Howdy, I am in the middle of hopefully landing a new job and would appreciate advice.

A little background...
This is an IT position with the U of Missouri. I've lived in Columbia since late 2013. I have about 25 years of experience in IT.

I had a Zoom interview for this position on May 11. It went well, and I sent a thank you to the hiring manager shortly after it. I didn't have contact information for the other two people who were on that meeting (why I emailed only the h.m.). On May 19, I heard back from the h.m. that he was going to want me to interview in-person but that, because of pending vacations, it would be June before that could happen.

I had my in-person interview on June 8. It also went well. It was the same people I'd had my Zoom interview with plus one more. Afterwards, they took me to lunch, and during that lunch, I learned that the guy who hadn't been on the Zoom interview was paying for the lunch out of his own pocket, because he wanted to make sure that he'd be able to work with me "if we were to hire you."

The lunch went *very* well (and least from my point of view). The guy who wanted to get to know me turned out to be a big baseball fan, and so am I. Then it turned out that we were are both big college baseball fans (he'd gone to Vanderbilt)... pretty cool as that's a fairly unusual interest of mine. At the end of the lunch, the hiring manager told me that I could be hearing from him "as soon as early next week." I sent another thank you to the h.m. when I got home.

So here we are at Wednesday, and I've not heard anything. I'm not going to email the guy today, but at what point do I consider it? What would I say in that email?

I'm quite anxious about this as:
1) This job looks to be an outstanding fit for my interests and skillset
2) I HATE my current job (something I did not share with the Mizzou folks).

Thank you,

Fletch nailed it.

I think you're good. But if you're not - keep applying.

But seriously, how do you type that and not think you have it. Anything can happen, but that sounds really positive. I agree with fletch but if you don't hear in a week i think it would be okay to check in.

Long stalling after initial interview and just running it back with one more person in the panel. You were the backup plan for somebody they really really wanted to hire but had to wait on/was unsure of.

Sucks but it happens.

Sorry man. That sucks. Keep your head down...there's something better out there.

Well, the job has been reposted with additional requirements and a $20k bump in the high end of the salary range. I guess they really weren't happy with my experience. As Columbia, Missouri has no Linux Users Group (or apparent Linux community), I wish them the best of luck in finding what they want.

I was the sole source of tech support (outside of my student workers) for various departments around campus in my time at A&M. I'm very much a jack of all trades in the IT world. The buck stopped with me, so I learned to do a lot of things. Linux is my passion, but I actually have more experience supporting Windows.

The requirement they added is outside of the realm of my experience. This is a job specifically supporting researchers on campus. At A&M, I also supported researchers, but not exclusively. I supported faculty who did no research, staff, and grad students as well.

Any experience with instrumentation, interfacing, or special technologies like DICOM, HL7, XML, API's, data transformation is a plus.

It's funny how much harder it is for me to land the right job at 50 than it was at 30 or 35, and I'm much more skilled now than I was then.

Sorry to hear that, but as others have said academia is often more focused on diversity and some esoteric requirements than business that need to run a profitable operation.

I would suggest starting to watch for jobs in the Engineering and Architecture consulting fields. The federal funding for infrastructure is starting to drive a lot of growth. Solid IT people will be needed to support their design, data management, and procurement of equipment. If you have this experience you'll probably be able to get a nice salary and competitive benefits.

I'm so sorry to hear this. I had been rooting for you and praying. I checked in hoping to hear good news.

That's very kind of you.

Thank you!

I'm in a similar boat in a lot of ways, so I get it. the right thing will come along, keep your head up

That's absolutely awful. I hope that CEO has reached out to you.

My first "real" job out of college was in the private sector. This was 1995-96, and it was a horrible workplace. Company was full of workaholics with no scruples. Left an bad taste in my mouth and was why I went to work for the public section (i.e. TAMU) later in '96 and stayed 17 years.

If your #1 goal is to get an on campus job at Mizzou, you need to get a foot in the door somehow. Contract position in IT? Make some contacts with some Aggies at Mizzou or Columbia area? Sounds like they liked you but the more and more I see it, the more I am convinced there are "it's who you know not what you know" for the good jobs. Somewhere in my mid to late 30s to now the higher up jobs are as much about networking and politics as they are "best" candidate. And I say that as someone that just got a new position where I exploited those relationships and politic'd my way into it.