When it rains....

It pours!

So, for all you FB friends of mine, this is very hush-hush, but I've applied to become the dining services director at Shepherd University which is back home in WV, but REALLY close to where I live right now in MD. Essentially my commute would be the same though it's longer mileage wise as I'd be going against the flow of traffic going to, and coming from work. So if I got the position and accepted it, we'd stay in MD for the time being until the wife could find a job in the eastern panhandle of WV. Then we'd make the move as taxes are MUCH lower on that side of the river AND the cost of living is half what it is here in MoCo.

I made it through the first two rounds of interviews and am scheduled to do the full academia marathon interview a week from this coming Tuesday. I'm sure Whale can elaborate more since he's BTDT, but essentially I'll be put in front of everyone who matters and even a bunch of people who don't because, that's the way academia works. The interview starts at 9AM and won't finish until 6PM. I'm just hoping they remember to feed me along the way.

So, I got that all scheduled when yesterday, I got tapped by a headhunter for one of my current employer's big rivals. I'm not a big fan of their system, but they have a job opening in Falls Church, VA which might be interesting to me as it's a business dining environment instead of a scholastic one. I don't think it'll offer too much to pique my interest, but you never know. So I wrote the headhunter back and said "Okay, let's talk" and will see what it's like from there. It'd be a semi-crappy commute given that I'd have to fight beltway traffic, but if the money is right (6 figures or so) then I'd be mightily tempted. This is the sixth time I've had a headhunter come after me in my career and the 4th from just my LinkedIn profile. So far I've never gone all the way through with the other endeavors. Closest I got was when I was brought in on the short list for an exec position at Capital Grille. I turned that one down for a multi-unit job (that turned out to be something other than what was promised) and other than that, most of them have been phone conversations where they give me a number and I turn it down for not being enough vs my current compensation package.

The best thing is, I'm not even necessarily looking to leave my current job. The environment has gotten a bit stale, but I can transfer within the company or stick it out to maybe go the route of a District Manager position or something similar, but my current DM isn't that great on cheer-leading his managers for promotions like that, so I'll have to go over his head to get anything done.

It's pretty nice to have this many options going when you aren't even really looking. The WV job is the one that would probably make me happiest since I'd move back home, be right between the Shenandoah, Cacapon, and Potomac rivers (kayaking and fishing galore!) and could afford to buy a lot and build a log home like the wife and I have always wanted.

Yeah, the only real hangup I have is that Shepherd is a small (4k undergrad) liberal arts school. The state chartered it back in the late 1800's but it's never been what you'd call big so much as steady with it's enrollment. They only recently became a university (within the last two decades) and their graduate degree program only has a couple hundred people in it. I'm not sure what their grad program focuses are, but I DO know that they have a large civil war history center on campus and are convenient to all of the major battlefields, so I'm assuming that a civil war history program is one of them.

(This is where Reb decides to go back to college AND get to eat my food. Two birds with one out-of-state tuition bill!)

But I digress. The hangup I have is that being small, liberal arts, and down on enrollment recently, I hope it's going to be able to right itself. From what I understand, I'm to be part of that upward-swing process if I'm picked for the job. They're looking to upgrade their campus experience to help bring more undergrads in. So long as they don't go all Sweet Briar on me, it'll be fine I'm sure.