On the road again

This week's tag-along trip takes me to Columbia, Tenn. I'm here with my roommate Yen who has meetings to attend to while I have cable tv to attend to. It took us about six hours to get here when it probably only should have taken about four. There were various hold-ups: the delay getting our rental car from The Most Skeevy Enterprise rental place in The Known Universe (it kinda looked like it could have been a crack house not too long ago...), a couple pit stops, and one 45 min phone interview.

We pulled into a Wendy's parking lot where I had Interview Numero Dos with the HR lady from the Desert Dispatch. And thankfully, the interview went very well. Even though I was in a car, sitting with my laptop in my lap, and battling the last flickering bar that T-Mobile was threatening me with, I managed to eke out a pretty decent conversation with my interviewer.

I think there's such a thing as making a Professional Connection - the counterpart to the idea of a Personal Connection. A Personal Connection is when you hit it off easily with a person you're meeting for the first time. The encounter is fresh. There's momentum in your conversation. You hope (and are already plotting ways) to talk to them again in the near future.

A Professional Connection is similar, despite a different agenda and balance of power. Usually for an interview, you put on your happy face, which for me is trying to be a Chatty Cathy. You're trying to break the ice but it only really shatters when the Interviewer acknowledges your effort and responds to it - by being nice. It's simple enough.

If you quickly convince them that you might be friendly/tolerable enough to work with, they feel no need to intimidatingly lord over you. This, in turn, frees you to be more honest and less uptight. In the best case scenario, the Interviewer will genuinely spark to something you say. After all, you're both in your mutual element. This drives the momentum. Even while in the interview mode, you dream of when you'll hopefully speak to them again - gainfully employed, of course.

It's a delicate act, however, to balance being friendly and appearing qualified and wanting to please. And in the end the Professional Connection is always dictated by keeping one's eye on the prize. It can be genuine and enjoyable, but the stakes remain.

I think I made that connection today. I hope I made that today.