No, I'm not looking for a job. I conducted my first interview, and boy... I'm not cut out for this. My boss wasn't around to start things off, and HR wanted to see him at the end of the interview, so it was up to me to do it. Yikes!

My part of the interview was only supposed to be a few minutes, and only technical. "Do you know SQL? Stored Procedures? VB6? C#?" Instead, I'm in a one-on-one situation trying my best to impersonate someone I'm not: a people person.

I don't know how to start a conversation with a stranger unless I've had a few drinks. That wasn't possible. At least, not in the few seconds I had to prepare. So I did the next best thing: awkwardly fumble my way through it. Poor guy. It was a bit surreal for me; almost an out-of-body experience. I could hear myself saying "uh" over and over, but I didn't know how to stop.

Here's how the conversation went (in my head):

Should I tell him the open position is because our previous DBA left? Am I allowed to talk about that? Maybe I should tell him something about our company? How many employees do we have? I don't even know. What should I talk about? He looking right at me. He's waiting for me to say something. Say something!

Here's what I actually said:

ummm...

This went on for about an hour. Not the "ummm" part, but close. I'm a nerd, and proud of it. I get paid to write code and create useful interfaces, not to talk. My only consolation was the guy sitting across from me was a nerd too, and because his nerd factor was greater than me, he was probably more nervous than me. I'm sure you can imagine how awkward this interview was...