TEAMS sorted... friend paid me a visit this evening, passed me his old work laptop.
We connected to the interweb via the Wifi of my ADSL box. First time I use that, works fine, was not terribly difficult to get working, it's auto-detected by the laptop then you click on it and it asks you for a password, that's indicated on the ADSL box (well, you press a button and it displays it on its tiny crappy built-in LCD ).
Opened my Gmail account from there so I could click on the link / invite I was given.
Opens up the web browser and it works, I can see my ugly mug in the frame, sadly.
Boy lots of traffic on here today again... looks like Dragon is sending his gem of a scope back in the end, hopefully will get his refund...
OK so as planned I did that TEAMS job interview just a few moments ago.
TL;DR : it went rather well overall.
Lasted for bloody 1h30min... mostly me talking so it didn't feel that long really, time flew.
I was told there would be two people torturing me, but a third one came to the party, so it was quite crowded.
The HR girl from Paris, another girl, the team leader on site, that I would be working with / reporting to, and her chief, that handles business for the west of France and works in the regional HQ in Nantes.
I thought they would make minced meat of me, so I was a bit nervous, but it soon turned out they were all a friendly bunch, managed to make them smile and laugh. Don't know if that's good or bad
The guy / boss noted my old glowing Tek scopes in the background behind me, he got curious ! So I panned around to show them all 25 hollow state Tek scopes, then showed them the bench/lab/gear.
I don't think they get that many interviewees like me !
The others probably try to put nice plants and paintings behind them... not my kind !
So I told them all about my life, since they asked.
Overall it went really well, though that doesn't mean squat, from experience.
They have positions right now that they are desperate to fill it looks like... Airbus is impatient, as always.
Three different jobs. First two were inline with my previous work experience, working in the aircraft to control airframe work orders. Another one slightly different / better, where you take the time to tell the workers/blue collars what they did wrong, how to improve, and get their feedback, to improve the work instructions, make them clearer, whatever is required to make the worker's life easier so he can do a better job and more reliably / consistently.
Both jobs require working shifts, which I hate, killed me for the past 10 years. But well if no choice, short term I would do it again of course, need money here...
However at the last minute, they came up with a third and last position... that sounds much more interesting to me. Never did it before.
Mostly an office job this time, but well the A/C is still right behind the office door so it's not too far, I can go see it and touch it when I miss it !
Job consists of keeping track of all 'C' suffix concessions (the ones that need to be brought to the attention of the client), make a quick Powerpoint presentation to summarize what the concession is about, what has been done to resolve it / fix it, the current state of things, what actions have been taken to try to avoid the problem happening again. So track every such concession for every A/C. Daily you must do conf calls with some guy located in a German Airbus plant, to discuss all these concessions.
So this would be a good step up for me. Would allow me to switch from working inside the A/C which already caused me two really bad accidents in the past, switch from shifts.... to office hours, and a comfy desk, which is the only way to preserve what's left of my body and health. That's what I want, need to be reasonable now, I am not 20 year old anymore.... Crawling in every nook and cranny of an A/C is fun only for a short while... then your body says stop.
Of course needing to speak English and exchange e-mails in English, is a huge added value that I can then (try to at least...) monetize. I mean very few people speak or write English to any decent level at Airbus or any sub-contractor, you would be surprised. A guy that ACTUALLY can handle English decently well, is not at all common around here, would you believe it.
So if I can survive if just 6 months at this position, that would be an excellent point on my CV to then move to even better positions with even better money.
So I told them I was really interested in that position. Plus, they said the guy currently doing this, sucks big time, can't even tell an LGP from a Hilite fastener, they told me... which is like hiring an electronic engineer that literally can't tell a resistor from a capacitor, and has trouble remembering ohm's law !
It 's really really bad...
Then at the very last 30 seconds the HR girl asked me how much I wanted... said XX for work order inspections, working in the A/C, but for that position where you need to speak and write English, sorry but you will have to pay extra. English skills don't come cheap around here, and you know it.
Managed to make them laugh when the HR girl asked me : "How do you think you could improve, on a professional level ". To which I replied : " Well for startes I could lose some weight so I can one day manage to squeeze my frame through the man hole to get inside the center wing box, you live in hope ! "
All three positions sadly are on the A320, so boring as hell and production pace is silly high, will be a bit stressful I fear...Airbus still trying to ramp it up any way they can, they can't cope with the high demand of their A320 "Neo" version, and their long range version as well.
My experience has been only on the A350, more interesting.. but so far customer demand for those is not picking up just yet (I understand many A350 orders have been converted to long range A320s instead), so there are no 350 job opportunities, for now. Hoping their will be once COVID and Ukraine stuff calms down a bit...
Anyway, if I can't keep up, will resign in 6 or 12 months and do something else, but right now I can't be too choosy... need MONEY !!!
They said they need to interview a few more people in the coming days, and that I could probably expect a reply, positive or negative, in a week or so.
Company website :
https://expleo.com/global/en/The usual colourful and fancy corporate " in your face " but hollow web site, typical these days...
Well let's see if that gives me a job or not