Where I am and how I got here

Nearly a month has gone by during which I've wanted to write here about the results of my job hunt. My life seems to have up and gone completely crazy in that time, leaving me, as so often, with lots to talk about and no time to say it.

Waaaay back in February, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I had not yet joined Facebook - amazing technology that allows me to give my friends virtual cake so they know I like them - I had a remarkable interview with the director of overseas business for a Japanese software company. It was remarkable in that I went to meet with a recruiter, but ended up actually getting a job offer before I went home. I talked to the recruiter for an hour, she called the director, and he then came over and interviewed me and offered me the job more or less on the spot. I can tell you, I was strutting big time on my way home.

The problem, of course, is that this company doesn't exist in Germany yet. Their presence here, to date, is literally me and my boss. And actually he's back in Japan this weekend, so this blog post is being written by my employer's entire German presence. This creates two problems: First, there is no German corporation to hire me. Second, there is a rule at this company that all hires have to be interviewed by two managers, and of course there's only the one here. Personally, I think he should promote me into management and then let me approve myself, but that possibility evidently hasn't occurred to him.

To get around this problem, I've been using a combination of technicalities that allow me to contract myself out as a small business, but at midnight on the 31st, those technicalities lose their mojo and I turn back into an unemployed pumpkin. By then, I'm supposed to have a full-time contract, but one meeting that was supposed to take care of the problem has already been cancelled, so I'm a bit nervous about my prospects - I think the only way to solve the problem at this point might be for me to fly out to Japan and meet with a manager there.

To keep all of my options open, I've been continuing to search for other employment possibilities, which led to an interview this morning with a Japanese company that does sales representation for robotics firms. I was actually not very interested in the job from the description I got, especially because the pay was quite low, but during the interview it became clear that the job would actually pay rather more than I had understood (though still less than my first offer), and the work would be much more interesting than I had imagined. And at the end of this interview, as with the previous one, I was pretty much offered the job on the spot - the difference being that this offer came with an actual contract written on paper with numbers and dates and a line upon which I might affix my signature.

In this economy, I'm incredibly lucky to have two jobs to pick between, but it's a very stressful position to be in. One job pays more and seems more interesting, but still hasn't actually given me a contract and thus I don't know what benefits I would receive. The other pays less, but has very good benefits and has given me an actual contract.

Hopefully, this should all be resolved by the end of the month. I will graduate on the 31st, and both of the full-time jobs I've been offered are supposed to start on the 1st. The ideal case would be that the job I'm doing now offers me a contract so that I have something to compare. Otherwise, I'm not sure what I'm going to do.