Friday afternoon I received a call from a job recruiting agency regarding an individual who used to work for me named Nelson. She asked me the usual questions about my job title, how long I managed Nelson what his duties were, etc. When she got to the question of why Nelson left, I politely told her that Nelson did not leave, but instead he was fired for poor performance. She paused a bit, asked me was I sure, and then I proceeded to go down the laundry list of things Nelson did wrong. The recruiter was taken aback by my honesty, and quickly decided to bail on any further Nelson inquiries. The conversation then switched to me.

She asked if I was looking for a job, and I explained to her that I am always listening and looking, and she asked me a bunch of questions about my background, my salary requirements and where I’d be willing to work. I put a stop to her line of questioning just as quickly as she bailed on inquiring about Nelson. I told her that I had no interest in being pursued on the tail end of a call that was initially made with someone else in mind. She was a bit taken aback, and perhaps I was being a bit persnickety, but she respected my wishes and called me back later in the day. I appreciated that.

When she called, she told me about two jobs. One is a managerial job (I’d be in charge of 10-15 people), it is in litigation support (I’ll spare you the details), and I would be making $15-20k more than I make now, which SOUNDS awesome. But the job itself sounded boring as hell, and I know I would be selling out for the money, which would have been fine about five years ago, but not now as I am trying to figure out a way back to writing. I hope I don’t regret that decision.

The second job is a technical writing position that isn’t available until February or March, and it is only a 5k raise, but it is everything I want. There’s writing, there’s researching, and there is ZERO managing involved. The only catch is this recruiter was hell bent on trying to make me take the managerial position—I suspect there was more incentive for her company. She spent 2 hours on Sunday (during football no less) trying to get me to take that damn managerial position, and she even had her manager call me to sweet talk me. I didn’t take his call, and I didn’t call her back, I just decided to sit on his for 24 hours.

I want that writing position and I will wait for it, I am 85% sure about that. But still, I find myself wondering if I am making the correct decision…