How I Came To Be Eating Cake
Normally there's no cake in my house. There's a Mrs. Smith's apple crumb cake in the freezer in case there's any company-related surprise incident, but I don't count that. Because it's for guests.
Today sucked. I didn't get a job that I went on a THIRD interview for on Tuesday. Granted, I walked out of the interview feeling like the attorney didn't like me and I even SAID I didn't think he'd want to hire me. But today that was confirmed, and I'm bummed.
I found that out after leaving a hellish interview that came about in a weird way. When I deal with recruiters, I'm very aware of all the player's roles in the game. Their clients are the law firms. I am a tool they use to make their clients happy. I know this, and am okay with this. Since recruiters want me to get the job (so they'll get a percentage of whatever salary the law firm will pay me), they normally set me up to do as well as possible at interviews.
They send me to the law firm's website, give me the name of the attorney I'll be interviewing with, etc. I walk in prepared.
This morning at 10 a.m., a recruiter called to say she had almost no information but a firm wanted her to fax resumes in the morning and set up interviews for the afternoon. Decent recruiters will NEVER send a resume until I've said yes, I'm interested in that law firm. I didn't have enough information to know whether or not I was interested, so I said sure.
At 1 p.m., the recruiter called to say the law firm wanted to interview me at 4 p.m. Okay that just shot my whole day to hell. At 3:50 p.m., I was in the elevator and on the way to the office.
When I got there, the receptionist showed me to a conference room and handed me an application to fill out. She walked away, I flipped the application to the first page, and ... read all about the applicant who had already filled out that application. The receptionist and I got that sorted out, and right after I started filling in all the same fucking crap that's on my mother fucking resume that they had TWO copies of, Person Number One came in to interview me.
She was the attorney I'd be working for. She was bubbly and friendly and had a loud laugh (that I tried to not cringe at) and I liked her instantly. We clicked, we could work well together, I could tell. Sign me up.
Then Person Number Two came in to talk with me. Person Number Two is actually Person Number One's current secretary, who will be going to work in a different location at the same firm on Monday. I was the third interview they were doing this afternoon, and Person Number Two was over it. She was polite, but slightly distant. Fine.
Then Person Number Three came in to interview me. She was H.R. for the firm, and works out of a different office normally. She hated me on site. No really, I'm sure of it. Totally sure of it. We talked, she nodded, we talked, she asked more questions, I smiled, answered more questions, and had I been bleeding she'd just have looked at me and said, "You'd BETTER not get any blood on my white pin-striped suit, bitch!" because that's just how much she hated me.
What with all these people interviewing me, I hadn't finished the application, so Person Number Three said I should just finish it up and then leave. I finished, but the receptionist had already left for the day. I didn't see anyone around. At all. So I left it on the receptionist's desk and walked out.
When I got home, the muscles in my back were spasming horridly. Turns out I was sitting in an awkward position at the interview. For too long. And of course, because I'm a good girl whose mother taught her right, you know I was sitting up straight at the interview. For an hour and ten minutes.
It was on the way home that I found out the job I wanted is not going to be mine. Oh, and I couldn't find a cab and had to walk all the way home, in heels.
And that's why after dinner I felt a need for cake. Sweet Trixie offered me some Vicodin, but after thanking her, I declined. Advil should be able to fix this. It better.
Today sucked. I didn't get a job that I went on a THIRD interview for on Tuesday. Granted, I walked out of the interview feeling like the attorney didn't like me and I even SAID I didn't think he'd want to hire me. But today that was confirmed, and I'm bummed.
I found that out after leaving a hellish interview that came about in a weird way. When I deal with recruiters, I'm very aware of all the player's roles in the game. Their clients are the law firms. I am a tool they use to make their clients happy. I know this, and am okay with this. Since recruiters want me to get the job (so they'll get a percentage of whatever salary the law firm will pay me), they normally set me up to do as well as possible at interviews.
They send me to the law firm's website, give me the name of the attorney I'll be interviewing with, etc. I walk in prepared.
This morning at 10 a.m., a recruiter called to say she had almost no information but a firm wanted her to fax resumes in the morning and set up interviews for the afternoon. Decent recruiters will NEVER send a resume until I've said yes, I'm interested in that law firm. I didn't have enough information to know whether or not I was interested, so I said sure.
At 1 p.m., the recruiter called to say the law firm wanted to interview me at 4 p.m. Okay that just shot my whole day to hell. At 3:50 p.m., I was in the elevator and on the way to the office.
When I got there, the receptionist showed me to a conference room and handed me an application to fill out. She walked away, I flipped the application to the first page, and ... read all about the applicant who had already filled out that application. The receptionist and I got that sorted out, and right after I started filling in all the same fucking crap that's on my mother fucking resume that they had TWO copies of, Person Number One came in to interview me.
She was the attorney I'd be working for. She was bubbly and friendly and had a loud laugh (that I tried to not cringe at) and I liked her instantly. We clicked, we could work well together, I could tell. Sign me up.
Then Person Number Two came in to talk with me. Person Number Two is actually Person Number One's current secretary, who will be going to work in a different location at the same firm on Monday. I was the third interview they were doing this afternoon, and Person Number Two was over it. She was polite, but slightly distant. Fine.
Then Person Number Three came in to interview me. She was H.R. for the firm, and works out of a different office normally. She hated me on site. No really, I'm sure of it. Totally sure of it. We talked, she nodded, we talked, she asked more questions, I smiled, answered more questions, and had I been bleeding she'd just have looked at me and said, "You'd BETTER not get any blood on my white pin-striped suit, bitch!" because that's just how much she hated me.
What with all these people interviewing me, I hadn't finished the application, so Person Number Three said I should just finish it up and then leave. I finished, but the receptionist had already left for the day. I didn't see anyone around. At all. So I left it on the receptionist's desk and walked out.
When I got home, the muscles in my back were spasming horridly. Turns out I was sitting in an awkward position at the interview. For too long. And of course, because I'm a good girl whose mother taught her right, you know I was sitting up straight at the interview. For an hour and ten minutes.
It was on the way home that I found out the job I wanted is not going to be mine. Oh, and I couldn't find a cab and had to walk all the way home, in heels.
And that's why after dinner I felt a need for cake. Sweet Trixie offered me some Vicodin, but after thanking her, I declined. Advil should be able to fix this. It better.
Labels: I'm Hurt, Pounding the pavement, Trixie
posted by Green at 7/19/2007 09:16:00 PM
2 Comments:
What I don't understand is, why the hell don't they just say upfront that they want all potential employees to fill out applications?
I understand that having every person's info in the same format makes things easier. That's fine. I only get pissed when they ask people to fill out an application OR send a resume. Well, if I have a stack of resumes handy, I'm not going to trudge down to their office and write all that shit down all over again, so I just send a resume. Then I show up for an interview and before we can even get on with it, I have to copy everything from my resume to the application? Bullshit.
What is that about? Are they testing my penmanship, my literacy, my patience, what? They could have saved us all lots of time by just asking people to fill out the application in the first place. Dumbasses.
Rant over.
Hope it works out. Liking the person you'd be working with most is the important thing. Although the bitchy HR person, the unorganized receptionist and disinterested secretary might be indicative of the company culture.
And you totally deserve cake for going through all that.
Thank you for giving us insights and inspirations. This article is really helpful and informative. We would like to see more updates from you in the future.
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