A New Job

I spent most of August and September getting us settled into the new house, Jack settled at school and taking care of all the busy work that establishing residency in a new state requires.

Before I knew it, it was October.  My promise to myself to start the job hunt immediately upon arrival in Fort Collins was already 2 months behind.  There were lots of advantages to working from home, an opportunity that I will forever be grateful for, but with each passing week it was becoming more clear (from both parties) that come March GCSAA and I would be parting ways as planned.  I was down to 5 months and started to panic.

I kept an eye out for any posted openings.  I scoured the Internet every day for leads and of course I polished off my resume, reached out to references, updated my profile on linked in and became active on job search engines.  But that didn't seem like enough.  I also did tons of research and came up with a list of 15-20 local businesses with ties to the event planning industry that I wanted to reach out to in order to start developing a network.  After all, I knew absolutely no one.  That list included event production companies, private event planners, hotels, golf courses, event centers, city offices, and the like.  I prepared a cover letter and planned to start at the top of list and essentially cold call them all and see if it went anywhere.

On Tuesday, October 13 the Fort Collins Coloradoan published an article about a planned 5 million dollar expansion at the Fort Collins Country Club.  It seemed like a perfect opening, so the next morning I sent an email to the General Manager and introduced myself.  Scott called me back within the hour.

As it turned out their Event Coordinator was retiring and they were in the process of searching for a replacement.  In fact, while the position had been advertised, they were so far along in the process the job posting had been taken down.  Having just started my search, I never saw the posting and had no idea they were hiring.  When the GM called me on Wednesday he said they had 3 final interviews scheduled for that Friday.  If I could be there, he wanted to talk.

I figured if nothing else it was going to be a great opportunity to polish off my interview skills and really get into the swing of the job hunt.  I didn't have much time to prepare and was at a bit of a disadvantage because I didn't even know what it was I was "applying" for.  I went to the meeting with as many questions for them as they had for me.  I felt good about our time together, but wasn't convinced it was a perfect fit.  The things that were holding me back were the hours (nights and weekends - particularly during the wedding season - would be a must) and the sales component of the job, which I wasn't sure was a good fit for me personally or my skill set.  After much discussion Drew & I both agreed that despite some of my concerns, it was an excellent opportunity to get my foot in the door in the community, make some contacts, and have the security of a local job.  Not to mention the fact that it is barely a half mile from our house.  By the end of the weekend I was trying to stay relatively cool about the whole thing, but had convinced myself I really wanted the job.

Scott called again Monday morning.  The club is managed by a management company out of Atlanta.  One of their executives was going to be in town Wednesday and he wanted me to come back.  I had a second interview.

This time, I had a much better idea what the club was looking for.  I also knew that the candidate list was shrinking and that I had a real chance at getting this job.  I came to the second interview much more prepared.  Our meeting lasted over 2 hours.

I couldn't wait to tell Drew about the interview so he stopped by the house late that afternoon to check in.  I was in the middle of telling him everything that had happened when my phone rang.  Scott was calling to ask me to check my e-mail as a formal job offer had just been sent.  6 days after cold calling the Country Club.

It's been pretty much a whirl wind since.  I accepted the position the next day (after running some numbers and sleeping on the decision).  Then I submitted my resignation (for the second time in a year) to GCSAA.  I had 2 business trips coming up that I had to see through and did my very best to leave things in the best shape for my replacement in Kansas as I could.  I was also dropping by the club whenever I had a free minute to spend some training time with my predecessor before she left.  Two weeks later I started full time at the club - right in the midst of the holiday season and the single busiest revenue month for banquet sales of the year.  Talk about trial by fire!

The dust has settled now and I'm approaching 2 months since I joined the Fort Collins Country Club as Event Sales Director.  The verdict:  I love it.  There are growing pains and there are challenges of course, but after operating on autopilot for so long, it's been a really welcomed change for me to have to operate outside my comfort zone a bit.  We are a small staff and each of us has a lot of freedom to get the job done, but also a lot of accountability.  I've been doing a ton of networking (both with our club members and within the community) and am more and more comfortable every day.  Most importantly, the people I work with are fabulous.  Of course, there are also some perks to working at the Country Club, especially when you are a family of avid golfers (like the chef prepared free lunch every day and full access to the golf course, to name a few!)

I don't know if this experience was simply a stroke of luck, all about the timing, or if some sort of higher power was guiding me through.  In any case, I think we'll keep riding this wave as long as it will hold us!