I was supposed to fly from here to Phoenix, have a reasonable hour and a half layover, and arrive in Philadelphia a little before 5. Plenty of time to drive the 30-40 minutes down to my hotel, have dinner with boyfriend, make him listen to me practice my talk one more time, and get to bed nice and early before having to be at the interview at 8. Clearly that didn't happen.
When I got off the (20 minute) flight to Phoenix, my flight had an unspecified "ATC delay" but the earlier flight to Philadelphia was just boarding, so I asked if they had any open seats. No. (So they said.) An ATC delay is when the FAA steps in and imposes limitations on the flights in and out of any given city (Philadelphia and a number of other east coast cities in this case), usually for weather related reasons. The annoying thing is it's much less specific than another delay. There is no updated departure time. The air traffic control tower guesses when they think you might get to leave.
They initially guessed we might be allowed to leave around 9:30 - not bad, less than an hour's delay, so we boarded the entire massive jet for the cross country flight, and then we sat there. We sat at the gate, and eventually they said it was going to be at least three hours before we could leave, so they couldn't legally pull away from the gate (thank God). We sat there a while longer before they encouraged us to get off and get food, because there was no way they had enough food for everybody for the 3+ hours sitting at the gate and the 5+ hour flight. So I got off, got myself about 2 days worth of food, since I figured I might be getting into Philadelphia after most food options had closed, and sat there at the gate. Of course the airline's website, FAA's website, terminal monitors, and gate info all have different information. When the flight was cancelled that info was online at least 15 minutes before it was ever announced or posted in the terminal. That's right, the connecting flight to my first grown up job interview was cancelled. I figured that since it was already noon, Phoenix is 3 hours behind the east coast, and there was weather that I was probably screwed. I called the recruiter to let her know the situation, and sat there debating whether I should wait around the Phoenix airport or go find the shuttle back to Tucson. Yay for having a travel agent, because I am 100% sure that I never would have been rebooked and rerouted that quickly or even for that day on my own.
My reroute sent me from Phoenix to Charlotte, and then finally to Philadelphia, where I landed around midnight. So no dinner with Boyfriend (and no carefully saved and packed leftover cookies for Boyfriend), but at least I made it there. It had already been difficult to squeeze in a date when everybody involved could do the interview, and between E's wedding and other people's travel schedules, it would have been at least 10 days before we could possibly reschedule, and I was already the second to last person interviewed.
Even without a checked bag it was almost 1 am before I got on the highway to drive the half hour to my hotel. It's totally desirable to get about four and a half hours of sleep before a job interview, right? I set about 4 alarms to make sure I made it up with plenty of time to make myself presentable. Unfortunately in east coast humidity it takes about twice as long to dry and tame my hair as it does in Tucson.
I made it to the interview on time (first requirement! see this awesome link Boyfriend shared for more interview tips, in convenient graphical format), gave my talk, and sat through the panel style interview portion. I know the talk went well (thank you E and Sugar Pants for listening to me practice and giving me feedback!), and that they enjoyed it. My dissertation research is really different from what they all (at least currently) do and I could tell they had fun hearing about something really different but neat, and that made it all the more fun for me to give it. They asked decent, although sometimes funny questions about my talk, all of which I could answer, including the historical/literature question, so that was good. The actual interview portion felt like it went really quickly. It was a behavior-based interview rather than technical skills based, which I expected. I had previously thought about responses to several behavior based interview questions, though none were questions they asked. I could pretty regularly think of answers to everything they asked, though I was a bit horrified that the first situation that came to mind for most questions was not a lab/science situation! They didn't seem to think that was problematic though, so I told them about the first relevant scenario that came to mind anyways, promising to return to the question if a lab/science based story came to mind. I guess since they're looking for examples when you demonstrated certain social interaction, thinking, or character skills or qualities they didn't really care about the context of the example. After a brief tour, the entire thing was over in less than three hours.
I returned my rental car barely twelve hours after picking it up. And while I spent the entire afternoon chilling in the Philadelphia airport (yay for free wi-fi at the Terminal C Au Bon Pain!) for convenience sake, the trip home was fortunately uneventful. Although I got home about midnight. And had no idea what time zone my thought it was in or should think it was in.
About a week later I got an offer for the job! Yayyy! After some back and forth I formally accepted the offer this past week and got a start date this morning. I'm really excited about the job - I really liked everybody I met before/during the interview. While that's not essential, it's certainly encouraging. I think I'll have good bosses who will be good mentors. The job is a post-doc, but an industry post-doc, which pays a heck of a lot more (~2x more) than an academic post-doc. It's a nice transition from academia, and somewhat less scary because I won't be expected to know everything and just go on my own because it is a training position. The work is also really, really different from what I do now (but still mass spec), but also directly related to what I think I'd ultimately like to do, so awesome. As mentioned in J's guest post, I'll be employed by an instrument company, but work in a lab at an academic institution.
I start September 5th. The next couple of months will be full of dissertation defending, cross country moving, and beach sitting. I'm pretty psyched.
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