The other day I checked in on my card and saw that I had an update to the credit rating. It'd been steadily going up in the last year, so I figured that it'd be a nice surprise to see it go up into the middle seven-hundreds from where it was currently.

It dropped sixty-seven points. What. The. Fuck?!

I checked my credit report, and it's all as it should be. I read there was a change to the FICO scoring model, but I didn't think that it would cause that big a change in my credit score. I was bummed, because I've been paying bills on time and being responsible and putting some real work into getting things back in order.

Then I discovered what happened. I recently bought the Acura, taking on more debt. Of course, this is an installment payment, meaning that I agree to pay so many dollars over so many months. That generally causes a bit of a hit at first because you're taking on debt, but usually not that much of a hit.

Well, at the time I was wiring the down payment monies into my checking account from an internet-only bank I had it sitting in, but it would take another two days. To short-circuit the whole thing, I decided to put the five-thousand dollar down payment on my credit card. Once the money hit my account I'd immediately make a five-grand payment. They can just float me, no problem, and this is exactly what I did. No muss, no fuss.

Well, when I did that, it ends up looking like this on your credit report for a while: you just bought a car, and your highest balance for the month is plus about five thousand dollars. In fact, my highest balance for that month was about $6250.00, and my credit limit was seven grand at the time. It was only that way for about 48 hours, but still, there it was.

Fair, Isaac, and Co., who makes the FICO scoring model, treats revolving credit like a credit card differently than an installment payment arrangement; in fact, they weight it a lot higher on the theory that if you are utilizing almost all your credit available, you must be overextended. In fact, it makes sense — somebody who uses a lot of their available credit is perhaps living beyond their means.

So, I fell in a crack in the model. According to the FICO model, I was borrowing money left and right out of the blue. Technically, I was, but I had a perfect handle on it and it's not reflected in the reality of the situation.

The good thing is, next month it will show that I reduced my revolving (credit card) debt tenfold and I should start seeing my credit score creep back up over the next several months, especially with this new credit line open and being paid on time month after month, along with the others. Still, I was a bit upset because the kick to my credit score isn't the best thing to have happen when you're interviewing for a position.

Interviewing for a position? Yep, I interviewed for another job today. Without going into a lot of detail, it was for a "programmer analyst," although I felt that the position wasn't that exciting. The upshot was that I'd be on a team to write custom .dll files to control an interactive voice response system (IVRS) and do the necessary processing for the information.

Sure, it's closer to home. However, it's not really in product development (it's more in service), and I doubt the money would be any better than where I am now. Their application developers are all in cubes, too. Plus, it's not doing anything nearly as technical as I'm doing now, it's just plain-old application development without any excitement.

Needless to say, I didn't fit their worldview; they didn't fit mine, either. I didn't have pat answers to some of their questions, or the methods I use are different and they didn't like that, so I wasn't an acceptable candidate. At the end of the interview I got the impression I wasn't in the running, because I got the dread, "well, we'll be looking to fill this position in the next two to three weeks, so we'll let you know something, blah, blah," from the group manager who asked most of the questions. So be it — I still hadn't gotten over the fact that they write executable code to control a system like that. In fact, when I told a couple folks here about that, they looked at me like I was nuts, to which I responded, "exactly!"

A couple hours after the interview I wrote them an email thanking them for the opportunity to interview and that the position isn't what I'm looking for so I would like to withdraw myself from consideration. Anyway, if I know I don't want the job, I should stop them from doing the background and credit check in case they're interested at all, right? I mean, just what I need with the aforementioned drop: another credit check! (Even though I don't believe an employment check has an effect, but you never know...)

It was a good dry run at interviewing, though. I haven't actually been on an interview since before I started here, although occasionally I sit on the other side of the table.

I discovered that while I was more talkative and sure of myself in the interview than I was a few years ago, I was still nervous. That goes with the territory of being judged, I think, but it's something I can get over. If I take care of that, then my rambling should be taken care of, too (I hope).

The pat questions that you always get in an interview threw me, because... well, I don't have my pat answers rehearsed anymore. You know the kind: greatest strength, biggest weakness, if you could meet one person who would it be, best accomplishment, all those. I guess I should come up with some pat answers if I go again.

I think I need to remember what it's like to be on the interviewing side of the table a little more. I kept looking around to make eye contact with all three of the people, but I should focus most on who's speaking. I know when I am in a group interview like that, I don't mind if they're not making eye contact with me constantly, so I am sure the others at the interview didn't, either. A couple times I felt like it looked like I was leering about the table.

The worst thing I did was make a couple flubs on the technical questions because I overanalyzed and was making the questions a lot harder than they were (and, in fact, I said that once). They wanted basic technical knowledge, and I was trying to find the hidden trick in the question. I suspect that it was because I tend to ask difficult and open-ended technical questions in an interview.

All in all, a good experience to get back in the swing of it, even if it likely wouldn't have led to an offer because of the difference in what each party wanted.

restlessmind