"There can only be ONE..."

So, interview went well in the city and am still here now blogging from this awesome little outdoor park on W27th street, it must have been an old alley that they gussied up and converted into park space.

I don't know, if you follow me on Twitter or are a Facebook buddy of mine you already got the brief feeling, but I've never left an interview feeling sad before. It's the weirdest thing in the world. I left the Principal of the company with quite a weighty decision to make, he admitted to me. And I could tell he wasn't just giving me a BS line or anything, the dude was upset and looked worried. You could just feel that he had a hard decision to make.

How it started was typical for a mid-size firm interview: a rather casual briefing of my work experience as well as an exchange of references and projects we've worked on, but then it got into a weird area. Mid way through, he admitted to me that, "you're perfect for our company, but this will be a hard decision to make, we've had so many candidates, more than we normally have and you all have unique and tremendous talents, I feel honored, actually."

That's when I realized, "wow, I'm in competition with someone right now, I'm going to have to do something unique and cool." So I basically started talking shop with the guy: relaying my experiences with particular projects and doing what I do best, personalizing. That's probably the only compliment I received from my short corporate gig is that apparently I possess a unique talent of communication, something that engineers either don't have or are just bad at all together. So I figure, let's use it.

So as we start swapping stories and I can see his body language changing dramatically. He started to open up more and talk to me like a mentor and a boss. Then he did something that was really kind of awesome and unexpected. He asked me my advice on a connection detail. Not one of those BS interview questions, but like a real question on something the way a client or even an engineer in need would ask me. It was in reference to something they were doing right now and it had to do with directly welding to an existing cast iron column. So I told him what I would do and recommend that he bring a portion to a testing facility and as I was mentioning the name of the firm I stopped myself and remembered, "HEY, this is an interview! I'm not giving away any secrets." So I stopped and we just gabbed a little bit more about it.

As the interview winded down he seemed to not want to let me go and wanted me to stay longer, but I figured an hour and a half had passed and I didn't want to overstay my welcome, so I shook hands with him and recommended he take a look at my job list and online portfolio. He then showed me around the office and I split.

At this point it can go either way, but he did say he would let me know by the end of the week about his decision. It was one of those, "I want to hire all of you and I know I'll never get this opportunity again since the only reason you people are available is because of the economy, but I can only pick one."