My interview at Caterpillar…

The day started off EARLY. I got up at 4:30 am so I could get a shower before my Dad had to get ready for work. I made sure I had everything together, got suited up, and was there twenty minutes early to the Administration Building at Caterpillar. I unintentionally tried to go into the side door, and was told to go get a visitors pass from the Security Post. I went around the building, and they told me to go to the front desk. I did, and that was the right place to be.

I met up with my guide, Bob, at 7:10 or so (he was late) and we went ahead for a breakfast meeting with a woman named Natasha. Both Bob and Natasha were outside of the hiring process, they were purely there to make sure we were comfortable and informed about where to be. At 7:30, we went to an orientation that lasted a half-hour. We got to see some videos about Caterpillar and an introduction to living in Peoria.

After this concluded, it was time for the drug test. They had a little medical facility right in the Administration building, which made it convienent at least. I hate drug tests, they just all seem accusitory. After that pleasantness was out of the way, we were off to the AD building where I had my interviews.

Interview One
My first interview was with my Dad’s director. He was very businesslike, professional, and straightforward. He commented that it was nice to meet me, because he had heard so much about me over the years. He asked a lot about my work experience and my experience in working with teams of individuals. Everything was pretty low-stress, I got to explain a lot about what I had done for the University and what my preferred position would be.

I did ask him at the end if he had any roles within Caterpillar that he could see me being a fit for, and his immediate response was “Yes, I have very specific roles in mind already.” This set me at ease for the rest of my day.

After my interview concluded (it took exactly an hour), he thought it was important that I get to go see where my Dad worked, and find out what exactly he did. So I got over to my Dad’s office area and got to meet his co-workers. My Dad’s director even gave him permission to show me the server rooms, and these things are ENORMOUS. All of WIU’s servers could fit in about 1/8th of the facility that I saw, and that wasn’t the only setup like this at Cat.

After that aside, it was off to interview two.

Interview Two
My second interview was with a very nice woman from the Human Relations department. She started the interview by stating that she was a very informal person and that I could relax and be straight with her, it was her job to get to know my personality and find out how I’m different from the Average Joe.

We talked at length about my education, why it was so focused, why I stayed on for my Masters right away, and what kind of hobbies I had. She also asked a lot about how I feel about working with people from varying cultures and how I rated my interpersonal skills. After about twenty minutes of talking to her, I was very comfortable and I liked this woman quite a bit. She was just fun to talk to, she seemed to immediately see that I wasn’t some nerd that was going to be content being silent and sitting behind a desk all day. This is exactly what I wanted to convey to her.

We were booted out of the conference room, so we moved to her office in HR. We sat down at the table and she read through her little book to make sure she had hit everything that she needed to, and then she looks at me and tells me: “OK, sell yourself to me. Go.” So I did. I told her how enthusiastic I was, how I could work in both a leadership and a team role, and how obviously my education and work experience shows that I strive to be above average. That was the end of interview two, I was quite pleased thus far.

Intermission
After the side trip to my Dad’s offices, we were running about twenty minutes behind schedule. Bob and I got a free lunch at the cafeteria (breakfast was free too), and I sat with him and a few of his friends and we visited for about forty minutes. Nothing big, they just told me about what they did and what kind of things to expect from working there. Then it was off to interview three.

Interview Three
My final interview of the day was with a gentleman in the Information Technology department and was in charge of architecture and system administration. He was quite hard to read, I thought to myself at the onset that he was going to be hard to get a feel for so I adjusted my approach to make sure I was giving him the information that he needed from his questioning. I did notice a Red Hat sticker and a Red Hat table standee thing on his desk, so I commented how much I liked my Red Hat Linux box. He was pleased.

At this point, many of the questions were repeats, but he asked me a lot about what I do extra to satisfy my customers and how I adjust my goals to meet customer needs. He also asked quite a bit about how I like to plan my days, and how my organizational skills stack up. At the end of the interview, he told me straight out that he was very impressed with me, and that Caterpillar needed talented people that can communicate as well as I could. He also went as far as to say that he would do all he could to make sure I get along in the hiring process, so that’s a pretty darned good sign.

Conclusions
After this, I went back to Natasha for a wrap-up. She told me that the three interviewers would meet on Thursday to determine whether or not I am an acceptable candidate. She stated that if everything went as well as it seemed, she didn’t think this would be a problem. She said that I would get an email to inform me of that decision as early as Friday, but likely at the beginning of next week. If found acceptable, I would be placed in the job pool and would be in line to get an offer in anywhere from one to three weeks. After this we visited for a bit about my day, then she showed me to the door and I headed home about 1:45 pm.

I was really pleased with the way things went. I don’t think it could’ve gone better, my resume had the effect of making all three interviewers skip the technology skills section of the interviews and they all commented how impressive my credentials and job experience were. The first two interviewers asked about my Karate, and I got to explain my leadership skills and confidence that I gained from my time training. I think all of these things set me apart from other people interviewing, and I think I’ve got a pretty good shot at this one.

I will post updates as they occur, probably publicly. I didn’t want this post to be public in case a search on my name yeilded my blog. If you have anything else you want to know, let me know and I’ll tell ya. 🙂