Monday, October 1, 2012

The Great Job Hunt


OK, I’ll spare you the suspense: I have a job. Two jobs, actually, one full-time and one part-time.

Back in April, back in Japan, I started job-hunting and found an open position for ESL Instructor at a community college in North Carolina. I was invited for an interview, but as I was still 6,000 miles away and they weren’t into Skype, I was put on hold indefinitely.

The same thing happened with two other organizations I applied for. One was a social worker-esque job working for the State of North Carolina in Durham and the other was for a non-profit in Raleigh that I was strongly drawn to. Both were interested in me but neither wanted to hire me until they saw me in the flesh.

Two days after moving back to NC in August, I had a face-to-face interview with the community college folk and was hired on the spot. I started teaching Level 1 ESL two nights a week two weeks later. Then I was asked to sub during a day class in Garner four mornings a week. I was really enjoying the classes, but amusing myself between 12:30 and 6:30 p.m. in south Raleigh without driving back to my house 35 miles away was difficult. Plus it was still part-time (18 hours a week) and not quite enough to support me.

I was getting headaches thinking about how to fill in the afternoons . . . contractual medical interpreting? Nope, I couldn’t pass the phone screenings. Tutoring? With only one student, it hardly was worth it to drive there. I really needed a full-time job.

Then they both came at once. I saw an open position at the organization in Durham on Craiglist and landed an interview. When they offered me the job, the salary was $6,000 less than I’d been quoted, but the benefits were good and I’d be able to speak Spanish every day. I was scheduled to start training on Monday.

But on the Friday afternoon before I was going to start, I got an email from the non-profit in Raleigh, asking me if I was still interested in working with them! A position had suddenly become open and they were hiring fast.

How many hours of anguish did I spend that weekend, agonizing over this decision! I knew I’d rather work in Raleigh than Durham, but do I really quit one job before it starts, just for the promise of an interview at the other one, not knowing how much I’d make or what my responsibilities would entail? Do I start working on Monday and maybe quit by the end of the week, despite the hours of training they would have invested in me? Did I tell either of my potential employers what the situation was? What was the moral, ethical, legal thing to do? Damn the timing!

In the end, I couldn’t lie. I emailed my new supervisor (who had only met me once, at our interview) and told her I had accepted another interview, and if that I meant I shouldn’t come in to work on Monday morning, I understood. She wrote back a brief but professional reply, completely expected, telling me good luck with the interview and that she was sorry my career choice didn’t fit in with her organization.  

So it was that I walked into Tuesday’s interview with absolutely nothing to fall back on if it didn’t go well. As things turned out, though, I was offered the job the very next morning, and was asked to start work the day after! I’ll be teaching two ESL classes four times a week and be in charge of creating a curriculum to use with them. I’m really excited about the responsibility, experience, and freedom this job will give me.

Of course, I wonder if I was stupid for giving up a state job that offered a better salary and benefits to work at a non-profit, but then again, money isn’t everything. I think I’ll have more personal satisfaction in this job than I would have had with the other. Plus, most of my professional experience has been with non-profits, so I know what to expect with them. What makes me even happier, too, is that now I don’t have to compartmentalize my last two years working in Japan. I can continue to use those teaching experiences to make my classroom in the U.S. better than it would have been otherwise. And getting paid to do something you love . . . well, that’s what we all want, isn’t it?