A few days ago, I received a call from a temp agency that I’d sent a resume to.  I’m interested in something to help tide me over so I can get started in real estate.  I’ve been putting feelers out everywhere, and while I keep hearing how tough the job market is right now,  apparently that applies to the temp market as well.  

Most of the sites are automated, so you upload your resume or specify what you’re interested in.    One company I did that with sends daily updates for jobs it seems would be compatible with my experience, only they’ve got it all wrong…waaayyy wrong. It’s sending me a truckload of listing for various software program engineering all the way down to really obscure things like fire sprinkler design engineer.  Frankly, I didn’t realize my skill set qualified me for that! 

Anyway, I got a little sidetracked.  Sorry.  So I got a call from one company that was very excited by my resume, wanted to know if I could do a project coordinator position, the pay range was right on, and they want to send my information to the hiring manager as she’s looking for someone ASAP.  They were in Bellevue, I was in Redmond, so I went straight over to their office where, what was supposed to take 45 mintes, took more along the lines of an hour & a half.  There were two very young ‘girls’ working the office.  Toward the end of the massive amounts of paperwork I had to fill out, one says to the other “I just think it’s so cool you can type without looking!”.  The chatter continued along the same lines and there were matching phone calls to go with it.  I stopped for a second and thought “this is who will be making decisions of compatibility between positions, companies and candidates?”. 

Now keeping in mind that I hadn’t planned on being there that day, I didn’t have a good second proof of citizenship, and I don’t know about everyone else, but I don’t keep my birth certificate on me, and I’m still waiting for my passport that was supposed to have been here almost 4 weeks ago. The one girl looked at me like she was totally shocked and amazed by this.  I had other proof, my real estate license, which she looked at and asked “what’s this?” and she wasn’t impressed by my gun permit either.  So she asked me to email her a copy of my resume (which she already  had) attached and open in email and my birth certificate.  When I got home I emailed the attached resume in Word, the “soft copy” as well as my bc.  I received emails from her throughout the day, one asking me to email it, so I sent it again.  Then she wanted a soft copy, which had now been sent to her 3 times, followed by a message from her saying she couldn’t open it.  I’m thinking what the h*ll, you don’t need to open a soft copy, just scroll down the page.  Another email came through at the end of the day stating ooops, she hadn’t meant the resume, she wanted the birth certificate.  

So as I was staring at my birth certificate, and now that they’ve also got my SSN# on a bunch of paperwork (W-4 and background check), how easy it would be for identity theft.  And I’m sure these two dingbats are not overly cautious about the handling of paperwork, so I could easily see them throwing paperwork either in the garbage or recycling without shredding and without a second thought.

Another thought running through my mind was what kind of company would have these two working an office unsupervised and entrusting them with their client base (including Nordstrom and various other companies of significant stature)?  The entire time I was there, they were making personal phone calls and just shooting the breeze with each other.   Not only did they not interview me in any sort of way, they didn’t even talk to me the entire time I was there.  I can’t even begin to tell you how impressed I wasn’t.  Then to add fuel to the fire, they printed out a job description for the project coordinator position and it looks more like a bookkeeping position than project coordinator of any kind.  To add to my irritation, traffic was horrible and it took over an hour & 15 minutes to get to Keven’s house, luckily I stopped there on the way home only to discover the problem with his freezer.  We were in for a fun night….not hardly!

Last Friday I took my state real estate licensing exam.  You’d think I was testing for some top secret division of the FBI or something.  Appointments have to be made (and paid for) at least 3 days prior to test day.  Then when I arrived, they checked my ID, had me put all my belongings in a locker and took me into the testing room.  Test takers are not allowed to bring anything into the room including gum, drinks, nothing!  When I booked my appointment, I was told to bring 2 pencils and a non-programmable calculator.  In all actuality, THEY provide the 2 pencils, a piece of scratch paper, and the calculator is part of the software.  The desks are aligned along the perimeter of the room, facing the wall.  It is so quiet you can hear a pin drop…the only sound was the click of people’s mouses as they selected their answers. 

The test itself was quite a bit different than what we’d been prepared for in class and it was LONG!  While I’d breezed through the school test in less than an hour, the state exam took roughly 2-1/2 hours.  I’d heard through many people that the school test was harder than the state exam.  I disagree.  There was a large segment relating to state laws and many situational questions relating to combo situations we hadn’t even touched upon in class.  There were also a number of math story problems that contained quite a bit of unnecessary information and numbers, along with questions that were worded in such convoluted ways, I wasn’t really sure what was actually being asked.

So you get the idea now why by the end of the test, after staring at the computer for over 2 hours, my brain was in a knot, my eyes felt like they were going to fall out of my head (like those clown glasses),  oh yeah, add the fact that a re-test costs another $138, I was a little concerned about whether or not I was actually going to pass.  On the way out of the testing room with fingers crossed, I ran into a classmate who had the same observations and concerns I did.  To add to the fun, rather than give you the results right away, you have to anxiously wait to be called into a private office to be given “the news”. 

The news was good though…I PASSED!!!  Wooohoooo!!!!

…or maybe I was just moved by the spirit or some other force.

If you’ve been following the saga (if not, email me and I will get you up to speed), you know that real estate school breezed by.  There was also a “cram course” immediately following. We were kind of lead to believe that we only really needed to pay attention in class, don’t study at home so as to not go into brain lock, and we’d be ready to take the school and state tests, no problemo. I think many students, including myself, thought we could take the school test after the last day of class and pass, then follow up with the state exam a day or so after that.  Boom, you’re done and ready for the world.  We couldn’t have been more wrong.

The last day of school was just like the last day of school when we were kids…the sun was out, it was warm, and everyone had ants in their pants to get the hellouttathere.  We were countin’ down the minutes…12 minutes, 7 minutes, 1 minute…then for the first time in the life of this class, the instructor ran over time.  Aaaagggghhhh!!!  Finally it was over, furniture was flying as people were scrambling to get out of their seats, hugging goodbyes with  promises to keep in touch,  we’ll meet up to take our tests together.  And out the door we went…not a moment too soon.

A few stayed behind to take their tests, although word on the street later was that, that was a bad move.  I, on the otherhand, flew out of school and met up with Keven for a celebrational lunch.  We had bbq at Milt’s, where I got myself into a pissing contest with Milt as far as how much heat I could take.  I will try to remember to make a separate entry about this, but let’s just say, I don’t back down from challenges, he makes hotter than-shit-hot sauce…one called something to the effect of “damn idiot, I told you not to eat it” hot, and it was SO hot.  I couldn’t taste the food.  And then he asked if I wanted the really hot sauce, started to change his mind and walk away, when I, in all my glory, said “sure!”.  My eyes were watering, my nose was running with something unlike normal snot but more like melting brain matter << >>, my lips were swelling, gums on fire and I think my face was a deep shade of red bordering on purple…you’d have to ask Keven. 

Anyway, rumors spread fast about the difficulty of the school test along with the recommendations to do the online practice tests first.  Wow, they were a lot more challenging than anyone expected.  We were having regular conversations about how much studying we needed to do before attempting the school test and trying to coordinate schedules so we could do it together.  As if.  Finally, I figured out for me, not to bother with the text book…just study the wrong answers from the online tests, because often there were 2 or 3 out of the 4 choices that were correct.  You’re thinking “just look for the rightest answer”, right?  Haha, WRONG!!  or just “apply a little common sense”?  “Pick the legally correct, most logical choice”? WRONGO!!  Basically what has to happen, is that one has to memorize the answer that “they” are looking for.  Studying consists of several tests that have about 125 story problems that take about an hour & 45 minutes to 2 hours to complete.  You do this repeatedly until you score high enough consistently that you feel confident enough to go into school for the real deal.  This has been going on for weeks now…maybe 3?

When I woke up this morning, with no prethought, I had the revelation that TODAY was the day.  I got up without dillydallying, got ready, was on the computer by 8:00.  Email was waiting that we had a new baby…no better omen as to what the day had in store.  I spent about another 2 hours with online testing, had about a 15 minute lunch with Keven that was supposed to be a chicken salad wrap, but turned out to be a tortilla full of salad with about 2 teeny bites of chicken.  So after leaving him, I went to Milt’s for bbq (for good luck, of course) and on to school.  Expecting the testing to be online, I was surprised to be greeted with a pencil, an answer sheet of paper with circles and a paper packet.  I breezed through it fairly quickly and was rewarded with the declaration that I’d passed!  Woohoo!  Being the pain in the ass that I am, I had to know my score.  94%, baby!  How sweet is that!!!  One down, one to go….Tuesday will be the state exam, then watch out world, here I come!