For some reason I have very weird interview experiences. Last year I had the inkling to try and find an email I sent out after my IBM interview in 2003. Thanks to the man, he happened to stumble upon it in an old email account.

The e-mail

YO YO, I’m sitting on the plane right now so I figured id write you all and let you know how it went.

The Trip: I get to RDU for my 430pm flight only to find out it delayed until about 6pm b/c of rain in Atlanta. Yippy. Short flight get to ATL at 7pm, my connecting flight is at 7:04pm uh oh! I start hauling ass from terminal A to Terminal B, halfway there I stop and see that its delayed for another 20 minutes, What a relief I was thinking. I get on the plane just in time….for the toilet to explode. This poor woman went into the bathroom and the toilet just went up like OLD FAITHFUL spitting a fountain of blue-I-Don’t-want-to-know-whats in there- all over her and thus another delay while they clean it up. Well it leaked into the belly (luckily my bags where carry-on but unfortunately the Capt was worried about this blue mystery liquid freezing underneath the plane, and decided we couldn’t take this plane and he would find another. I guess he thought Delta has a secret parking lot of extra planes somewhere. I was sorry to find out there is not parking lot of planes and we had to wait for one to come in from Cincy to take. Delayed until 935pm. The next flight was uneventful, other then the fact I did the crossword puzzle in about 10 minutes, to the amusement of this lady next to me who thought I was Doogie Howser “WOW, I’ve never seen anyone finish a crossword that fast” …Little did she know I spent the hour flight from RDU to ATL doing the same one, along with buying everyone’s bday present from the skymall catalog. THEY HAVE SOME GREAT DEALS IN THERE!

Thomas KLUV’s twin was sitting next to me on the plane, add Kristin’s big boobs and she was a dead ringer, even acted like her.

Well I finally get to KC with an airport about the size of a Home Depot, flag down the hertz bus. Hope on and there is this girl (Candace) on there we start talking and she is there for the same interview…Naturally I did what any good Samaritan would do, I gave her directions to the hotel….in NEBRASKA…cue dumb and dumber (” That Jon Denver sure is an idiot, These rocky mountains sure aint rocky”). I was supposed to get a nice mid size car at hertz, they were out of them so I suggested the Porsche, the old guy working the midnight shift at Hertz in KC sure didn’t seem amused but he gave me a 2005 4Runner with 1083 miles on it, man was that thing sweet. The other girl followed me to the hotel we checked in this brand new Sheraton, then headed straight to room 112, bada bing!

They stuck me up top somewhere and we were gonna met in the lobby for a beer but it closed so we went to some Bar And Grill down the street. Seeing that we were the only ones in there the bartender was very chatty and gave us a few of the local beers on the house, and I chatted him up about what there is to do etc…Seemed pretty cool, I hope I get to spend some time out there. It reminded me of Charlotte, just a big ass metropolitan area, real spread out….on to the interview

The Interview - Candace and I, head over to the office, and there was 10 or so others in the lobby like us, so I stared them all down until they got scared and grumbled “Take the turkey out of the oven chumps this job is mine”….They actually didn’t tell us how many positions there was just kept saying “several”…They stick us in a conference full of drinks and bagels etc and give us a presentation about what the job is and what its like working for IBM as a Consultant etc. Our host says ok I’m gonna read off your names in the order to be interviewed, guess who was first…Ev motherfuckin ROCCCK. Yippy again! I really wasn’t too nervous tho, I prepared as best as I could all that was left was top notched smoozing. They put me in this 5 by 5 room with a table and 2 chairs, If I didn’t know I was at IBM I would have thought I was in an interrogation room! This guy comes in and just starts chatting with me, asking me to explain a few things on my resume and he said that the next guy would be more technical. He didn’t ask me any of the standard interview questions, no “Tell me about yourself” , “Why should we hire you” or anything like that, it was real relaxed and I felt I had a good conversation with this guy and he said he felt I was very qualified for this job, if not overqualified but in a very good way. 30min later shake hands and off the next guy.

My host tells me his name is Hakish Abudabi or something like that, so im thinking great, he’s gonna slam me with tech questions…Not even close, just asked me general questions, more of the standard interview questions, how would you deal with this, describe a situation when you did this. I breezed through and he gave me lots of compliments and an hour later my interviewing was done with IBM..

I forgot to mention this group, you want to talk about Equal Opportunity this group had it all. Black girl, Asian Girl, White girl, Arabian guy (with a towel thing on his head), a Indian guy and what a shocker his name was Patel, the old balding guy, the European (I think), the Dungeons and dragons long haired hippy guy, and me and 2 other average white doods. After my interview 6 of us are done and back in the conference room and start talking about the interview, apparently each group of 3 of us talked to 2 different people and for the first time in my life I didn’t get the hard one. The white girl comes out like she’s seen a ghost, apparently this Dr. Bello (Thomas’ boy)/Dr. Kelinga (Odom’s boy) was asking her some crazy questions and then would just stare at her. She even said she started drawing pictures after he asked her some question about her computer knowledge. Now I may not be the smartest man but that can’t be a good thing for an interviewee to do. I felt pretty good when I left. We should know by the end of next week. (Ill write about the job at the end if anyone cares to read it, this email is long enough) *update* A few weeks after I got back I found out they hired the korean girl, Indian Guy and Arabian guy. When I found out i didn’t get it I promptly accepted the job at WebSourced. Raleigh > KC anyday.

Emit Patel was the lucky one whose flight got canceled and gets to stay in KC and go to the ball game tonight, I pimped my 4runner back to the airport only to find my outgoing flight delayed 30 minutes and that puts me back here on the plane to ATL writing you all.

Back to my skymall catalog,

Evan

PS Ill be expecting the World’s First Global Atomic Watch on pg 102 for my bday www.skymall.com for your convenience..

About the job, IBM signed a multi-billion dollar deal with Sprint to reorganize there customer service and client management. Spring headquarters is in KC (a very very sweet complex). There is a total of 250-300 IBM people working on the job, but are broken down to teams of 10 or so. This position would start Aug 2nd and they send you to 5 weeks of training, 2 weeks in NY, few days in VA, and a few weeks somewhere else to be determined. Id be required to relocate to KC for 1-2 years then after that you have your choice of relocating permanently to just about any city where IBM has an office, then I would fly out to wherever my next project is on Monday, fly back on thurs. Not a bad deal, lots of travel but I think its good experience and all that….ok that’s all for now, time to land.

I’ll post my Microsoft experience later in the week