Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Gavin Potenza Artwork by Gavin Potenza

See, I currently have my dream job. I run a successful design studio with my wife. It naturally has its ups and downs, our healthcare costs as much as our mortgage. But it’s our business. We make the rules, we get to work on whatever we want, whenever we want. It’s really an ideal situation, and we’ve worked very hard to build it up to this point. So while it does seem weird that I’d even want a *real* job, the truth is I wasn’t looking for a job. But then I saw one of my favorite agencies was looking to fill an exciting role. And it’s weird but I instantly felt I had to give them a shout about it.

It’s really a crazy idea. To even consider the possibility of taking this job, We’d have to sell (or rent out) our house, (mostly) abandon our business, move my wife, daughter, dog & cat across the country. It’s probably one of the more selfish things I could put my family through. But, the job was scary, it was exciting, it was new, and it kinda just felt right. If I had to step away from our studio, this seemed like a great reason to do so.

First though, you kinda gotta be sure that there’s at least a little bit of a possibility it could happen. So that’s what I did. I sent a feeler out, had a couple conversations, was met with enthusiasm and excitement. With each conversation I had, I gained more and more interest. The feelings seemed mutual and it started to seem like a real possibility. In fact, they wanted to hire me to freelance in the meantime — as if they (seemingly) needed my help right now, and couldn’t wait out the hiring process.

Though I was freelancing in a role that was a bit more production-based — as opposed to the leadership role that I had applied for—I was happy to get started and happy to get to know my potential co-workers (while getting paid for it). Plus, if I was hired, I would have a bit of insight to help work out some of the little issues in workflow and process that I was sure would come up.

The project started strong — I felt good about the work, but as with sketches, they often feel so unfinished (I mean, they are). The communication naturally grew less excitable as the first deadline approached (work harder, talk less). After sending my initial ideas, I waited. Rarely am I hired to just do a “sketch phase”. I’m more of a rough-ideas guy, early sketches are a fine starting point but the real exciting part is seeing the process evolve through closer to final. But then I was informed that the client had chosen another direction. Wut, there were other directions presented? Couldn’t I get another day to push it further? Did they know these were roughs? I didn’t realize the assignment would end so abruptly. Shortly thereafter I was notified they were looking for a different skillset for the position. And that was that. Somewhere along the line, I failed the test. Now everything had ended abruptly. Six weeks of mentally preparing for a potential monumental change, flushed down the toilet with just a couple sentences in an email (though a very nice & thoughtful email). It was all over. The opportunity ended quicker than it started.

And it really was over. It was just hard to believe—things seemed to be going so great. And I know in a sense, it sounds nice to apply for a job then you get paid for some freelance work, but really it wasn’t. And that’s why I’m writing this. Because it’s hard. Because the process is less than ideal. Because it’s impossible to not fully commit to something you feel so strongly about. Because the feeling may not be mutual. And mostly because that pretty much totally sucks.

But it happens. And it happened.

Thanks for reading.

Good luck out there.

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I Applied For A Job And Sorta Lived To Tell About It was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I Applied For A Job And Sorta Lived To Tell About It

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