THE EAGLE, ER, VULTURE, HAS LANDED....

Well, maybe not a vulture. They defecate and urinate on themselves to keep cool. They consume nasty things. And their primary mode of defense is projectile vomiting.

Yes, I know. I am a fount of unusual and largely useless information. It comes from a lot of late nights of testing and waiting for limping systems to be brought back up. I can also tell you about the reproductive habits of earthworms, minutiae on leprotic armadillos, and the fact that camels can swim, although they don't enjoy it.

But to get back to the point, I've been pretty quiet, blog-wise, for a few months because I've been travelling as part of my job search. And I've just accepted an offer from the Great Northwest. Portland, to be exact.

Did I get everything I wanted? Well, my title isn't "Queen of QA", so I fell down a bit on that one. Everything else, yes. I'll be establishing and managing a quality services organization for a 3-billion dollar company. Am I excited? Boy, howdy. Opportunities like this one don't grow on trees; I'm totally pumped up about it! The biggest glitch in my generic happiness at the moment is finding a place to live and getting my house in Central Ohio on the (depressed) market in time to start January 10!

So it might be another 6 weeks or so before I blog again; I'll be getting situated. But expect a lot of of information about the work involved with setting up an organization from scratch; I'll be new to the Northwest area, so I'll have to start building a network and working through the challenges of finding great people in a new area.

To summarize The Search, I planned a 6-month search and it took 5 months and 2 weeks. Whew! Talk about running it close to the line!! I stopped counting inquiries at somewhere around 160 in October. That sounds impressive, but what it really means is I heard about every opportunity available in the country, from assistant tester in Asswipe, North Dakota, to proud owner of my Very Own Franchise. Most of the people who called me hadn't even read my resume. Only a handful were really interesting opportunities at a management level. I almost ended up in Texas. Twice. I love Texas, and evidently they love me too. But Portland, well, Portland had everything. The job. The environment. The peers. The boss. The lone employee (talented, funny). The job. The job. The job. "And what about the MONEY, Linda?". Yes, they had that too. Other than having to pay for parking, which would be damn petty to complain about under the circumstances, I was satisfied with the money too. Unfortunately, I won't be grossing the same as Donald Trump, but my paycheck should keep me and my Sheltie, Elvis, off the streets.

So for those of you looking or planning to look, I can tell you in all honesty that there's a lot of opportunity out there, especially if you're at a lead level or below. If you're at a manager-level or above, plan for longer haul. But that will happen too, especially if you're persistent in your search and follow up on all your leads. I think I've had about 20 free lunches talking about various opportunities, over a hundred phone calls and even more EMails. Some plane trips as well, especially lately. It became a bit tiresome sometimes, since a lot of it was "I know person X at company Y; I'll give him a call...", but it was worth it in the end. And sincerely, all, I appreciate everyone who showed an interest and gave me a call. It kept things hopping. I did take a few short-term consulting gigs to keep from getting bored, but I didn't want to commit to anything long-term that would interfere with interviews, etc. And searching for a job IS a job. And oddly enough, I thought things would slow down to a crawl after Thanksgiving, and they didn't. In fact, management opportunities actually INCREASED. I assume it's because companies want to get their new management on board for the new year (and new budget!). So if you're searching and you've got experience, that Perfect Job might be right around the corner; don't get discouraged. And don't forget to put your resume in paragraph format (LOL!).

So thank you all for your good wishes and support; have a wonderful holiday season! All I can say is that I'm mighty glad the search is over at last and can't wait for the New Year!