[Rhodes22-list] MRI Interview Trip

[Roger Pihlaja]

Hi Everyone,

The Midwest Research Institute (MRI) is a class act.  They sent a limo to pick me up at the Kansas City International Airport.  They put me up at the Kansas City Marriott Hotel, which is right downtown in the "Plaza Area".  The holiday decorations in the Plaza were amazing and the view from my 12th floor hotel window was pretty impressive!

The interview day itself was nonstop, back-to-back interviews from 8:00 AM until the limo picked me up to take me back to the airport at 1:45 PM.  Lunch was catered in and the interviews continued thru lunch.  On the tour of the MRI facility, I never saw so many Biological Safety Level 2 (BSL-2) and BSL-3 labs in one place in my life.  These folks are having way too much fun!  

The position I was interviewing for was called Aerosol Engineering Section Manager.  I was interviewed by the person that would be my boss, his boss, and several of the people that would be on my staff.  It's a high security environment.  As a visitor, one does not go wandering off by themself.  I even had to be escorted to and from the restroom!  The fact that I don't currently hold a security clearance may be an issue.  Apparently, it requires up to a year to process a security clearance application these days and the fact that I held a DoD security clearance level at the level of SECRET from 1987-1990 does not speed up the process.

Other than that, I thought the interviews went well.  It is my understanding that MRI still has a few other candidates to interview and these interviews will take place early in January, 2005.  Hopefully, by mid to late January, 2005, I will know whether I have a job offer or not.

Also on a bright note, I have another job interview lined up on 01/04/2005.  This one is with Broin & Associates, Inc.  Broin makes turn key package corn-to-ethanol plants.  I've been marketing my process waste energy recycling concept from the entrepreneurship class at SVSU to companies like Broin.  It took a while to get thru to the right person; but, apparently my proposal finally crossed the appropriate desk!

I haven't felt this hopeful in quite a while!  We're going to be traveling for the holidays from Christmas Day thru to the evening of 11/30/2004.  I hope you all have a very merry Christmas and happy New Year!  I'll talk to you when we get back.

Roger Pihlaja
S/V Dynamic Equilibrium