Third Week

Week three in Eugene, and I'm now gainfully employed! The placement agency set me up with a company called PeaceHealth Medical Group. It's a Catholic non-profit organization with hospitals and labs in Oregon, Washington, and Alaska. I'll be working as a lab assistant in their annex building across from the hospital in Springfield. It's just 10 minutes from my apartment.

I interviewed with their evening and night supervisors, a woman and man, respectively. I arrived early, so I sat down in the lobby for a few minutes. The building is about 10 years old, and was originally a Sony disc packing plant. PeaceHealth has had it for a few years now, I think, and they just tore out the Sony equipment and replaced it with medical laboratories.

When the time came for the interview, I dialed the phone in the lobby, per my instructions, and was led back to the offices. The first thing they did was sit me down at a computer to take a typing/data entry test. After the three-minute practice round, the night supervisor saw my results and said something about my score being the highest he'd ever seen. The actual test was five minutes, and my kph score was a little higher than before, so I was feeling good.

Next, they took me to an HR conference room and went through a quick sheet of some pretty standard interview questions. The only one I slipped up on was when they asked me about a time when I've thought outside the box. I didn't really know how to answer. I guess I tend to think inside the box.

But they seemed happy enough with my answers. They're both pretty laid back; they were making jokes with me and each other. After that round of questions, they took me on a quick tour of the facility. It's quite a large building. They led me down a few hallways lined with sizable lab rooms. They took me to the one I'll be working in and showed me where I'll be receiving specimens, logging them, and sorting out where they need to go.

After that I was expecting to see more of the building or answer more questions, but instead they just led me back out to the lobby and told me they'd confer with the placement agency, who'd let me know what they decide.

The next day, I got the good news! I came back into the placement agency and went through about four hours of paperwork. It was tedious and very repetitive, since I was essentially going through the hiring process at two different companies at the same time. Because I'll be working at PeaceHealth, but still working for the placement agency during the evaluation period. There were also some packets and tests covering some medical information.

But everything's finally in order. All I need to do now is get a physical and I'll be all set. At first I thought I was going to be starting training and orientation tonight (Monday), but it turns out I won't be put into the computer system in time for that, so I start Wednesday. My shift is 4 pm to 12:30 am. It's a little later than would be ideal, but it's really not a bad schedule for me, as I tend to be more of a night-owl than morning person. Plus, I think there'll be a shift differential for every hour after 5 pm.

That's the biggest, and pretty much only, news for the week. So I'll end the post here.