Next Tuesday

Next Tuesday, I get to see the offer that my would-be employer will be making me.
In the longest ever job-hunt courtship I have ever experienced, I worry that I will sign the contract just to get closure on the darn thing.

Maybe that was their dastardly plan all along.

Really very quite contrary, How did your job interview go?

Well, it went fine.
There were a couple of last-minute pre-interview stressors though:

- first, my mum rang up 90 minutes before the appointment, to say that my brother had forgotten to get her day's medication sorted out before he left for work - could I please go over there and do it before she collapses from hunger? I did that and, fortunately, even managed to leave her house quickly - before TLM got too insistent with her need to jump on the trampoline in her back yard. And I was back in time to change, put on my interview face (i.e. with makeup) and catch a bus into town.

- then, I realised after I got into town, that my skin was flaking and my makeup was caking, and I had nothing with me to fix it. The last thing I wanted was to go into a job interview with flaky, cakey skin on my top lip. I was extremely grateful for the pharmacy attendant who gave me free samples of makeup remover, foundation, tissues and the use of a mirror, so I could fix my beauty emergency.

But the interview itself was fine, just...incomplete. I had to do a little exercise to show the manager how well I write instructions. After fifteen minutes, I had over a page of scrawly writing, telling an anonymous (and ignorant, yet literate) person how to brew a pot of tea.

The thing is, I still don't know whether they want to hire me. I have to go back a third time, to meet with one of her colleagues, who will ascertain whether I'm right for one of their documentation teams.

Geekdom beckons

I've decided to look for work as a test analyst (as well as look for technical writing work, that is). For those of you unfamiliar with the IT industry, these are the people who test new software before it goes "live". It's always been thought of as extremely boring (which explains why it's so well-paid). But a lot of test analysts get to do technical writing work and the latter is what I'm after. So I'm going to give it a go.

At the very least, I'd be able to earn enough money to pay for the nanny that I'd have to hire, to entertain TLM until she gets into another daycare (one that is open all day).

But if I do this, I'll end up very close to where I started - miserably writing computer programs for a large,greedy corporation. I don't know how I'll feel working again with the kind of people whose idea of heaven is a room full of computer parts, peripherals, cables, modems and little flashing lights.

What's the plural of Curriculum Vitae?

I have an awful lot of different versions of my CV, on my laptop. It's probably because I never settle on one particular type of job, when I'm job-hunting. But I have a different-looking CV for every job I've applied for in the last six years, each one trying to highlight a slightly different array of skills and experience.

Job-hunting would be so much simpler if I could just sent my entire working-life story to each and every potential employer. But then, job-hunting would probably be a lot less successful.

So I've just put the finishing touches on my latest CV, which I plan to send to any junior tech-writing vacancies that come to my attention. But if I see a library-type position advertised then I'll have to go find one of my older CVs and create CV-version-twenty-something. I suppose all this re-writing of CVs must be good writing practice. Or something. But I also makes me nostalgic for the days when I was in the same job for years, and expected to still be there now.