Armed with my new classification, and being graded at the ninety fifth percentile on the Civil Service Administrative exam, I felt invincible. I had received a letter in the mail from civil service telling me about an open position, Bureau Administrator 18, and telling me I was qualified to apply. I couldn’t believe it. My hope soared. I checked yes on the enclosed card, indicating I wanted to interview for the position, and sent it back immediately. About a week had passed without me hearing anything back, and our school principal had asked me to step into his office between classes. Back then, I didn’t have a phone in my classroom or email. Usually he would just open the back door of the principal suite and yell down the corridor for me to see him when I got the chance. If I didn’t hear him, somebody else would and they would inform me he wanted to see me. He would also contact my colleague in the classroom across the hall by phone, and she would inform me he wanted to see me. In any event, I wasn’t hard to find if he needed me.
I thought it was a little unusual for him to request to see me between classes but I figured maybe we had company in the school and he was trying to be a little more professional. I liked him as a person. He had gone to bat for me and got my salary adjusted to what I had been promised it would be during my interview for the instructor’s position. It took three years and he was relentless. With his help and our union’s persistence, my pay was adjusted accordingly. He showed me he was a man of his word, and I respected him for it. When I stopped in to see him he had informed me that he was called about my work performance as an instructor. It seemed that the department I was going to be interviewing for an administrators position was verifying my employment. I thought that a bit odd. My boss just laughed and gave me some advice on the interview process. He basically informed me that all the department heads were governor appointments. Those appointments usually hired their own. The civil services job was to make sure the rules governing the interviewing of candidates and hiring were followed .
With my new classification status he thought I would be getting many interviewing letters, and that I should go on every last one of them. It was a good way to meet people in other departments and if the position wasn’t already filled by the appointees candidate, I could have a shot at it. So I had to laugh. Man, I was naivete. I thought the job was given to the most experienced, and qualified candidate through the civil service testing process. It was hard to hear that political appointees running the state departments had their own version of political appointee hires backed by the civil service. I appreciated his honesty and told him so. Because of his advice, I ended up interviewing at least three times a month for about three years.
With the amount of letters I was getting from the civil service for open positions I was qualified to interview for, it could have easily had been ten times a month. I actually had to turn many down and check not interested in this employment opportunity on the card to be mailed back to civil service. On the interviews I chose to go on, I got to meet a lot of interesting people all throughout the state of Michigan, and it gave me a new respect for the jobs they did. The stories they told me about their employment with the state were fascinating. When I shared them with my boss, he patted me on the back laughing, and called them “war stories.” I began to understand. Not all is well in this states’ departmental administration. This fact being told to me by the people who have to work in it. Political and family nepotism was rampant through out the civil service. All the years I spent earning my Bachelor of Science and MBA gave me the chance to interview for positions that were pretty much already filled. I tried not to let the wind blow through my sails but the tears were too many. I had to form a new plan. I would create my own “interviewing war stories.”
To Be Continued…
Mathew 18: 1-10
MJ-Way 