Oh, San Francisco we hardly knew ye!
But alas it was not meant to be. After a nearly month-long flirtation with the Bay Area, I've recently received word that I was not offered a position at either nonprofit I applied to in the area. Combine that with having heard from another nonprofit in the city in December that I would not be offered a position and it's safe to say that The City By The Bay and I will not be forming an everlasting bond any time soon.
Although this is a setback, I choose to see it as a positive experience. Not only did I get to have a total of 4 in-person interviews where I got to fine-tune my interviewing skills but I also had a chance to make it into the city and surrounding area, something I had only had a chance to do once so far since I moved to Northern California. I not only had a chance to drive around the city's famous hills with a manual transmission but I also had a chance to reconnect with an old friend and his wife in the city and go for a hike at the nearby Muir Woods National Park. Although I will not miss the early morning commute (roughly two-and-a-half hours from Sacramento), I will miss the anticipation of it all and wondering each time I made that commute if this would be the opportunity to get me back on my feet.
Each position I applied for in the region was in a similar vein: It was an education nonprofit working with low-income students to provide them with support and resources to help them both attend and gradate from college. At this point, I can safely say that my education resume and cover letter are solid as each organization contacted me after I submitted those materials and then scheduled me for an initial phone interview. Although I cannot remember the exact specifics of each particular phone interview the questions were roughly the same: Describe your teaching experience. Have you worked with this population before? Have you taken on an adviser or mentor role? What experience do you have working with a team? What experience do you have working with parents? What is your classroom management philosophy? And the list goes on.
With my teaching background, I was able to comfortably answer those questions. In fact, it was being able to work with that population that made me want to apply to all three positions in the first place. It helps that not only do I want to work with students of a low socio-economic background but that I also have worked with that population as well. I personally believe that you need to have that actual experience to work in that environment as it is a lot more difficult than working with students from more affluent backgrounds. Students of low socio-economic backgrounds come with a whole lot of baggage and if you haven't experienced it, it might be shocking as to just how many issues they're dealing with outside of the classroom.
So, fortunately each organization found me worthy of at least meeting in person. I knew that I wanted to limit the amount of times I drove into the city (for both time and monetary reasons) so the first day I actually scheduled two second round interviews on the same day: One at 10:00 A.M. and the second at 1:30 P.M. I figured I would be able to end the first interview, then move my car toward the second interview which was in the financial district, (hopefully) find parking, get lunch and then make it to my second interview. That was the plan at least and surprisingly it worked. Parking was a pain to find but I got there around noon and used my Smart Phone to find a restaurant within a block of where my second interview was. I then was able to leave the city around 3 thereby beating the impending rush hour which was sure to cause havoc on those leaving around 5 P.M.
In terms of the interviews themselves, I felt that the second one went better than the first. At the end of the first interview, a manager briefly came in to introduce herself and just ask me if I had any questions. We chatted briefly and she left me her business card. It was then I knew I wouldn't be asked back as I had previously gotten a business card at the end of my in-person interview for a job here in Sacramento as well. It's essentially a way for employers to make you think they care about you when they really don't. I know it sounds cynical, but it's the truth. Why would you ever want to contact an organization that didn't want you? However, the organization does it to give you a false sense of optimism when you leave the interview. Psychology 101. My assessment proved correct when they emailed me a week later telling me I was not offered the position.
The second interview went better and I didn't get a business card at the end of it! That interview went well and I was actually complemented on several of my answers, something the other interviewers didn't really seem to do. At the end of the interview, I was told that they would be interviewing candidates and would let people know if they had advanced in a couple weeks. Since this was right around the holidays, they said that there would be a slight delay between second and third round interviews. I took this in stride and was actually surprised when they got back to me right after the New Year to ask me back for a third and final round interview. It would be on a Wednesday and would require me to read over a hypothetical "case study" of a student and then submit how I would address certain concerns with that student. I took a full afternoon to do this and scheduled a third round interview at 2:30.
Shortly after I received this invitation, I received a different invitation from a third San Francisco nonprofit that wanted to schedule a second interview. Again, I felt it would be best to make one trek into the city instead of two so I opted for the Wednesday 9:00 A.M. slot. This meant I would have to get up at the righteous hour of 5:00 A.M. to get there but I figured it was better to bite the bullet than make two separate trips. I was also told that there would be parking, so I brought sneakers with me and decided that I would walk to my second interview and back rather than have to worry about parking. It ended up being about a 3 mile walk but it was a nice day and I enjoyed the exercise.
Six days later I received an email from the second organization stating they wanted to have me back for a third round interview. Since I hadn't heard anything from the other organization I decided to continue the interview process so once again I got up at 5 AM, drove for over 2 1/2 hours and got to San Francisco for a 9 A.M. interview. This time, I brought with me hiking gear as I was intent on visiting Mount Tamalpais State Park after my interview as a way to explore the area and kill the rest of the day in the city. This interview went well and once again I didn't receive a business card so this seemed promising. I was told that there actually was a FOURTH round interview for candidates that advanced that far in which they would meet with the CEO. I was told that I would be contacted if I had made it to that point. After I left, I made the hour-long drive to Mount Tam and eventually found a trail that led to Muir Woods, where Return of the Jedi was filmed. When you think of California redwoods you probably think of Muir Woods and even though it was a sloppy, wet hike it was definitely worth doing. I even went down the Pacific Coast Highway for a bit on the way back before heading back to Sacramento.
That was Wednesday. On Friday I was out to lunch with a friend and saw I had a missed call and voicemail. This was at 2:30. Rut-roh. As I pointed out in a previous blog, Friday afternoons are notorious for letting employees know they weren't offered a position. I had that sinking feeling when I checked my voicemail and sure enough, I did not get the position. I sent an email to follow-up at to the reasons and was told that the organization was looking for someone with more "individual" mentoring experience. This struck me as odd because the organization knew my background as a classroom teacher who also taught an advisory class. In addition, one of the people I talked to in my final interview joined the organization because she, like myself, wanted more one-on-one interaction with students. If the organization had concerns that I had never done one-on-one mentoring then they should have let me go after the second interview and not strung me along. At least, that's how I saw the situation upon further reflection.
So that was the end of organization one but I still had hope for organization two. At least, I had hope until Tuesday. Tuesday afternoon I had a missed call (I swear this is my last iPhone) and voice message to call the person who had previously interviewed me. I did so and was told that they had offered the position to another candidate. Again, in an effort to better myself I asked what I could have done differently. This person told me that they had concerns over my classroom management. This was an odd response to me because they had asked me a single question about it and I had answered with my go-to response about how the best classroom management is a good lesson plan. If they had wanted specifics, I would have provided them but I was not pressed so I figured my answer was satisfactory. I don't know how you can rule somebody out who says that as long as he is teaching an engaging lesson from bell-to-bell then students will be unlikely to misbehave if he has done his job and has created a meaningful lesson for the day. But alas, it was not to be.
So again, I'm a little disappointed but not downtrodden by any means. It it all three of those organization's loss and I won't shed any tears or break any plates over their decision. It's simply another bump in the road for a career that I will ultimately find fulfilling. Had I not gotten the interviews I would have never experienced an early morning commute to the city, driven its hills, caught up with my friend, been to Muir Woods from Mount Tam State Park, and driven down from the park to the PCH. I can officially add San Francisco to my list of conquered cities to go along with Boston, New York City, Charlotte, Los Angeles, San Diego, Denver, and Sacramento.
At the very least I won't have to worry about that San Francisco commute for a long time.
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