For those of you that have been reading my blog for about a year, you may remember these posts about my job search...this one and this one. In both of those I talked about QAI, or Quality Auditing Institute, a company that does physical and fire resilience testing on building and construction products. I was one of the candidates for an engineering test technician position that they had open last year.
Anyway, ever since I went out to the lab for an interview last May, I believed that QAI was the perfect fit for me. I wanted to start a career there so badly. And even though they ended up choosing another candidate for the position they had open last spring, they encouraged me to keep in touch because I was still going to be in the running for future positions.
So I called QAI every month or two just to see if there were any engineering positions open. Month after month, the answer was always no.
Finally, in December of 2010, Brent came up with an idea that set me on fire. I contacted QAI and explained that I was getting rusty in my skill set and was desiring to be in an environment where I could maintain my engineering skills and develop new ones. I offered to go to the lab once a week for a sort of unpaid internship to help out the engineers with any odd jobs they might have for me.
Surprisingly enough, QAI jumped at the offer. The first week of January 2011 I went to the lab for the first time as an intern and started learning the ropes around the lab. The QAI staff was extremely welcoming and all were willing to take breaks from their schedules to answer my many questions when I became inquisitive about the exciting projects they were working on. In the coming weeks I was given a few projects of my own which I tackled to the best of my ability, my motivation being the idea that if I worked hard enough, I might just be offered a job there some day.
Well, praise God, two weeks ago almost to the day, my supervisor took me out to lunch to let me know that from then on they would be paying me for my internship, that I could start coming to work two days a week, and that within the near future they would be hiring me full time.
I'm still kind of in shock. I can't believe that I'm going to be employed full time doing work that is in the field of my education, that is extremely FUN and fascinating, with people that are kind and fabulous to work with. So, so cool. Thank you God!!!
