I am afraid my blog has suffered from a tight work schedule recently.  Last week we invited candidates that had either taken the Office Assistant assessment online, or in a proctored test session here in Indio, to interview for three positions the Mental Health Department had in their Cathedral City and Indio offices.  (Did you know that you can take Office Assistant and Accounting Assistant assessment test online, from the comfort of your home?) 

I wanted to thank everyone who came and sat through until their turn for an interview.  In the best case scenario we would have multiple departments here and candidates would be busy going from one interview to the next.  The Valley is still in the doldrums of summer when everyone that can, gets away to cooler temperatures.  So, there is not a lot of hiring activity at the end of August.  Two interviewer sessions were going on at the same time, but the candidates did (regretfully) have a long wait to be seen.

Sympathetic to their plight, I offered to entertain the waiting room full of strangers.  Since I don’t sing or dance, I offered to share a few personal stories, much the same as I do in the blog.  Hearing no objection, I launched into the first tale about the time I bought a fixer-upper house in La Quinta, with the goal of transforming it into a valuable piece of real estate, which I could then sell and reinvest. 

I had great vision for this house that had been on the market for 4 years without any takers prior to my buying it.  The first year of my roughly two year time table was spent on the interior; and the second year I started on the outside.  My recently retired father would come over on the weekends to help out. 

I remember telling my wife, with great enthusiasm and gesticulation, about one of the next steps in the exterior remodeling.  Waving my hand in a broad rounding arc in front of the master bedroom’s exterior wall I described this architectural element the would extend out supported by two columns (kind of a cross between a porch and a colonnade), but it would be open at the top with lights shining down (by this time my arms were really flailing around like I had lost control).  It must have seemed to her that I was describing an alien space craft to have that sort of expression on her face.  She simply said, “Do you know how to do that?”  Of course, my answer was a sheepish, “Well no,” but my quick retort came back,  “… that hasn’t stopped me yet!”

Lacking the exuberance I wanted, and seeking sympathy if not praise for my idea, I again started waving my arms around when my father came over that Saturday.  Only this time before I got caught up in full rapture he stopped me by saying authoritatively, “NO… no, just tell me how long you want the board cut.”

Well, this project taught me two valuable life lessons, the first was about real estate.  When I was ready to put the house on the market the realtor I selected came over.  He suggested that he wouldn’t be bashful to put it on the market for X amount of dollars (obviously thinking I would be impressed); I said great, now increase that amount by 25%.  He completed the listing paperwork at my price, and left that afternoon.  The next day he called me to say that he had two offers for the full listing price, one required financing (and would I please speak to the young couple) and the other was a cash offer.  The following day when I phoned him to say that I would take the cash offer, he said he had appointments booked out for two weeks solid to see the place.  The net result was that I had made a 250% profit over what I paid for the house, with a meager $5,000 investment in materials and stucco work.

Now the part of the story I left out was that people who had seen me working on the house and yard after all these months had sort of invested in me, and were vicariously living out their own remodeling dreams through me.  While working outside I would often get an arm extended out the car window, or pressed to the windshield, a “big thumbs up”, as people drove by.  One woman even knocked at my door, and when I went to open it she wanted to know who had done my remodel.  When I told her that I had, she wanted to know if I could do her house.  I had to explain that I was not in that business, and had just done it for myself.  Then there was the civic group that wanted the City Council to give me an award for one of the most improved properties in the City. 

I don’t know if the two weeks worth of appointments followings the for sale sign going up were all people ready to buy, but I do know they all wanted to see first-hand what I had done with the place, and in some measure I believe they all took pride in the accomplishment, as I did. 

The second thing I learned was about the choices we and the people around us make for the roles we take on.  In any given situation there can be the person who is ready to scoff at anything, in contrast to someone with a vision of how things could be, and then, there is the person who just wants to know how long to cut the board.  We all have to decide which one we want to be.

… After leaving the candidate waiting room for a while, I returned to find they were all happily talking to each other, united in a bond of kindship, and they didn’t need me anymore.

Employment EXPO news to come later…