After nearly two and a half months since submitting my resume at BART, I had my three part interview today at 11AM. Now, I have never been a big fan of interviews, on either side, administering or participating in them, I always get nervous and my head is a jumbled mess of thoughts. Up until now everything at BART has been going my way, I guess I could call Paula my “guardian angel” so to speak. All I do is say her name and good things seem to happen. Don’t get me wrong, I am qualified for the position I interviewed for and I know I would make a damn good employee [regardless of current attitude I have at my current job].

I arrived about 60 minutes early, because I always fear something will happen, so I need to give myself plenty of extra time in which to arrive. So I arrived quite early and just hung out, waiting…and waiting…and waiting. I was approached by a well dressed man who asked me if he could help me and what I was doing. He introduced himself and oddly enough he was a manager in the department I am trying to be hired to, so he understood my plight. He did say, “based on how you are dressed, you should get the position.” That was a positive thought that I took with me into the interview.

Once I was inside, there were three individuals who would administer the oral portion of the interview. There was a fourth individual who was an “observer.” The interview was very structured from the greeting to all eight questions including the writing assignment and typing skills test. Now due to the fact that I could be disqualified if I actually go into details, I won’t risk it. You never know who’s eyes will see what I type. Remind me to relate another Internet incident that nearly got me fired back in 1996 from my current employer. If you have spent any time taking interviews then you can figure out the basic line of questioning. A panel of people who want to see if you have what it takes to be a successful candidate.

I breezed through the writing assignment and finished the typing skills test. Hopefully I am not docked points because I did not capitalized any of the characters as they were denoted on the paper I was to follow. Of course all my keystrokes were 100% correct, I had time to check them all over and I did not have any mistakes. Then again, I did not think I would as my typing skills are very strong.

So the last two items I had to do was get them a dependability calender [number of days missed of work] from June, 2005 to June 2006 and god damn, wouldn’t you know I missed 2 or 3 days at the end of May and early June. Three days in the last 11 years! But they do not know that and I have no way of conveying that information to them since they only want 12 months because that truly does not reflect my dependability at all. I am nails when it comes to going to work…all the time. I don’t use sick time if I don’t have to, but under those circumstances I had to. So, hopefully that does not go against me.

Now we play the waiting game again. The list of candidates was short, if indeed that was the full list. There were 5 or 6 total people interviewing today. I don’t know if there were more yesterday or tomorrow. All I know is that I did my best, came prepared, made a good impression and went above and beyond what was needed to be done prior to the interview. I had read numerous manuals relating to the operation. I had spent 7-10 hours observing in their operational control center and spent time observing in the train cab, with a friend of mine who is a train operator. That is more than some outside candidates could even hope for. So keep those fingers crossed for me, I do see the light at the end of tunnel. As I said, hopefully it is the end, which would be the start of a new career and not a train coming to take me out.