Thursday, 27 October 2011

Lots of Interviews


After receiving a call from a recruitment agency last Wednesday, I was surprised even further when my usual agency gave me a ring the day after and informed me of a position in Nottingham that would be right down my street. It was with one of the credit card corporations, close to the Nottingham station (and therefore VERY convenient) and had a very nice working attitude. They offered to let me meet up with one of the managers there and see what the job entailed.

I arrived at Nottingham very early, about an hour or two earlier than they had said, so I had the chance to go and tour Nottingham. It’s quite a lovely city that I fell in love with almost instantly. It has a lot of history and historical buildings in the city centre and Nottingham Castle gives a feeling of being a western version of the many castles that I saw whilst I was in Japan a year ago. I think if I get the time I’ll be sure to give Nottingham a good tour and see what other history it has to offer. There’s a lace centre near the Castle that looks quite nice and I am very fond of Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem, which is billed as the oldest pub in England. I wonder where the oldest pub in the world could be.

I got to the building of the company and waited, got the opportunity to talk to the other two candidates sent by my agency (we aren’t competing, there are 3 positions open) and then we met the lady looking for candidates. It started off with two tests to see if we could first be good at proofreading and limit the number of errors we would make. The second was to see if we could write a letter in the way that they desired. As it turned out I not only passed but was the strongest in that particular area. One of the other candidates and I were asked to turn up for another interview on Monday. We had a nice chat and had two additional interviews. The first was a job fit, and I personally felt it went very well. The second was a behavioural interview, which I can’t help but feel as if I didn’t do so great and I think I shot myself in the foot by saying so. I think it could go either way, but I’m not entirely confident to be honest.

That same day, I had an interview with the recruitment agency that contacted me on Wednesday. The lady I spoke to was very pleasant and I got along quite well. I think that she’ll be quite good at finding me work in the local area. She also offered to give me a job with a charity doing telephone fundraising. I don’t know how I feel about that due to the constant rejection I would get, which I would probably not take too well. I think if it were face to face it would be so much easier for me. The truth is that it pays well, so I might take it.

The third interview was yesterday. It wasn’t too hard to find and I wasn’t late for it at all. I went in and spoke to a gentleman who was one of the managers on two campaigns who began to tell me the deal with their company. He spoke of the progression scheme that his company offered and that I could get myself into a position of management between 6 to 12 months. As I am going to Japan in March and this sounded like quite a hefty commitment, I can’t help but feel as if this job would interfere with it, and am feeling a little unsettled after the interview. It felt like a waste of train fare just going there to see them (just as my cousin Rachel SO told me so), and more so a waste of my time that I could spend applying for other positions. I felt like he was trying to sell the role for me, not sell myself to the role, and that was something that I wasn’t entirely comfortable about. Plus, it’s more sales work and I was expecting it to be more related to customer service. I wonder what I need to do in order to do work in customer service roles.

I went to a party over the weekend too…to be honest I wish I hadn’t. At the very least, I wish I hadn’t drunk so much and spoke about my many insecurities because I’m certain they’ll come to bite me up the arse. That’s something that I need to sort out. I don’t think I’ll be doing much drinking for a very long time.

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