Ch-ch-changes…

Ok, the housing market around here is… well… not good. At least not for those trying to sell. And even worse for those trying to build homes to sell. Which is what I have been doing for almost three years now.

But that seems about to change. Right now I am facing the very real possibility of a lay-off. It is a short-term issue, but this is a presidential election year. I am not going to hold my breath on things turning around all that quickly.

I started out in commercial construction a bit over seven years ago on a fluke. I was doing computer work for a start-up company, data-base building, web site work, etc. They like working with me and wanted to hire me full time, but said I would have to learn construction since there wasn’t enough computer related things to keep me busy full time. So I cut my teeth on a tenant build-outs are the MSP airport, a couple of small strip-centers, and a few other things here and there. And I liked it.

Unfortunately, the four partners didn’t see eye-to-eye on some things and after a couple years ended up going their separate ways, leaving me out in the cold.

From there, I hooked up with someone that I knew from my restaurant management days, and ended up working for another commercial construction company. He was brought in to help turn a failing retail project around and he brought me in to help. And we pulled it off. When we started, they were just hoping to get the buildings finished. By the time we finished switching some trades and getting some other things back under control, the developer actually made some money.

So there was some more tenant build-outs, additions, and even picked up some CAD skills as the owner started looking at opening a chain of coffee shops. Was a nice way to mix my experience in restaurants and construction. Unfortunately, things do not always go as planned, and I was laid off.

It took a bit, but then I ended up where I am now, managing residential construction. I directly over see two projects, assist on a couple others. It’s different, and not. It is still construction, but I have the opportunity to work with buyers a bit. Mostly during the selections process where they pick carpet and cupboards and such. Nice use of the old “people” skills from when I worked in restaurants.

So I am working on my resume… finding lots of helpful information from sites like LifeHacker, and I’m trying out emurse.com as a way to post it online. They even will help with tracking as I start submitting it to places.

I would keep my fingers crossed, but that does make it hard to type.