Falling Down on the Job

Here it is mid-morning and I'm just getting to my blog for the day. I've already had several email flurries. Oh well. Working on the new role opportunities. Trying to get one that is designated for northern USA to be considered for me. It would be great to distract them with that argument, forgetting about whether I'm the guy for the role or not. On my resume I added a little map showing my city as part of a triangle with the other locations, showing that I am closer to the one US spot, than the other US spot is. Hopefully that carries some weight. But oceanographic folk aren't always the most rational! :o

My old VP is even being helpful. I didn't think of this person as the most pleasant in the world, but I guess we did get along well at a corporate dinner, and hopefully non-disparaging things were said about me when my work came up occasionally. So one can only that my professional behaviour and reasonably decent contributions would carry some weight in the hiring process. The role I'm scouting out in, what was it-aquatic mammal classification strategy - sounds like a good one for me. It's not a specific product, which, while interesting would tend to bore me too quickly. I mean, being a product manager for kelp biscuits would be interesting in that you do lots of customer facing stuff. But it's a week-by-week schedule driving job really, in development work. I enjoy the making-something fulfillment of it. You end up with a product that ships. The mammal classification work is strategy stuff for the future. That's much more in-line with my previous research work, and the 'vision' component is very much related.

Sometimes, looking at senior positions I wonder - could I really do that? But then I think of the people I know in those roles, and how there are often slugs that just generate grammatically marginal stuff, and how our company hasn't been the trailblazers of all the new oceanographic products lately, and realize that surely I could do at least as good a job.

So anyways, I'll see if there's any chance. How would failure look for this? Probably one of two approaches - a note from the hiring VP saying they've got someone already, or that the role needs to be in the US locations... or just no response at all. Actually the generally ignoring you approach seems most like our corporate culture, where the motto is never answer the phone, and don't talk to anyone unless you're locked in a room with them.