So, a while back I inquired with Apple Retail regarding potential employment prior to their opening of their new store in the Town Square shopping complex. Never heard back. Figured, 'whatever; another dry hole, I'm "overqualified" in some ways and too old and eclectic...'Then, outa the blue, I get an email from their HR recruiter asking me to attend a group "interview" last week at the Hilton Garden Inn on the south Strip.
Which, of course, I did. It was not anything like I might have expected. Two hours of great, informative fun. These people truly do "think different." None of your typical Suits stiffness. Not a whiff. But, at the same time, Apple Retail is a serious, profitable, and rapidly growing enterprise.
The corporate HR recruiter was there, a delightful young woman from Portland, Oregon.
Dressed in an Apple t-shirt, jeans, and flip-flops.
So, now I'm startin' to think 'hmmm...maybe they won't hold my MySpace pages and the other Bad Attitude aspects of my personal life against me...'
Well, I just got another call. I made the second cut and will have a one-on-one interview Tuesday afternoon. This has been my first in-person interview since getting laid off 17 months ago. I've had a number of tentative offers during that time, but all involving permanent out-of-state relocation, something I cannot now do after having moved my parents here from Florida last year to be able to better look after them. Though Pop has finally now passed on, my Mom remains in long-term care, and I hang with her pretty much every day.
Gotta say, I'm more optimistic than I've been in quite a while. We'll see. Tryin' to not get my hopes up too high. They have a position they call "Business Partner," which would be right up my alley, and is the slot I'm really after. My last day gig involved helping smaller primary care medical practices convert to electronic medical records technology, and I've been involved with desktop computers and LANs of varied flavors (e.g., Win/Novell/PCs, Macs, Unix, and VAX) since 1986. And, I know how to talk in ROI-speak with business people.
I love Apple technology. It's No-Brainer superior, period. Cheryl and I have a His & Hers dual core iMac network setup here at home in our library, replete with all the cool software toys. I do my Santa Fe Podcasts with the killer "GarageBand' app that comes bundled with their systems.
That reminds me, FYI: I'm working on Podcast #7, "Friends of Santa Fe, Volume 3." Gonna be another fun one, with yet more great music from our peeps.Looking ahead, once we can get all the requisite pieces-parts in place to do high-quality live streaming video webcasts from the Santa Fe gigs, we'll probably be using apps such as Apple's QuickTime Streaming Server as part of the tech array.
So, yeah, I'm pretty stoked today.BY THE WAY: Dr. Lenny The Lopez will be again singing with the band tomorrow night. Oh, yeah!!
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POST INTERVIEW UPDATE
Well, that was a disappointing waste of time. They allotted 30 minutes for each personal interview, because they are so swamped with applicants. I interviewed with a very pleasant young woman -- who had not even seen my resume, causing me to burn up about half of the session going over relevant details of my background and abilities she should already have been hip to. Then she told me that they were not staffing up for the "Business Partner" position here full time (and any part-time slot would just be handling in-store referrals directed from walk-ins), and that she feared I might be "way out of their ballpark" in terms of salary expectation given what I've earned in recent years.
They're really just looking for in-store consumer retail people whom they can pay maybe mid- $20k'ish.
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