The need for a new opportunity grows

Over the past few months I’ve been feeling the need to look for new employment. It’s not that I don’t like where I work. I really do, the people are great and I love working in the web. I have been working on the programming team for the past 3 years and the last year I’ve spent as the supervisor of the team. Being the supervisor of the team means I get to take the supervisor calls and help those who feel they didn’t get what they purchased. Apparently I have a knack for taking the heat from upset customers. Despite all the good, I felt it was time for another opportunity to grow.

Since I started on the programming team I always thought that I really wanted to be a programmer and I wanted to really dig into the code and learn all about the actual programming side of the business. A while ago I started noticing that I really don’t care about the code as much as the other members of the team do. I like it and I would enjoy doing it all day, every day, but there are other aspects to the web that I’ve found more of an interest in. Right now I’m into analytics and SEO.

An Unexpected Opportunity is offered

Since we don’t specialize in SEO at HIT I started looking around and there is another company right down the street that does specialize in SEO, Orange Soda. I took their test and met with some people and they are all amazing people and I believe they like me as well. I let my manager know that I was considering alternate employment and she let my VP know. This is typically the point where I assume they would come back and let me know how under-appreciative I am – but not HIT. Instead, they offered me an unexpected opportunity handling quality control and looking for ways that we can improve the company and our quality and perhaps streamline the production process.

If you haven’t read my mind throughout my life you wouldn’t know that I’ve always thought that I would be good at removing the excess from any business. What they offered me was an opportunity to do what I always wanted to do (other than psychology) and hopefully improve my workplace at the same time. I’m actually very excited about this new position and sadly, I’m afraid that I might have hurt my opportunities with Orange Soda in the future. I don’t intend to go over there at the moment, but I like to keep my options open.

What’s all this about SEO anyway?

If you haven’t figured it out already, the internet is big. There’s thousands of websites about thousands of topics out there already. If you want to know about it, you can find out about it with just a few searches. The trick is to be the site that is found. That’s where good SEO (Search Engine Optimization) comes in. Getting to that good SEO involves having a good analytics system built into your site. That’s where I come in, or at least that’s where I would like to come in. SEO work is fun, interesting and cutting edge. There’s always something new to learn and plenty of competition to keep it exciting.

The Web is Weird

One of my customers that I’ve been helping for the past few weeks has a site that is dedicated to cats. At first I thought the couple was a little odd. Who cares enough about cats to dedicate a website to them? I later found out that they are not simply odd, they are flat out nuts! Their website is to be a community website (think Facebook or MySpace) that will let the members sign up for themselves and then sign up their cats. They can then go through the website as if they are the cat and make comments on other peoples pages under the cats name. I let them know they were odd and they assured me that they already knew that but they had a ton of people already lined up and excited to get on the site. People want the oddest things for their websites. I suspect I’ll be able to do some good SEO work on their site though.

I Blame My Faith

I want to also give credit where it’s due. I didn’t choose to stay with HIT easily. The future of my family depends on my employment. I’m taking a chance by staying with HIT and I wouldn’t take that chance easily. I know that I have God backing me up on this decision. Whether I help the company to pull out of the slump or the company falters I know that everything will turn out alright. Life always turns out the way it should, just not always the way I expect it to – or the way I want it to at the moment. I’ve taken the opportunity to get to the temple more recently as well. It’s something I should do anyway and now that the boys are back with their mother I have more opportunity to get there.

Did I mention the twins are gone?

Last week the twins were allowed to go back with their mother. Things are looking up. We have the older boy still but he’s not nearly as much trouble with his younger brother gone. In the next few months he should be able to return to his mother or father also. The parents are doing better as well, but I’m not going to get into their story.