Full Circle

Hi there. The title isn't simply referring to the fact that a whole year has passed since I last posted an entry on here. It refers to (yet another) change in plans.

Well, I wouldn't actually call it a change in plans, because the plan that is in place now was in fact the plan last year until I got a chance to drop anchor at Merrill Lynch while I thought of something to do. But let me start at the beginning.

I completed my second test at Merrill Lynch - the Series 66 combined exam for state law and investment advisor representative. I duly passed that test on September 20. Life was good on that day - I was prioritizing relentlessly (see one of my past entries), and I had cleared two milestones and I was enjoying myself.

But then, something started to change. The following week, I attended a seminar or two on selling and its process. One of the seminars was given by a senior member of our team, a financial advisor who had created a successful practice. He was telling us that as an advisor who was trying to build his business, he had to do a lot of sales calls, and drip on his prospects ("Dripping" is a sales technique which involves making several repeated calls to a prospect at regular intervals, in the hope of winning some business from them) and often the business wouldn't close until several months to even a couple of years later. Once I heard that I sat up and paid attention to the difficulties of this job. As those weeks passed, I began to second guess my job choice. Until I finally woke up one morning.

What was I thinking? What am I doing in a job like this? In no way am I cut out to be a salesperson. Dripping on your prospects for weeks on end? Coming up with an "elevator pitch"? Prospecting in a business park? Walking around handing out business cards? Having my salary depend on the results of sales efforts? After leaving behind a six figure income and after realizing the kind of job I was in, I started to realize I could probably get an easier job paying more, using my analysis skills and my old qualifications - the I.T. resume.

Even though I realized (yet again) that I was in the wrong job, things didn't really change that fast. Why would they? I was earning a comfortable $80,000 a year, and while I wasn't saving any money (San Francisco is a very expensive area to live in), I certainly was able to afford most things I needed to buy. The work environment was low-pressure - there were no managers breathing down your neck. The commute was ridiculously easy. For months, I treaded water - doing mandatory training, trying to study for another test, attending marketing seminars, helping other advisors with their work, even trying to change my role to that of an "unofficial" productivity specialist training advisors in the use of wealth management tools. Anything but sales.

As time went by, I started to feel disoriented. I stopped going to the office regularly. I grew unhappy with the training program and with the lack of structure. I couldn't tolerate being in the tubelit cagelike environment. I made friends with a couple of senior colleagues, who could see in no time that I was in the wrong place. These people would become my close advisors. At home I would sit around feeling guilty at robbing Merrill of an investment. When I did go to the office, I was struggling to get there on time, and feeling guilty at being late. I got nothing done, and I couldn't buy any peace of mind!

One day, I got home from work by 11 am - I had no meeting or pressing commitments that day and it seemed as though no one even cared whether I was at the office or not. I walked in the door, all depressed and dejected, and then I caught a look at myself in the mirror. I looked fabulous. All dressed up and nowhere to go.

Shortly after that day, I told one of the managers that this wasn't the job for me and I needed to move on to some other role within or outside the company. He was very supportive and appreciated the honesty. He gave me around five or six weeks to look for a job and leave. I was happy to resign because I couldn't see a future in this job and I was fed up of not having a career roadmap and forcing myself to go to the office and be bored out of my mind. Merrill was very good to me, and they even helped me out by paying me to look for a job.

But did I look? Nope. Instead I got ill. And by the time I recovered, it was May 1, the last day at Merrill.

I spent the next three months in a familiar space - unemployed, without a care in the world, and with an exponentially decaying bank balance. I felt myself sinking deeper into a hole that I had dug for myself. I was feeling happy emotionally at home, but I seemed to find any excuse to not look for a job. I was hiding from the inevitability of the need to sustain oneself. So while I was in generally good spirits, every once in a while I'd wake up in the morning in stone cold panic, wondering how on earth I'd get myself out of the doldrums. My notorious time management got worse, as if that were ever possible. My entire day was spent worrying about things I had little to no control over.

In the middle of July, I hurt my back and was sidelined from the tango craze I had been caught up in. It would turn out to effect a change in the emotional landscape. When I realized I couldn't dance tango, and that I didn't have health insurance to cover me while I was hurt, I came face to face with the gravity of the situation.

Things didn't start to change until my mom came to visit me in the second week of August. When she arrived, my social life took a nosedive. In addition to not being able to dance much, I was also forced to stay home a lot. I was thus forced to focus on my career and moving it forward.

During her visit, my mom was supportive, kind, gentle and very helpful to me. She was good company, and she lent me some great advice from her years of experience. I was able to focus on the job search without feeling pressured to keep up things around me.

The economy is very slow these days and it was slim pickings at job opportunities. The only conversation that led anywhere happened to be one about a Senior Business Analyst position with Wells Fargo. Without much warning or notice, I was called in for an interview with just two days to prepare for it. I was disappointed that my first interview happened to be with a good company, and that I couldn't be well prepared enough to succeed at it.

I spent the weekend studying. I was really in a pickle. I had no idea how to prepare for a business analyst interview, in my old field, after three years of having no interviewing experience, and trying to change my area from programming to requirements analysis. I found this website that had listed a few hundred questions asked on typical Business Analyst interviews, along with the answers. As I started to read them in serial order, I began to piece together the contents of my resume. My confidence began to grow.

Monday morning arrived - the day of the interview. I wore the same suit that had got me my last job. I met four people including the senior vice president of the division. I realized that these people weren't going to hang around - they were going to decide today whether to hire me. was going be the decision round.

Oddly, I was not nervous in my first interview after three years. I was well-dressed, I was unruffled by the questions they threw at me, and I came up with imaginative ways of expressing why I was perfect for the job, even though I felt far from it. I left the interview feeling good about my efforts, and prepared to use the lessons learned for other interviews.

And then, the stunner - they wanted to hire me! My first interview in a long time. The very job I had been targeting. Just a few days after I finally stepped into the job search. In a lousy job market. Being as rusty as I was. Hired the very same day.

Perhaps it wasn't so improbable after all. I did have the perfect resume, and I was able to wax eloquent about my almost-truths. But I can't discount the karma or the cosmos factor.

I start tomorrow, Sep 9. Please, just don't let me throw this one away as well.