Jobs

So I know that it has been a few days since I have written but things have been a little crazy. On Friday we received some great news. A little over 2 weeks ago Devon interviewed with a man named Bob Jackson from Baltimore, Maryland.

A little background for Bob Jackson: Bob started his own business in 1973, and now revenues more than 4 million annually. He is one of Washington's leading design/build firms and has Elite clientele. He specializes is large-scale residential design and installation, but does do residential and commercial maintenance. He has received more than 50 regional and national awards for design and contracting and has been featured in many landscaping magazines.

Well, Bob came to BYU-Idaho because he knows that they have a great Horticulture program and did a couple of presentations and then had a sign up list so that anyone who wanted to could interview with him. Devon was one of many who decided to take him up on his offer. While Devon interviewed he gave him his resume and a CD with his portfolio on it. Devon felt that the interview went really well but was realistic in his hopes for the job. He knew that not only were there a lot of other students interviewing for the job, but that over the years Bob has only hired 2 students from BYU. One from BYU and one from BYU-I. Another reason that we weren't too hopeful for the job is because a lot of times in landscaping you, like a lot of other jobs, have to put your time in at the bottom before you do what you actually want. We were totally prepared to find a job doing installations and maintenance in hopes that in a few year he could move up to a designer. Bob was looking for an actual designer. So although things went well in the interview, we really weren't too hopeful.

Devon had been talking to some other students and heard that a lot of them had been calling Bob to follow up on jobs and internships. Devon had sent a email to thank him for coming but hadn't called to follow up on any thing. So on Friday Devon called Bob and was going to ask if he has had time to look at Devon's portfolio, and see if it was okay to send him some more hand drawn designs (I guess Bob really likes the hand drawn designs and Devon's portfolio had mostly computer sketches). When Devon called he got his answering machine and so just left him a message. Well, a couple hours later Devon checked his phone and had a message. When he checked it he almost drove off the road! The message went something like this "Devon it's great to hear from you. It's funny that you called we must have gotten our lines crossed. I sent you an email earlier today offering you a job. Why don't you look it over and then give me a call back if you have any questions."

As soon as Devon got home he just handed me the phone and told me to listen to the messages. I didn't think anything about it until about 10 sec. into the conversation. I couldn't believe it! We quickly went and checked Devon's email and sure enough, there it was. A job offer from Bob Jackson. When we looked at it we were even more surprised to see that Bob wants Devon to be an actual Designer, not just an installer! We are so excited! Since Friday we have been trying to figure things out. We have been looking at apartments, checking on moving vans, trying to decide if we are going to move both of our cars or sell one. There are a million different things that we have been trying to figure out. Bob wants him to start early to mid May so we have a lot to do in not a lot of time.

The company is actually located in Owings Mills which is about 20 min NW of Baltimore. We have already figured out that we will be in the Washington DC temple district so we are about an hour from the temple and 20 minutes to the Baltimore airport. We are really excited and really just can't believe that this is happening to us. To make things even better, if Christopher and Lauren live in Virginia we will be only a couple of hours away! It will be nice to have some family close.