Career Transition

As of Thursday, Mach 6th, I received a job offer from Citizen Schools for their Database Administrator position. This is an amazing opportunity and it will secure my long-term career goal. Unlike Tenacity, where I was wearing many different hats and feeling overwhelmed, I will be specializing in just one aspect of Development. I'll be in charge of managing the company's database system and train staff members all across the country. In addition, with over 300 full-time staff and offices located at 6 other states, the opportunity to grow within the organization is excellent. The best thing about this new job is that it pays $12,000 more than what I currently make, but not only that, the benefits package is simply incredible. On top of all this, employees at Citizen Schools are entitled to salary negotiation every 3 months!! I have the chance to earn significantly more than I have ever dreamed of before the end of the calendar year!

After years of helping out my parents and trudging through years of grad school, I feel like I finally made it. To say that I'm on Cloud 9 is simply an understatement. This is what Adie has been waiting for. Ironically, I didn't find this opportunity, it just sort of fell on my lap.

About a month ago, I received a call from a recruiter from a professional recruiting agency who found my resume on Monster.com. I was skeptical at first only because these calls usually end up as a dead end opportunity (i.e. financial advisor at Ameriprise Financial). However, he told me that his client was Citizen Schools, which surprised me. Citizen Schools has always been Tenacity's major competitor, but I never thought I would ever work there. I just didn't think I had enough experience or skills to work at such a large organization.

After communicating incognito at work for a month, and after 3 phone interviews and a 5 people panel interview, I landed a gig that I thought I never had the chance of passing the first phone interview.

My first day with Citizen Schools is March 25th. I've been dreading the day I have to give my 2 week notice at Tenacity but I need to just face the music and hope that it doesn't get messy. If I were them, I would probably be very upset, especially knowing that there's a big fundraiser event coming up in a month and I'm the only guy they have who knows how to use the database and pretty much work on everything else besides planning the event. But there's never a good time to leave your current job. Any time is bad time for the employer and I understand that. However, this is strictly business and I am doing what is best for me and my wife. I had a great time at Tenacity and I'm truly thankful that they took a chance on a kid who knew absolutely nothing about fundraising and sticking with him for almost 2 years. Without Tenacity, I wouldn't have been able to land a job at an organization like Citizen Schools.

The next 2 weeks at work should be pretty interesting....

As for Adrienne, she has given her 2 week notice last week. She has been feeling miserable every night and it was inevitable that she had to simply move on. When she comes back from Florida next week, she'll work on finding her new job and finish school by May. Adie has no idea what she wants to do, but she knows for certain that she doesn't want to go back to working in the medical field again. I'm just glad that she made the bold decision to quit. We both hope that she finds an opportunity that'll make her truly happy.