cc: file, Marti, Sara and Des, Diane Cluff, Tony Hafen, Darrell and Nancy Krueger, Eric and Annette Krueger, Eric and Renee Miner, Claude and Katherine Warner, Forest and Amy Warner, and Ivan and Chell Warner.
"It is Monday night and I am just settling down after getting back from an interview trip to Utah. I was turned down and I turned down an offer. It is an interesting experience to find myself back where I was after college, or when I visited Fred Hilterman at the Seismic Acoustics Lab in 1979; which were the only times I really interviewed for a new job. Thought I would use this weeks Thoughtlet to chronologically reflect on various key job interviews that come to mind. Some other time I will write about my reaction to the family and individual interviews we used to have, father to child.
I believe you are all aware I turned down the last two years of the Pan American (Amoco Scholarship), the best scholarship in the department, to serve my mission. After I returned from England in November of 1972, I went back to campus and the professors who attempted to get me to stay home from the mission told me:
My first real job interview was with Bob Kalweit of Amoco. He had been my boss in Denver the summer of 1973, and we both assumed I would go to work for Amoco in Denver after I graduated. He came over to the University of Utah, interviewed me as scheduled, then made arrangements to take your Mom and I out to dinner. He gave her a big box of chocolates. At the same time I was interviewing with Sun Oil, who provided the scholarship for my last year and a half of college, and Mobil Oil. They invited me Dallas and I did both interviews on the same plane fare. The Chevron interviewer on Campus said he could not consider me because I did not have a Master's Degree. Many years later he reminised how he had attempted to get an exception in my case and how foolish it was Chevron had not hired me.
The trip to Dallas was my only college interview trip. The meetings with Sun went well, and they expected me to go to work there because of the scholarship. The meetings with Mobil went well, and they expected me to work there because they were willing to pay more and they had put together a more extensive training program than any of the other oil companies. Terry Daw was with me on part of the same interview trip. We shared a cab back to the airport. When we left Mobil I gave the cab driver the address of the church on Turtle Creek Boulevard and had him drive up into the parking lot. The feeling of being at home I had as we drove into that parking lot determined for me my first job would go to work in Dallas. Mobil's money and training won the day over Sun. Bob Kalweit was very disappointed, since he thought he had me in the bag. Mobil actually gave me three raises before I ever reported to work in Dallas. I believe I started at $1,145 per month, on July 15th, 1974. We thought we were rich.
In 1978, after over four years of trying to get Mobil to buy into my ideas about `interactive 3-D seismic interpretation,' I gave up and decided to follow up on an advertisement for a job opening at Hunt Oil. I called up the Chief Geophysicist, a Mr. Campbell, and asked if I could apply for the job. He invited me downtown Dallas. After a half an hour with me he said he wanted me to meet his bosses. He took me upstairs to meet Herbert and Bunker Hunt, the two men who lost billions attempting to corner the silver market a few years later. Herbert was a businessman. Bunker was a big cowboy. I felt like a stockshow calf as they asked me questions and gave me an offer expecting me to accept on the spot. I did, and I later retracted my acceptance after discussions with my boss at Mobil, Courtney Gans. Courtney arranged for me to go into field operations to get seismic acquisition experience, in order to get me to stay at Mobil.
I lasted a year and a half before the bureaucracy got me looking again. I had arranged to attend the first SEG (Society of Exploration Geophysicists) short course on 3-D seismology in Houston with a friend from Evans & Sutherland, Wayne Wade. Wayne guided me to the right lunch table, and when Fred Hilterman asked me to come to the University of Houston for an interview trip, Wayne encouraged me to take it because `one in the hand is worth two in the bush.' Wayne and I were attempting to put together some stuff with E & S. They flew me down on the brand new Southwest Airlines in the middle of December of 1979. The interviews went well. This is shown by the fact I was given an offer of $37,000 per year, which was more than the Chairman of the Department of Electrical Engineering, which the Seismic Acoustics Laboratory (SAL) reported to, was making.
Thursday I flew to Salt Lake City to interview to be a research scientist at The Energy & Geoscience Institute (EGI) at the University of Utah Research Park. I was very excited about the opportunity (see #97.33, Blessings). EGI sounded like a place I could repeat the fun I had at SAL for the next 20+ years. The first day's interviews went well. I gave a presentation, which was very well received by all but two negative, unhappy people. At the end of the day Bill Kanes, the EGI Director gave me a nice job offer with outstanding benefits. The job would allow me to live in Houston for at least two years, marketing EGI to sponsors, setting up and doing research projects, and flying back and forth to Salt Lake. However, the salary was not enough to allow me to cover child support and the house payment I will be taking on. It was a very good offer and by Friday morning I had convinced myself there was going to be a way to make it work. In phone conversations Thursday evening, there was even an agreement for me to transfer HyperMedia's HyperEdge and Knowledge Backbone technologies to EGI and for royalties to to pay off the investors in HyperMedia (who to date have had to write off that investment). However, by Friday morning, the key folks at EGI decided our arrangement was too complicated, would be too hard to handle legally, and withdrew the offer. I was relieved. I didn't want to make a job commitment which might mean I have to move away from Rob and Sara before you graduate from High School. I was especially relieved after a few of the interviews I had later on Friday afternoon. Too much politics and I realized my life is too short and I have too much I want to accomplish to get caught up in all of that stuff. I anticipate we will still work together on mutually interesting technical problems.
Friday night I drove up to Heber and saw Grandma Hafen, and Glenn and Linda. Stayed with Sara and Des Friday night. Took your Grandma Nelson from the rest home to Pinto to the Adolph Hafen family reunion on Saturday afternoon. I didn't know very many of the people. Mom seemed to enjoy it, even though she got very tired. Her cousin Bob Moss, who has written 8 Book of Mormon story books, set me up with a divorcee convert of four months, and we spent quite a bit of time talking. I stayed in St. George with Uncle Tony and went back over to Pinto for Sacrament Meeting and lunch on Sunday. The talks were about William Atkin, who was one of our handcart pioneer ancestors. They were very touching. He is going to send me a digital version of the story and I will post it in this forum. After Sacrament and before hashbrowns and hamburgers Elaina and I spent a couple of hours interviewing each other. It was nice to talk to a female about personal things, and yet it still feels uncomfortable to talk to a female other than your Mom about such things. All in all the family reunion was a good experience and I would like to invite all of you to plan and spend a Labor Day weekend sometime over the next few years with me in Pinto at the Adolph Hafen Family Reunion. There are about 200 folks there, with four-wheelers, horses, games, and lots of good food.
The bottom line of this Thoughtlet is you will not have very many key job interviews in your life. Recognize when they are occuring. Ponder and think through the consequences of various options carefully. Remember the importance of prayer. Listen to the spirit. Live your lives so you can be guided to make right choices and so others will be guided to give you opportunities to provide maximum service. There is a lot of good flowing from a proper job interview, independent of whether the job is offered or not, and separate from if the job is accepted or not."