What else is inevitably easier to tell others than it is to heed yourself?
Things learned thus far (yes, the hard way even though I’d have suspected the following anyway, because sometimes you just have to try, you know?):
(I do take into account that I am probably a fortunate one who has part-time employment – however insecure – to keep me going in the meantime.) …is that you will be awake some nights asking yourself many questions and grumbling over the situation. Including:
Many of the recent job interviews I have had have started with a “this doesn’t need to be so formal/we just want to have a chat about the job/remember that this is a two-way process and you can also ask questions,” or words to that effect. One interviewer also mentioned that a job interview is an unnatural situation. However, as casual as the panel wants to be, it can sometimes feel like empty words – especially the ones about “two-way processes” – when your enquiry to HR about possible help with transport is met with something like, “we expect those who truly want to work with (for) us to find their own means of travelling to our offices”. I know that this does not apply to every potential employer (kind thanks to LTU who insisted on flying me to a gently-lobbed frisbee’s distance from the Arctic circle), and certainly not to every type of vacancy (hello senior staff), but for us minnows, it essentially means that it is up to us not only to prove our skills, but also to make an early pledge to only massage along the direction of hair growth (smooth things out), if we choose to pursue a post.
The reason that I mention ask and guess culture – in short, if you want something, do you 1) ask, with the understanding that both “yes” and “no” can be the final answer; 2) only ask if you are mostly certain that the answer will be “yes”, to save the person asked the consternation of maybe needing to say “no”, meaning you have to guess the answer beforehand – (a more detailed lowdown here) is because, in the world of “casual” job interviews/chats, no matter how chill the atmosphere is, the onus is even more on you to guess what will be the better answer. And this time, without straight-up interview questions to guide you. Don’t get me wrong, I find it easier to relax into a more casual interview, which should (theoretically?) enable more clear-headed thinking sooner, which in turn should lead to better performance. I do also appreciate the opportunity to actually talk to the staff outside the stiff frames of a Q&A, to “fulfill” my part of the two-way process, but barring them proving themselves to be terrible people (which I have not, and hope I won’t, encounter), the level of “chill” is still heavily weighted in their favour. This format of interview also allows for on-the-spot critique, which I like being able to address while I’m still there in the room, but here it is also a case of guessing the best answer.
House-keeping: if somebody feels that guessing a “best answer” is not being honest with yourself or the employer, the matter of fact is, all of your options could (and probably should, although I know people who swear by the tactic of “always lie”, and I completely understand that attitude) be truths. Eg you have numerous experiences that fit a skill they are looking for, so you have to choose one with the best context. “I am enough of a leadership person to manage a group of volunteers for [charity if choice] (sic)” vs “I was the trusted local dog-walker in my old neighbourhood for five years and I can wrangle any excited Doberman (also, clearly, sic)”. As for any ego-massaging you may have to do, that is still the world of the minnow.
We also have cases where guessing conks out entirely, like when a friend of a friend got rejected because the interviewers thought that their trousers looked like jeans.
And then we have the case where I had applied for a communications job at a university, and the feedback mentioned that I didn’t have enough financial experience (note: this was not for a business school). I had gone back and raked through the job description and candidate requirements, and nowhere had it mentioned financial administration. At that point, the sentiment was mostly one of, “what am I even trying to achieve in this system?” How could I have possibly guessed that one?
Happy Easter/April fools punks!
The job application process is like that of the procreation of pandas (especially if you are a zoo keeper): an organic something that may take time, but you desperately hope will yield a good result eventually, and the involved participants do little to help things along.
It is not very sustainable since sustenance is sparse – money for you, bamboo for the pandas – and not something that will materialise quickly.
Those who hold the ultimate decision in their hands/paws – employers and mature pandas – will sometimes make things looks encouraging before dashing your hopes with a rejection.
Pandas are perhaps famous for phantom pregnancies, where they fake being pregnant for any reason, such as receiving nicer food or round-the-clock attention. Like when prospective employers list vacancies for which they already have a chosen candidate because policy says that they must advertise X number of jobs externally per season.
I just hope we all get baby pandas in the end.
The Real World for Young People 