Just a quick check in, here.

The proposal project is going pretty well. Some aspects of the project are a bit up in the air still, but one of the scientists has more or less agreed to sort those out, while I get on with writing the bits that are nailed down.

I wish I could talk more about the project here, but I've signed a pretty hefty confidentiality agreement, and I'm too busy right now to figure out what I could say without violating it.

Also had a very nice second round job interview at Company B yesterday. I'm a bit surprised to discover that I kind of like interviewing. I don't like the parts leading up to it: the phone interview, and trying to anticipate any curveball questions so that I'll have answers ready, and deciding what to wear, and worrying about whether traffic on 880 will make me late, and making sure to bring writing samples/references/extra copies of resume/notepad/pen/business cards/etc. But once I'm actually there in the interview: hey, it's just a conversation.

There was an interesting disparity of interview styles on display yesterday. The HR person, who did a very standard HR kind of interview. One person who was clearly very new at interviewing, and had a list of "standard interview questions" which she marched through methodically. One person who was *only* interested in what I knew about Microsoft Word, because he's been responsible for dealing with all the company's legacy Word documentation (all the new stuff is in FrameMaker, but older stuff is in Word), and he wants someone else to share the pain responsibility. One person who said, "Oh, I never look at resumes, because they're just full of lies anyway. Just tell me about yourself."

All in all, I met 7 people. Which means...you guessed it: 7 post-interview thank-you notes!!!

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but writing thank you notes is not my favorite thing to do. I think it's important to do after an interview, because it's always nice to thank people who put forth a little extra effort on your behalf. But writing the things is tricky -- many career advice books tell you to use the letter as an opportunity to sell your skills: "Based on our discussion, I am confident that my ability to wiggle my ears, sort things in alphabetical order, and belch "The Star Spangled Banner" would make me a valuable asset to XYZ Corp." Eh. I'm not comfortable doing that: it seems to me that a thank you letter that is too transparently a sales pitch casts doubt on the sincerity of the thanks.

At the same time, I do like to mention something specific that came up in the interview, just to keep the letter from being entirely bland boilerplate.

And every letter needs to be just a little bit different.

And I don't want to sound too stiff or formal, because I don't want to negate any sense of rapport that might have developed over the course of the interview. But of course, I also want to sound professional, and not offend anyone by too much informality.

Somehow, miracle though it seems, the things get written. I try not to stress over it too much: it's the interview that's the important thing. Post-interview follow up is just the icing on the cake.

So, I'm going to get my letters printed and mailed, and then it's back to work on the proposal.