Interview

As the cheesy electric rock plays the background to my pre-conference call life, I would like to share from a gold mine that was shared with me yesterday. I will periodically post some of these cartoons on here as appropriate, since they are simply hilarious and right up the.home.werker's ally.

 

Have you ever said this, at least in your head, to anyone? A few years ago when I was werking for the newspaper, I was interviewing for jobs, well...like it was my job. Several of the positions I interviewed for took me out of the office on multiple occassions as the interview process went further along.

What's a girl to do when she's got a killer job interview awaiting her amidst the hum-drum of the every-day-boring? Here was what may or may not have been my strategy:

1) Discreetly let a few people, including your supervisor, know that you have an appointment and that you'll be gone for an hour or two but it shouldn't keep you from werk the rest of the day.
2) A little more obviously, make sure to get said 'appointment' on the wall calendar and email calendar at werk. (For example, you are interviewing at a medical foundation, so your interview is appropriately labeled: Dr.'s Appt.  Or, the calendar would simply read 'Lunch/Coffee with 'name of interviewer')
3) Perfect the professional but not 'slap-you-in-the face' obvious collared shirt with suit pants/skirt. Have nicely pressed jacket hanging in the car, to be donned only once you've escaped view of your current place of employment.
4) If your interview is out of state, use some of your PTO, call it a mental health day, and voila! You are flown out to Colorado and back on a Wednesday, and no one knows the difference until you turn in your 2 weeks notice the following Monday.

Keep in mind, I claim none of the 4 items above to be true about myself..., but desperate times can call for desperate measures. When I was werking at the newspaper, and I had survived 4 rounds of lay-offs with no promise of promotion or even replacements for my 3 co-werkers who had seen the writing on the wall and left...I.was.desperate. Like gain 20 pounds and grind your teeth through 2 mouthguards at night, desperate.

Since then, I have been on the opposite side of the interview process, dutifully grilling hopeful candidates for jobs, and secretly wanting to ask the obvious question: Where exactly does your boss think you are right now? (Who knows, they might even score points for creativity, honesty, or just bomb the interview all together).

Who knows, maybe next time I find myself in the 'job applicant' seat, I might be grown up enough to be as candid as the cheeky woman in the cartoon above. Maybe.