So, I got the job.
And then I didn’t.
And then I did, kind of.
The basics are that I was told by the Personnel Manager that if I could pass their welding test, I should consider myself hired. I went out to the Jeep to grab my hood, boots, gloves and coat, and when I came back was walked in to another office and introduced to the Production Manager who told me that they couldn’t hire me.
Because I have not yet gotten my certification, they couldn’t hire me to be a structural welder. Also, my screwed up school schedule from the latter third of September until the second week of December made it difficult to place me with a crew, even as a fitter. I went to thank him and shake his hand and he asked me to sit down so we could talk. For about 10 minutes I went through a second interview covering a lot of inside baseball welding process questions and questions about my school transcript and 3.8GPA. He was impressed with what I had learned in a year’s time.
After that was over, he told me he wants me to call him around the middle of each month between now and the end of the upcoming quarter to keep up with my progress. Also, to plan on coming in to see them again right after Thanksgiving. He also asked me to not accept any job offers without getting the particulars about their offer first.
So that’s good, right?
The company works almost exclusively with another company that does crane work and piledriving. They fabricate the forms and other equipment for each job. Lots of cages and frames. Lots of MIG and Dual Shield. Lots of work. They can almost keep up, but the other company needs them to get ahead and they need machinists and welder/fabricators who know their shit, in a bad way.
On the way home I stopped by the welding supply store I frequent and dropped off my resume there. I also stopped by the state “Employment Security” office to try and find the procedure to get a 12-15 week extension of benefits.
Tomorrow and Wednesday I plan on dropping a few more resumes off to see if anyone else can work with my schedule for the next 15 weeks.
Thanks for all the help and comments, guys.
Good luck, sounds like you are on the right track. Looking for work is the most miserable, anxiety-producing, humbling experience there is.
From the hiring side, finding good people seems impossible, especially if there is any HR to weed out the good candidates. If an organization needs just one person, they usually wait until they need a few more. When the situation is urgent, everyone is too busy to hire and train new employees, so they wait for the situation to become dire. Then they would be happy to hire 5 guys at once, if only they could.
Hope you get the job you want. Keep it up as time will tell. I know the last few weeks of my training I had to use a credit card to “fill” the gap. I was willing to do that has with the degree my job prospects went way up.
A degree can be short hand to say you have some experience. with skills like yours it is less about class work and more about talent.
If I could make a good herringbone with a stick I might have followed a similar path. Prayers your works out.
Good luck man, we’re keeping our fingers and toes crossed!
I’ve never had a potential employer offer that much; I hope you get the job, they sound like they know how to work with new employees.
If the company you describe has a gorilla Incorporated into their logo you could do worse. We’ve got local aerospace work too but I’m not particularlly keen on them now. You should also stop by the larger shipyard on Harbor Island if you happen to be be in the neighborhood.
Thanks for the local knowledge, R. I thought pretty highly of the guys. They seemed like they knew what they were doing and were decent folks. No one there looked unhappy. Overly busy because their backlogged, but not unhappy.