Jun 18 2008
Informal chat at the Reading Room
So, I’ve been down to see them at the Reading Room. I had e-mailed earlier in the day to ask who I would be meeting, and they told me I would be meeting the Director of Operations, David Burgess – whoop, nervous as hell.
Put a fake meeting in the diary and I was off. Was nervous as hell, felt my big fat face getting red.
On arrival, I was told that I would no longer be meeting with David, but with Lidia Oshlyansky, Senior User Experience Analyst. She is a clever chick:
I immediately felt at ease with her. We had a chat about her being able to use the lift as she was with a guest, I told her a story about the Royal Society and sustainable fishing for some reason? She was really nice, she seemed to like what I was saying, and was impressed with my CV. It would be very different to what I am doing at the moment.
Of course, she asked the question I was dreading, why do you want to leave Wellcome. She is an academic with a Phd from UCL and knew about Wellcome. I tried to say how I wanted to get back into an agency setting and do project work and have more responsibility for running my own team, that kind of stuff.
She then said, ‘Come on, am an American, you can be candid with me, it’s coz your bored isn’t it?’ I had to agree. She mentioned a few things like how stressful it is and how busy I would be an all the responsibility of the job. She summed up with she thought it would be exactly what I would be looking for.
It seemed like she was responding really well, saying things like ‘if you chose to work here’ and ‘If you accept the role here’ – good open language like that.
As a senior role at the firm, I would get to work in ‘Group’ as they call it, which is the floor with all the senior managers and the directors, for 6 weeks to 2 months orientation, so I get to know the business, before I move to my own floor and run my own projects with my own team.
She let me know a few things about the company, that it is still a family run company, sounds like the joint CEO’s, Simon and Margaret. Margret’s sister runs the Oz operation. All very cool. I mentioned NYC | Dubai | Bristol. She said they were very embryonic at this stage. She was interested to hear that I grew up in Abu Dhabi.
It would be great experience, very hard work and it would be stressful I think. I would have to be completely different in my approach to work, but you know what, a place like that would want you to be.
I’m kicking myself now, that I didn’t ask what the next stage would be.
I hope I hear from them, or do I?