A month and a half ago I relocated to a new city about 2-3 hours away for my wife’s grad school program. I had a handful of successful interviews, mainly at employer #1 and employer #2. #1 was easily my top pick, but #2 got back to me basically the next day with an offer.

The problem was that the hiring manager for #1 was out of the office for two weeks immediately following my interview (I was aware of this beforehand) and #2 wanted my answer by the end of the week. I contacted the HR person in charge of the position at #1 and she said that they wouldn’t have a decision at least until the hiring manager was back in the office. She congratulated me and wished me luck and that was the last I heard about it – I was never really sure if they took me out of consideration or if I was never in the running to begin with. In hindsight, I probably should’ve just accepted #2’s offer and if #1 made an offer, I could break it off with #2. Declining #2 and waiting for #1 was never really an option, as my wife barely gets paid as a grad student and I wasn’t comfortable moving to a new city without something lined up.

So fast-forward a couple months, I’m working at #2, I hate it there, and frankly it’s a waste of my time. The work is painfully boring, I’m very isolated in my department in just about every way (age, interests, etc), and I found out that my entire job will just be supporting 2 ancient legacy applications (I explicitly said in the interview that I didn’t want my entire job to be maintenance).

  I saw that #1 has a posting for the same position on the same team, and I want to re-apply for it which leads to my main question – Should I address the fact that the offer I took isn’t a good fit while applying or will that just come up if they decide to call me again? I also have the HR partner’s email from earlier, but I’m not sure if contacting her directly would be awkward or inappropriate (she is still the poster on the listing).

I feel like the interview with #1 went well – I felt good about the programming skills test and our actual interview went about a half hour longer than scheduled.

A month and a half ago I relocated to a new city about 2-3 hours away for my wife’s grad school program. I had a handful of successful interviews, mainly at employer #1 and employer #2. #1 was easily my top pick, but #2 got back to me basically the next day with an offer.

The problem was that the hiring manager for #1 was out of the office for two weeks immediately following my interview (I was aware of this beforehand) and #2 wanted my answer by the end of the week. I contacted the HR person in charge of the position at #1 and she said that they wouldn’t have a decision at least until the hiring manager was back in the office. She congratulated me and wished me luck and that was the last I heard about it – I was never really sure if they took me out of consideration or if I was never in the running to begin with. In hindsight, I probably should’ve just accepted #2’s offer and if #1 made an offer, I could break it off with #2. Declining #2 and waiting for #1 was never really an option, as my wife barely gets paid as a grad student and I wasn’t comfortable moving to a new city without something lined up.

So fast-forward a couple months, I’m working at #2 and it is a very poor fit for me. I saw that #1 has a posting for the same position on the same team, and I want to re-apply for it which leads to my main question:

Should I address the fact that the offer I took isn’t a good fit while applying or will that just come up if they decide to call me again? I also have the HR partner’s email from earlier, but I’m not sure if contacting her directly would be awkward or inappropriate (she is still the poster on the listing).

I feel like the interview with #1 went well – I felt good about the programming skills test and our actual interview went about a half hour longer than scheduled.