well, I've dialed into the conference call for the first second interview. I am the first person in the conference. I'm wearing my jabra bluetooth headset, the little silicone tips make a good seal for my

oh!
we're live.

well, that just happened!

went very well, will know the next thing I know within a week.

Gonna go decompress a little, have a big day today with non work stuff, and more work stuff tomorrow with an in person first interview with employer number three.

keep on keeping on

good work, breathe

Sounds like you've been able to maintain a good attitude. :thumb:

It's been a week.

The phone interview went well.

The next day, Tuesday, I had another panel interview with an outfit here in town, just five minutes away. That interview also went very well and they said they'd like to have a decision in the next two weeks.

Yesterday I wrote a followup letter for the people in the Monday phone interview. I like them, I like their company, the job and the location all seem very appealing. I asked a couple people to proof my letter and I heard back from them this morning.

Alongside the replies from my proofreading friends, I found a message from the internal recruiter at the company who conducted the phone interview on Monday. They said they'd be in touch within a week and they kept their word.

Their word is "We would like to move forward with you. Do you have time tomorrow to chat?"

:celebrat:

This is the most preferred potential employer of the three that I've interviewed with to this point.

I am so stoked!

Go, Go Big V!!:celebrat:

That's my new pick up line:

I would like to move forward with you. And then back. And then forward. And then back. And then forward...

Man, you crack me the hell up!

yes!

Good news:
I have been made an offer, verbally over the phone. I like the offer and they say an electronic copy will be arriving by email by early next week.

Bad news:
It is a contingent offer. It is contingent on me being granted a security clearance. This is beyond my direct control, even beyond the direct control of the employer as they don't issue security clearances.

I have never had a contingent offer (nor a security clearance). The employer says that the offer stands for six months, that they are suspending the search, that they want *me* and are willing to wait on the government (for up to six months) to get me. The employer indicated to me that they understand that I still need to work in the meantime and there are no restrictions on me during the six month "life" of the offer. The recruiter said I can take any kind of work in the meantime and when the government issues the clearance, or an interim clearance, they'll tell me (though I think I'd be informed by the government directly as well) and I can choose to accept this offer at that time.

This puts me in a kind of weird position. I want a job, I want full time work. I have other live interview/opportunities which may develop into offers. Take a job then quit saying "see ya, got a better offer", which I know absolutely happens, but I've never done that. Would I accept and say I'm expecting to leave within six months? That sounds like a bad idea. Who would intentionally hire someone, train them up knowing they wouldn't be there past six months? The flip side also feels dishonest, not telling them.

At this moment, these are hypothetical situations. I don't have to make any of these choices right now. But I'm probably going to have to make a decision like this at some point it the mid future.

Side note, the recruiter spent a lot of time talking up / talking about the benefits of the company, holidays, pay schedule, PTO schedule, etc etc. That was nice to hear, but you had me at "offer". She did also say that I need to get a technical certification which was discussed in the interview. I told the men that I didn't possess the cert they asked about. They replied, can you get it within six months of starting here? Yes, definitely. I'll start at the end of this call (and I did). One nice company benefit: $5,250 annual stipend for academic assistance and technical training. This certification would fall squarely under that characterization. I see a lot of schooling in my future.

I feel good.

you carry on hunting, you take what job you get, you do it as if it were the job you wanted all along, and then when these people come back to you, consider yourself as having been head-hunted and resign from the one you are doing accordingly.

Perhaps I can give this some additional perspective:

The process you're awaiting is what everyone who's ever joined the military has gone through.

The authority for granting a security clearance descends from the POTUS. Career civil servants carry out that process for him and he'll never know you exist.

A security clearance is a privilege … not a right. There's no disputing the final determination; so, the government doesn't generally contact an individual directly regarding the outcome.

They'll do (maybe already have done) an instant background check for criminal convictions and psychiatric adjudications much like is done for purchasing firearms. Passing that gets you an interim security clearance.

Then they'll do a detailed background check for indicators. It's a more in-depth risk assessment in which they'll look at arrests without convictions. They may interview those you've listed as references and neighbors. They're looking to see if anything comes up that you could be blackmailed for (are you a peeping Tom; or, running an unlicensed lemonade stand?) and aren't particularly interested in people's opinions of you.

Not previously having held a security clearance only affects the waiting time. Updates are faster and there will be periodic updates. After you leave a position that requires a security clearance, it automatically gets downgraded to an inactive status. Going to another such position will only require an update and the waiting time will be shorter for reactivation.

You can lose a security clearance for anything that might've kept you from getting one in the first place (e.g. get a DUI and you can lose your job, even if you aren't convicted).

Taking another job before a security clearance is granted won't affect your eligibility for one. The investigation process will; however, stop and you'll have to start from scratch next time.

Congrats! Though as I understand it, they are far behind on investigations, and clearances are slow coming. But hopefully interim clearances are quicker.

on the other hand, once you get a clearance, you will be much more marketable.


It's all good news!

My last update was posted on 12 Mar 20, which seems an eternity ago.

I waited and waited, finally I contacted the recruiter asking about the actual offer, not just the talk of an offer. One day later, it's here. I've completed the next tasks outlined in the offer letter, including accepting the offer (utterly negotiation free, that was.... I'm struggling to express how painlessly they got their number, first time, frictionlessly, with my consent. It's a good offer, but ... I don't know. Maybe I just suck at negotiation.).

Now the contingencies get accomplished. I have studying to do. Others have investigations to conduct. Hopefully I'll have checks to cash soon. I'm so stoked and kind of tired.

Congrats!

What She said.

Nice! Good job V.

yay! good luck with the rest of it, hope it's quick!

Yeah, you've had your orgasm, just some afterplay then you can sleep.

Excellent!

Found this offering today. Might be a leftover from yesterday:


Wowser. I don't think I have my COBOL textbook anymore. Dude might have a copy though.

I think I have one.... just emptied my collapsed bookshelf with all my textbooks (and Beest's) in it. Pascal, anyone? Prolog? (I loved Prolog)

I will forward the job posting to you if you like. Since it is a work from (old folks) home posting, the commute is optimal. I'm sure you could find it yourself, it was on Dice.com.

I'm... gonna pass for the time being. I'm not really interested in this moment to return to the life of a programmer. But maybe in another week of confinement and no pay... ask me again later.

oh god no thanks, I hated that shit..... :lol:

...there was a reason I moved to Cognitive Science :D

I found this job on Indeed, no commute... I reckon maybe I could handle numerology?

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sounds promising!!!

Minus the phrenology, of course. #socialdistancing

I believe they're doing that remotely too...... :eek:

Hello friends.

Here's an update.

As I posted previously, I have a contingent offer in hand, good for another 5 months. In the meantime, I have been tasked with completing two requests. Provide citizenship verification, which I have done. I turned the house inside out looking for my damn birth certificate and did not find it. Let me offer all of you the benefit of my experience here. If you need to communicate with some distant public health agency for a document like this, do not click on the top search result when you ask the Google to help you. That link will take you to a very official looking site, ask you all the right questions, take your money after you confirm you've read the Terms and Conditions, and send you an email indicating they'll send the one paper page of info you just input via the mail to the public health department in question. In this email, they're very clear that you already clicked the box that you understood the T&C and that a refund will not be forthcoming. At this point, I called the office in question, and the nice lady said *this* is the one we use, the only one, you can rely on them to convey the data you input to our office electronically and that they'll probably have it out the door within the hour. Here's what you need to know, the real site, the good site, it's not at the top of the search results, and it has a kind of funny spelling. Use this one:

https://www.vitalchek.com/

C H E K, got it?

Not vitalrec or vitalcheck or vitalrecordsonline or yourvitalrecords or vitalrecordscertificates or anything like that. Just the one in the link above. As a sanity check look for the name "A LexisNexis (R) Risk Solutions Company". One sixth the price, one hour (to the health dept) instead of mailing the paper to me to be mailed to the health department for six times the price.

My money and time, your lesson.

And complete the Questionnaire for National Security Positions Standard Form 86 (SF 86). This is a non-trivial form, the quick reference guide for which runs 44 pages. I have seven days to complete it. It is pretty exhaustive and I've taken four pages of notes just on the quick reference guide to know what to expect. I'm trying to avoid having the form open in one tab and using my computer and phone elsewhere to get the answer only to have the form tab timeout, or some other technical setback.

I have my notes, I'm going to flesh out what I know will be asked for (it's like an open book test, I'm getting my book well bookmarked before the test) so I can git-er done. Optimistically, the quick reference guide suggests that the public burden for this collection of information is estimated to be 150 minutes.

bwwaaaahahahahahahhaha!

I'll check in again in 150 minutes. Bye for now!

149 minutes having elapsed, I'm here again.

*whew*

I've completed the 136 page form. I still need to resolve fourteen errors, then validate, sign, download, and submit, but that will all happen tonight. This just happens to be a natural stopping point and we just finished dinner.

OK!

See you all in one minute, right?

TIME!

Good night all!

Good Lord what a PIA. Nobody has clearance in the Executive Branch, can't we just open the flood gates? I guess that would spread out the Russian money too thin like UBI.

An update:

There have been a couple messages back and forth on this subject. One was a note indicating that an interim clearance would not be issued--not uncommon and not alarming. The other was a signed letter of intent to join their outfit in September--somewhat uncommon and somewhat reassuring.

Today I got an echo back from an investigator but no more breaking news than that. Good to know they're still working on it--still encouraged and still nervous.

!!!

I've just taken a call from the Special Agent and we have scheduled a videoconference for tomorrow at midday.

SO STOKED!

good luck!

Huzzah!

sweet!

Good Luck V.

And then... and then???

Hey everybody!

The interview has finally concluded.

I feel good about it (now). Yesterday was an epic failure. The DoD and subsidiary agencies are operating remotely in many instances as are we all due to the current COVID-19 crisis. This includes the agency conducting my background investigation. I received notice and invitation to a videoconference meeting via Microsoft Teams. Yesterday the Special Agent and I spent almost an hour trying to get me connected using the instructions and invitations (plural) she generated for our meeting, all to no avail. It was very discouraging.

We decided to try again today, but with the appointment booked as the last one on her schedule for the day in case we needed to hammer out the problems we encountered yesterday. This turned out to be a good idea. I won't go into / speculate why it didn't work. Well, not much. I used to be the mercenary admin for several companies that needed this work done but had no interest in doing the necessaries themselves. I had some thoughts on the matter.

But I did not think it was appropriate to barge in and mansplain to this person what she was doing wrong. That seemed very, very inappropriate. We worked together, me taking her lead, try, try, trying again and again to get the systems to connect using the instructions.... computer says not no hell no.

Finally, today, we/she got to the end of her rope after the better part of an hour trying to make it work. She said she'd contacted her tech support people and their first opening for assistance was tomorrow at 10am. Turns out I had some undeployed rope of my own. I explained that I have done this work for a living, that this was the work I was applying to do, etc, etc. and that I had some suggestions. I told her I'd done some research on the error messages displayed on my machine, found a useful FAQ from the Coast Guard related to this issue, and let's try something different. OK!

Well, we tried what I suggested and it worked. I believe there is some kind of misconfiguration in the template that she is using to generate the emailed invitation--that one never worked and we tried repeatedly. The instructions clearly state, and I quote:

Narp.

Her workflow produced two messages per invitation and I copied the contents of a link in the preceding message from her and was able to make it work. We finally got our respective computers to each display the camera feed of the other, audio worked, all was great! The interview was an anticlimax after that struggle, even if it did take more than an hour recovering ground I'd covered in the original *very* extensive background form.

We concluded the interview both glad to have finally succeeded. She said it had to go to a reviewer then to an adjudicator and then god knows where, but it seemed to be moving expeditiously. Spoken like an employed person, I said to myself.

Anyhow, back to waiting for the email to ring.

IRONICALLY


As I said, I am "working" from home, and she is also working remotely. During our non-video calls, my cat Cleo meowed and I (eyes rolling) said that's my cat, she wants on my lap since I'm sitting at the computer. She said she has a furry friend too, implying that she was not in her office.

Once we got connected the conversation got round to my address and she said, "XXXX Road?, I'm just off XXXX Road." Turns out we're neighbors.

Close neighbors. How close? Later in the interview someone exploded their last Fourth of July firework and we both jumped. I said "OH! Did you hear that through my computer mic?" She said "No, I heard it through my window!" Our houses are close enough that we're both hearing the same idiots blasting fireworks in the middle of the afternoon.

Later I thought, wtf, we could have just met up at freakin Starbucks.

Ha! Looks like people are falling into a new trap with all this video.

Sounds like she'll give you a good report. :thumb:

we were cordial. I tried not to presume too much. I feel I'm a good candidate, but I don't know what standards she and the others in the chain use to guide their decision.

I had a second interview today with a second Special Agent conducting my background investigation. It went well, but what do I know?

A well, one more step.

:cheerldr:?

Level up!
 

Clearance eligibility granted, to be precise. More tasks lie ahead. I feel like I've respawned on the next level having evaded all the traps and completed at least all the side quests. Now I have a new level, with new items and skills, though I'm not completely sure how to use them...yet. On hold now with the Help Desk (at > 12:00, I'm trying something else).

Keep at 'er.

yesterday was my first day at work!

#backinthesaddle

Yay!

sweet! well done

OUTSTANDING! Way to go, BigV!

groovy

Woot!!:celebrat::cheerldr:

Thank you my friends.