TX, and it would require me to move, but I'm willing to go anywhere to get a foot in the door at this point. This interview went really well, in my opinion. The interviewer and I shared a few laughs and kept it pretty loose. I had some great answers to his non-technical questions, and I told a good story of my journey to this point. I have another take-home assignment to complete with them, equally as hard as the other one, and if I pass that, I will get a second interview with them, being a technical. Then, I went to the doctor to get x-rays and be cleared to go back to work. Everything looked great, and he said I could start walking again in 2 weeks, which I can't wait for.

After this, I went over to my afternoon interview with the local company. I had a really hard time finding any information about the company before walking in, so I didn't know what to expect. They took me into a conference room, and then brought in the CEO of the company. He grilled me on all sorts of questions concerning my path in life up until this point, why I decided to get an Economics degree in college, why I got into the golf business, why I'm getting out of the golf business, and plenty of other questions concerning me as a person. I thought I was on point with my answers, but he was hard to read, so I don't know what to expect with that. Then, they brought in the CTO. He asked a lot of questions about the technologies and tools I'm comfortable with, but didn't really get all that technical. I thought I had some great answers to his questions, as well, and I was able to show my passion for web development well, and I think he identified with that. They are meeting tomorrow to discuss the possible candidates, so I should be able to find out pretty quickly if I'm going to get on to a second interview with them. So, overall, it was a much more positive day, but I still have a lot of work to do. My focus is turning towards this second take-home assignment I was given by the company in Austin, as I have less hope of getting the job in Utah. I think if I can knock this project out of the park, I'll be in really good shape with that job.

Until tomorrow!