Our news: Martin has a new job!

For those of you who haven't yet heard, my husband now has a new job! Through our vast networking abilities (read: by using headsets to chat with our guildmates around the world World of Warcraft), DH found out that the company one of our guildmates works for here in Toronto was hiring for a position that he was very much interested in, and sent his résumé and cover letter to the company through said friend. Things started moving very quickly after that. He had a telephone interview with a human resources person from the company's New York office. That led to a conference call telephone interview with 3 people from one of the company's UK offices (the headquarters, I guess; the people included someone on the technical side of things, a human resources person, and, um, someone else :)). Finally, he had to go in person to the company's office in downtown Toronto for a third interview. That third interview was this past Monday. Yesterday (Tuesday) he got the call from New York offering him a position, discussing salary, and so on. Oh, yes, salary...did I mention that he will be making more money now than he did in his current/previous job? He will be working some odd hours in his initial position, too, so that means he will also be getting extra pay (a "shift bonus") to make up for it.

He will be working at the office in downtown Toronto, and he will start there next Wednesday (June 6). Before he really gets into the swing of things there, though, the company is going to fly him to the UK for 6 weeks of training by their people over there, starting June 11! This is very exciting. Unfortunately, they are not paying for me to go over there, so I am examining our finances, travel sites, hostel information, and so on to figure out if I can afford to go see him over there for part of his training period; I'm thinking I'll probably go over there for a week or so about halfway through his time there. Oh, and renewing our passports, seeing as they've been expired for years :P. (Note to self: always keep your passport up-to-date, even if you have no travel plans...you never know what is going to happen, and it is expensive to get the I-need-this-passport-yesterday rush service!)

As for what his job will be, well, he is going to start off as a level 2 call centre tech support rep. Working a call centre may not be great, but at least he won't be level 1 (so he will hopefully not have to deal with people who think their CD-ROM drive is a coffee cup holder), and it is a way for him to get into the field (remember he's been working on fixing electronics hardware components in payphones and modems and such for the past 6 years or so, so this is a change of fields from the hardware to the software side of things). There is apparently quite good opportunity for growth within this company, too; when he had his conference call interview, it came up that either the person who'd been on the line before him or one of his interviewers had started where my husband will be starting, but had had 4 different job titles in the past 4 years, and of course his having a connection in the company already doesn't hurt. Anyway, he's excited because he's wanted to get out of what he's been doing and into the IT field for a while now, but didn't think he had the qualifications to do so (only a deep interest and hobby rather than any formal training in the field). I'm happy because he's happy and seems to have hope that there is potential for growth with this company, whereas there didn't seem to be that at his old job and he was feeling like he was at a dead end.

I'll keep you posted on how things go with my own job hunt (at this point, I only have the old news that I have my interview with the Toronto District School Board tomorrow). For now, I am happy for hubby: yay!