Lynn Twiss

After almost a year of picking, choosing, scrapping and searching in Portland for a job, I have finally found a place to call a professional home: opus:creative.

Last week I had a phone interview with the senior Project Managers, Estelle and Ethan, as an introduction and from that preliminary session they decided they wanted to meet me in the flesh and scheduled a physical interview for Wednesday morning.

Prior to my phone interview I spent a measure of time perusing their website and to say I was impressed is an understatement. Many agencies that I have viewed (including some of the largest and most prodigious ones with reputations that proceed via layman word-of-mouth) are rather lackluster, letting their clients success speak to the level of their creativity and ingenuity the agency has at arsenal, rather than actually showcasing themselves what their strengths are. Opus’ website was another beast altogether, employing some of the more progressive examples of how information can flow utilizing RSS and push technologies, database and dynamically driven Flash instead of simple creative Flash works and static pages. Upon seeing this site I became invigorated to talk with them about their future implementation plans for things like Ruby on Rails etc. While the technology was evident in the construction and deployment of their site, it gave amazing step-by-step examples of how projects started and ended. Print works, design, branding and collateral were all explored and detailed and not just projects that were years old, but current projects (displaying that they did not abandon projects). My synergy towards the interactive comes because at Kimber the projects were all print originating and the interactive and web came as a secondary heel; a necessary-evil in the mind of the marketing there. So to see a company that understands the future and how the two (print and interactive) are more a marriage than a sibling relationship was exciting.

My interview went very well and I felt I was able to portray both sides of my personality, both the fun self-deprecating side and the professional side. The team leaders all were memorable and stood out as distinct assets with their own expertise, ideally showcasing to me that this company was truly, A Team.

As I left I was told that a decision would come on Friday regarding a placement candidate. I drove back to my apartment and started packing; then I took a moment to email each one of the team members a personalized message (since they all so conveniently gave me business cards) and relay again how enthused I would be to be a part of what I saw there.

It worked. I’m now a Project Manager in training for them!

Instead of hearing on Friday about the position, I was told Thursday morning that they wanted me. YAY!