What is the sound a balloon makes?

Something like pffffttttttttttttttttttttttt? I feel like that today.

A week ago I ventured out to a short informal job interview. You know the one that gets your foot in the door for the big, full-day, more stringent, rigid, maybe you'll actually get the position interview ?

I went to the interview nervous, but confident in my ability to do the advertised job. A friend had pretty much badgered his old boss into giving me an interview because I was "perfect" and "highly qualified" for the job. I'm not sure HR agreed since they didn't pass my resume on the the man I was going to interview with. My previous communication with the HR guy consisted of a lot of "what have you been doing for the past few years?" types of questions...and not a lot of encouragement given my answers.

Pre-interview hours were spent studying up on certain technical aspects of the job, coming up with what I should wear (not a suit, since it was much more informal), and getting my nails done so I'd look a little bit pulled together. Getting ready for the interview, I felt like crap about myself and how I look. When I last worked I was about 25lbs lighter, well...before I gained the 60lbs while pregnant with the N during those last 8 months of working. I was also almost 11 years younger - and I can sure see the difference. And there is not much you can do about carrying too much weight in 2 days.

During the interview I did okay. I was able to talk about my work in the past and comment on the job and it's responsibilities and how I would fit in. However...it has been a long, long, long time since I'd done that work. While I remember at a high-level power point chart type of way what it was all about, being able to give exact detail was difficult. When I was a consultant I was on 3 different engagements. I remember the engagements, where they were, who I was with, etc. What I don't remember is what the heck I did all day. Seriously. One of the engagements I was responsible for establishing the IT processes and requirements for a client for whom we were building an SAP system, but wow...that's about all I can remember. We didn't use any special tools... I just documented things using MSWord and Powerpoint. On another engagement I managed the development of a system that received input from suppliers about part inventories and such that was used for Supply Chain Management by our client. Again...I cannot remember much about how I spent each day.

The worst thing was that on my way home as I pondered the interview I had an epiphany about the job. They are in the process of redefining how people and external systems access the data from their system. We did something similar when I was at my aerospace job. I was smack dab in the middle of determining the architecture of the system, developing requirements, use cases, etc, but I completely forgot about that, given that at the time I was also managing 40 engineers and our current system. That project was like a baby I had that I forgot about. Once I remembered it, it was like a flood gate of knowledge just poured from my closed up little brain.

I emailed the man I talked to with a thank you for the interview and discussed the project that I had done that was so similar to what his department is embarking upon. But it was too little too late. The door closed with my foot firmly outside. pffffttttttttttttttttttttttt

There are still some opportunities out there. My friend has also talked me up to another manager, in a group that is probably more closely aligned with what I used to do.

What worries me is where do I go from here, if that job doesn't work out? My experience isn't getting stronger while I'm sitting here not working. I'm stuck in the under qualified for a lot of jobs, over qualified for a lot of jobs, but out of the loop for too long for most of the jobs. It's not like I can just learn the new programming languages and start from that. I don't think many would hire me for entry level programming jobs. I feel like I'm walking in circles here. If the many years of experience I had before the N was born is now no longer valid, I'm likely to just do something completely different.

I've started looking into medical tech fields like diagnostic imaging. It's not going to be a $20K degree (I hope!) and it shouldn't take that long to do the program. And I can start from the beginning with that alternative. Sometimes the beginning is best...that known starting place. Something that everyone can agree upon.