I'm a definitely late posting this as we have already been living in California for a month now, but I thought I should write about it so we don't forget. It may not be interesting for everyone else to read, but it is something I want to remember.
So we'll go back to April 2011. Trav was working hard to finish up school and we were trying to get his Curriculum Vitae (CV) together. For those of you who don't know what that is, it is an extensive resume and basically a profile of yourself. When we got done with it, it turned out to be 7 pages long. I asked Trav if we should cut it down because I am so used to a resume needing to be 1 page or 2 at the max! But he was like it is fine. Some doctors have 20 page long resumes. He proceeded to tell me that a CV is something that you keep adding onto as you get experience. So we worked the CV over and over trying to go through each bullet point and make it as strong as possible. As we were working on this, he was asking some of his preceptors if they would write him letters of recommendation. They were more then willing and he got one from his preceptor at Family Plaza Pharmacy, his preceptor and teachers from McKay Dee Hospital and Intermountain Medical Center, and his professor who actually was the one he interviewed with to get accepted in USN, Dr. R. They were great letters of recommendations and I have no doubt that they played a part in him getting job offers. Next, it was onto the cover letter. Cover letters are really hard to write because you want to make sure all your grammar is good and put in solid information about yourself that will get the recruiter excited about reading onto your resume. We spent several hours putting everything together and making sure it was crisp and perfect. Finally it was time to apply. We worked on applying to a lot of different places over a period of a week. Then the waiting game was on.
His first call was an interview for a Walgreens position in Lake Havasu, AZ. We took a quick trip to Vegas for his interview with the District Manager. We didn't get to do anything all that fun because all we did was prepare for the interview and do mock interview after mock interview. It was really good practice and helped Trav have great examples for different behavioral questions. He went for the interview and I just sat outside in the car and waited because we already had to be checked out of the hotel and we had to head home right after the interview. When he came out he said it went good, but that we wouldn't hear back from her for 3 weeks or so.
His next interview was the next day with Target. It was a phone interview with their HR recruiter. He prepared the next morning and practiced, had the interview, and felt great about it. She had also invited him to have an interview via video confercing with the Area Manager in the California Bakersfield/Sacramento area that same week. So they scheduled that and he got the vibe that he was most likely going to get the job. Well sure enough, he was offered a pharmacist job in Visalia, CA. When he called me and told me I was like..."What did you say? Where is it?" I had never heard of it before and that night we did research and looked up everything about the area. He also later recieved an offer for the Walgreens position he had interviewed for. We thought over both options and decided that overall the Visalia, CA job was a better option. We accepted the offer before every even visiting the city, which was a huge leap of faith, but we had both prayed very hard about the interviews and about our decision, and we just felt really good about California. I have to add that when we found out he got the first job offer of Target it was the GREATEST FEELING EVER!!!! Becoming a pharmacist is what Trav has had his mind set on since high school and to finally actually get that job of your dreams that can support of family was a huge relief for both of us! Finally you can reap the rewards of your hard work.
Next, we planned a trip to Visalia the week after he graduated to find a place to live. It was stressful only having 4 days to figure out where we were going to live, but we were really excited about the place we found and for the price it was. We were able to visit the ward we would be in on Sunday and it worked out great!
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