In her last post, Ori told you about her new job. Well, now it’s my turn! In the space of only a few days, my month and a half of job searching suddenly became fruitful. I suppose I should count myself lucky, actually, because Ori has told me stories about how several of her coworkers at the Ashmolean spent six or more months searching for a job before finding that one. Personally, I had begun to wonder if I’d ever find anything, especially given that Oxford probably has one of the highest concentrations of highly qualified people anywhere in the English-speaking world, and that they all seem to be competing for a small number of available posts.

We were beginning to fret a bit about finances and whether or not we could continue to enjoy such luxury goods as wine with dinner most nights, so it was reassuring when, following rejections from various places, I was granted two interviews in quick succession. The first served as useful practice and an introduction to UK interviewing procedures, while the second was for a job that was the perfect match to what I was looking for.

The critical interview went extremely well, and I was offered the job. Coincidentally, the same thing had happened to Ori: interview #1 served as excellent preparation for interview #2, which both times resulted in being hired for the jobs we really wanted.

What is the job?, you might ask. Well, the place is called ecoVeritas, and they’re a small firm made up of scientifically minded people (100% graduates of Oxford and Cambridge Universities). As the name implies, they do work in the environmental field, primarily advising clients (e.g., department stores) on the amount of product packaging that they’re responsible for seeing recycled each year. It all has to do with UK Environment Agency regulations, and ecoVeritas has developed sophisticated calculation tools and product databases to make calculating the packaging weights for half a million products possible. The information is eventually submitted to the government to ensure that client companies are meeting the requirements.

I started the day following their offer, and have now just completed my first week of work. It’s great! The work is interesting, challenging and varied. The office is close to home, about ten minutes by bike. Everybody is friendly and easygoing, and I am thrilled to have found something so relevant to my needs – I had resigned myself to answering phones or managing others’ schedules, which wouldn’t have been the end of the world, but it’s much better to keep my analytical faculties sharp while I’m “taking time off” abroad.

My work week is 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday. Unfortunately, Ori’s changes each week, with the only certainty being that she has Mondays off. As a result, we can only count on seeing each other in the evenings now, but such is life. At least our future in Oxford seems reasonably secure for the duration of our visas, now that we’re both happily employed and otherwise settled in. Finally, real life! It isn’t that bad…