The One That Really Hurt

October brings a fresh start and I decide that I should apply for anything and everything just so I can get a job!

My first port of call for this new approach was the local paper, it had quite a few administrative jobs in there and I send my CV to a couple of them. I hear from one pretty quickly and am invited to an interview; I will call this one Company G. I arrive ten minutes early (as I usually do in order to take a moment to focus and so that I appear enthusiastic) and as I am signing in I notice that quite a few people have already been in today to see the same person that I am seeing, interesting… During the interview I am told that they have had two hundred applications for this job and they are trying to see everyone for a twenty minute interview (all the names now make sense) and then invite a few back for a second, more in-depth interview. I personally can’t see how they can decide anything from a twenty minute interview, especially as during mine the interviewer spends most of his time reading my CV out loud to himself and not asking me any questions. I am told that I will hear within two weeks but I don’t hold out much hope. I was right not to as it’s now December and I have yet to hear anything so again, I imagine it’s a ‘No’.

It all goes a bit quiet for me the next couple of days but I decide to apply for a job at the company where I did my Placement (Company H) in the hope that as I have already worked there, it will be an advantage. The role is to be a Pricing Analyst, not something that I have any experience in but I give it a go. I apply for the job in the morning and by the afternoon I have had a call to say that they would like me to complete some online numeric and verbal reasoning tests (again with the sodding tests!!). I don’t understand why I have to do them as I have already worked there for a year, plus my friends who have gone back to work there didn’t have to do them. I decide to stop complaining and just do the tests in the hope that it won’t affect my chances at getting the job. The following day Company H call me and arrange an interview (maybe I’m not as bad at those tests as I thought, eh?) for two days time. Company H seem pretty keen to get me in as soon as possible which fills me with a false sense of positivity, particularly when the person that I spoke to on the phone said that they always like to have former Placement Students back.

I am really nervous about this interview as I had such a good time there during my Placement year and would love to go back. Plus, I feel that because I have already worked there, they will expect me to know a lot more about Company H etc. During the interview I don’t even get asked what I know about Company H and they just head straight into the hardcore questions. When I left the interview I was a little unsure as to whether it went well but I had done all that I could and if it was meant to be, it was meant to be. A week later I find out that it’s not meant to be, I am completely crushed. I just about hold it together during the rejection phone call but as soon as I hung up, the floodgates opened and I found it hard to stop. After all the rejections that I had had, this one was the hardest to take. Why did everyone else seem to be getting jobs and not me?!

I now knew that I couldn’t get a job in a company where I had worked, where I hadn’t worked and in an area where I had experience and where I didn’t have experience, go me!! I was also getting fed up of people telling me to, ‘hang in there’ and that ‘the right job will come along’ as from where I was standing, the future wasn’t looking so great.