Had a bit of a surprise this morning. Woke up, fiddled around for a bit, made coffee. Aaron comes out of his room moaning about a hangover and hands me a piece of mail. I open it up and it's half a paragraph from CSIS recruitment.It wasn't completely out of the blue. I'd sent in a generic cover letter and my resume to their recruitment dept. However, I didn't really expect to get anything back. Now, it may be that they contact the majority of people who apply, once they determine that the cover letter and resume contain promising elements. I dunno. All I know is that I opened the letter... and three hours later received a call on my cell.
"Hi, this is so-and-so from CSIS. Is this a cell phone number?"
"Yes it is."
"When are you available for a short interview over a land-line?"
And so it began. I arrived at my parents' place around 3pm, and the call happened at 3:30pm. The woman was really nice, and it wasn't so much an interview as a preliminary screening and information transfer. I asked a few questions, and she was quite... thorough in terms of follow-up questions. "Military? What clearance did you have? What year was that again? Why did you seek honourable discharge? What made you decide to enlist?" It was quite a fun conversation, and very interesting. Highly informative.
What may have turned into a career with them was cut short (knowingly, on my part) when I said that, yes, I was "hesitant" when it came to the issue of "mobility". I just spent 10 months away from Angie, and I'm not about to jump into a job that involves a great deal of... well, mobility. The mandatory training programs (which I'm not sure I can talk about) seemed pretty intense and they themselves involved being in various places.
It's kind of funny. When I had sent my resume and cover letter in, I had assumed that positions would be for support type roles. You know, non-007 type stuff. Analysis, research, etc. The recruitment, however, was for something else entirely. It's all good, though: the recruitment person forwarded my information and resume to other departments internally that are support-type jobs, and based out of Ottawa.
Anyhoo... it was an interesting day! I doubt I'll have any calls quite like it in this job-search process.
8 comments:
thats cool dude. im calling you "Federali" from now on though lol.
BTW - Ed wrote that last comment
And he said he was in China to "teach"... Ah! CSIS spy!!!!
I can see it now. After the last James Bond movie, they were looking for a more buff and dangerous Canadian 007 type man. Get you wearing an Armani suit with a Sens logo on it, a litre of maple syrup in your pocket and you're all ready to go.
Andy
I loved reading this. Ben got a big kick out of it when I told him the story too!
Good luck with the job hunting- gosh it takes a lot of your time.
Scipio is about to tell us she got a call from SD-6...
I just found it funny that so far in my job hunt the only call-back I've gotten was for something I'd considered a complete shot in the dark.
Thanks, scipio! Good luck to us both. :)
Patrick, two comments for ya.
1) Got my blue belt last night :)
2) 4th edition is coming out next May. You know what I'm talking aboot.
Andy
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