An Interesting Time

There are times in life when things go a direction that you were never really prepared for and are not sure how to handle. I recently went through one of those times. I have been a contractor with my current company for a little over a year. In that time I have been working for a single financial company. I have tried to do side projects and improve my skills as best I can, but for the most part I have been doing the work as if I was solely employed by said financial firm. I like what I have been ding and feel like I have done my work pretty well.


Then the winds of change have began to blow. The market took a little bit of a down turn, the price of oil began to skyrocket and suddenly there were less and less of my co-workers around me. Those of us with the badges that designated that we worked for other companies slowly began to reduce in number. There were lunches to say goodbye to people who generally came into our group after I got here. It was a little strange. I got scared.

With everyone seemingly losing their jobs around me I did what I thought I had to do. i posted my resume on Monster.com. I did not what to do a full out search, cause my contracting company has a pretty good track record of moving people from on engagement to another, and I have really enjoyed working for them. There have been a couple things that have irked me over the past year and a third, but overall things have been really good. Yet, I thought it was my personal due diligence to take a look at what else was out there. I did my research using salary.com and glassdoor.com (this site is pretty cool). I decided that it was going to take a 10% raise to get me out of my current position.

I started to receive calls from IT recruiters. I have to admit that some of these guys don't even seem to look at a resume before they try to contact you. I would get a call or two a day. Some people looking at the systems I have used, others looking at my experience. Some jobs sounded great, others not so much. I even got contacted by the other major consulting firm at my current engagement, the one who was laying off people as they were rolling off of the team. It was a little weird. There were a couple that sounded interesting. An investment firm in King of Prussia, the company that owns Victoria Secret and a local insurance firm. I started some interviews and clearly was impressing I guess. Most were pretty standard. There was one that had me complete an Excel proficiency test, which I thought was ridiculous, but whatever... if that is the first impression that they wanted to give so be it.

I went through a couple rounds with the insurance firm and they made me an offer that was almost 10% more, which I thought was okay. If not for their lousy education benefits I may have jumped at it right then. They were looking for an answer the next morning. Instead of being pressured into answering right then I went over and spoke with my VP. I let him know that I received an offer and we chatted for a bit. He asked me to give him until noon the next day to see if they could run some numbers. It was refreshing to not be told just to leave the company. I was a little worried about that. So I left the office and felt pretty good about things. I was hopeful that my current company would come close to the offer that I was being offered by the insurance firm, cause while the instability of consulting is something that I don't want in my life forever, for now it is just fine.

So I went home and tried to take my mind off of it. I didn't want to think about it. It was out of my hands at that point. You can't sweat the things you have no control over.

The next day I came into work and got down to business. I actually didn't check my company mail for a little bit. I was to busy with setting up my day and getting ready for the work that I would do that day. It was about 9:30 when i checked, not really expecting anything, but there it was. A message from my VP asking me to give him a call. I took a deep breath and dialed the phone. It was one of the shortest conversations I have ever had.

THEY BEAT THE OFFER.

So I am a pretty happy guy. An 11.25% raise and I get to keep my education benefits which are really going to pay out beginning next year. Oh, and I took my resume off monster. Those calls can be very distracting.