This is the story of how I almost got the job I am most qualified for. This is also the story of why I am still unemployed, after an interview process that took three days and 17 hours.
Let’s just skip the “Previously, on the tragicomic life of AZ” bit, where you would just be treated to a quick montage of grainy, low-quality, hand-held camera videos with an upbeat soundtrack, showing how, since the beginning of the year, I lost my partner, lost my job, found myself crushed by unpaid debts and am now a forty-something single mum living off the charity of my elderly parents. Thank you ever so much, 2019.
Fast forward to the present. Applying for jobs, yet again.
I get the feeling people call me just out of curiosity, to know how a Uni graduate with experience in multinational companies has ended up back in the countryside. While I am sitting through interviews in my outdated graduation suit and clownish make-up, trying to sell my skills and make it look like I am JUST. THE. RIGHT. candidate for the job (and failing, obviously) I am also thinking to myself: well, at least this will be good material for a funny ha-ha anecdote, right?
I long for the day when I’ll look back and be able to laugh about all this. For the moment being, let’s just write stuff down, for the records. Laughs will hopefully follow at some point.
Invariably, interviewers are verging on one of the following types:
- The “How dare you pollute the shades of our Company?” type who are clearly disgusted at the mere idea that I would consider myself worthy of even breathing the same air as them. (Why did you call me then?)
- The “I find you’re such a great candidate! When will you be able to start? OK! We’ll be in touch!!!” type, which invariably fails not only to call me back but even to tell me that I was, in fact, not a great candidate after all, and probably never had been. (Why, oh why don’t you call back?)
Photo by Fancycrave.com on Pexels.com
Leaving this very odd and very quintessentially Italian habit of not calling people back aside for the time being, let’s dive right into one of the first interviews I managed to land this time…
Interview with the passive-aggressive Hipster Tour Operator from Hell
My background is in Travel and Tourism, so I was excited when I found a job ad for a position in a Tour Operator/Travel Agency, where the qualifications required seemed to match my own skills almost exactly.
I didn’t even need to modify my CV to hide the most industry-specific characteristics and really went to town with the Amadeus entries spell casting knowledge, Worldspan AHL mask cloak and dagger swordsmanship, International legislation rules and regulations and ancient scrolls interpretation and divination and so forth.
As soon as I applied, I got an e-mail back from the recruiting company, confirming that they had selected my details to be passed on to the TO/TA (see what I did there? Airline people and our acronyms, you common pax wouldn’t understand even if PHBA) and lo and behold, I receive an offer for an interview with the boss the very next morning. Good sign? I thought so. Was I right to be optimistic? Well, you’ll see.
So there I was, walking through the glass doors and scanning the very elegantly furnished space, trying to feel if I’d be happy spending there 40 hours per week for the remaining 20 plus years till retirement.
Smart office almost in the centre of town, nice plants, even nicer guy working at the reception desk. We chatted about which airline we liked the most (we both adored KLM, we had a conflicting relationship with AF, we loathed AZ, but who doesn’t, really).
I was then ushered upstairs in the boss’s office for the real interview.
The first bit of bad news was the contract offered. An apprenticeship. 500 to 600 Euro per month, for a full working week of 40 hours, opening times 9 to 13 and 15:30 to 19:30. For six months, then we would see… You read that right, for three and a half Euro an hour, with a very, very vague promise that maybe, one day, there would possibly be a decent contract and higher pay.
Seriously?
OK then, I thought I could convince them to hire me with a full salary anyway, maybe talking with the boss and impressing him with my RPP/RTs and WMDAHs…
But I need to be hired first so let’s see what kind of type the boss is.
Now, you’re a boss of a company who’s running interviews to attract talents, right? You want the person in front of you to want that job, to think that she’ll be happy working for you. And what do you do? Well, apparently, this person’s idea on how to present the best part of the job and his company was to start off by complaining about how difficult things were, how stressed he was, how airlines were purposefully making it so impossible for him to do his job.
Right, excellent start.
And let me ask you, if you’re an interviewee and hear this kind of speech, what do YOU do? If you find someone who is outwardly so negative already, do you go along with the risk of sounding negative yourself? Do you propose solutions, with the risk of sounding patronising? Do you play the Devil’s advocate and try to be positive with the risk of being in conflict with what he just said?
I played the American stereotype card. I told him that there were no real problems, only CHALLENGES! That communication between client and supplier was KEY! And so on and so forth in corporate jargon that would have made any The Apprentice participant proud.
And, ladies and gentleman, the boss bought it. He told me to go back there for a trial day ‘on the job’. YAY!
Day one: ticketing desk. I sat next to a couple of employees who were in turn very charming and friendly and eager to show me what the job would have been (Federica, you were a star; Mattia, you too), taking notes on how they managed bookings with ‘ethnic’ fares, charging commissions according on how smartly dressed the people on the other side of the counter were.
We had the most varied of clients, from the local police officer who wanted to book a trip to Japan and didn’t mind paying the extra for single travellers because she had enough of putting up with weirdos in her daily life, to the mum with a baby strapped around her back who was sent there to try to amend a booking for her mother-in-law who was in Nigeria and needed to travel back earlier for health issues, to the Cuban lady who was sponsoring her niece but didn’t have the paperwork yet and had the airline reservation expired just for that.
Day two: Tour operator office. I had the very charming experience of sitting next to a women-hater, who proudly stated that he told all female clients to park their feminism at home before departing for some destinations.
Also on day two: you see people’s true colours when they’re faced with conflict. And the conflict presented itself in the form of another tenant of the building where the office was, who waltzed in and threatened to sue us all.
I remained calm.
The boss exploded.
The issue was that the women-hater (who was clearly a favourite of the boss) was also an unrepentant smoker who took his lung-cancer-inducing breaks just in front of the building entrance door, liberally throwing cigarette butts all over the pavement.
The other tenant would have none of it. He insisted that he knew lawyers and he would be definitely suing us all.
The boss shouted back a classic: You don’t know who I am!
The other guy counter-attacked with a: Well, you don’t know who I know.
Things escalated in a whirlwind of: I have lawyers! vs I have entire law firms at my disposal!
Also: I will destroy you! Not if I destroy you first!!!
So instead of telling you-know-who to just quit smoking or at least stick his cigarette butts in his… ashtray, the boss went all out and yelled at the other guy instead. He really needed to sort out his priorities and was definitely not a person I would be happy working with.
Anyway, having passed the one-to-one interview and two whole days on the job, I was at least expecting the boss to tell me when I would be able to start. Despite the temperamental boss, the woman-hater, the long hours and the little pay, I would have said yes.
Instead, on that last day, the boss waved me goodnight and let me go. Just like that.
I heard nothing back from them, not even a “Sorry, you really suck. Stay at home”.
I started looking for other positions, I sent a ship-full load of CVs everywhere and to anybody. I got a call from a lawyer firm, they offered me an interview. Then just before that, the Travel agency’s boss called, after more than two weeks.
He did not apologise for not getting back to me sooner. He said if I was still interested in the job they would offer me the apprenticeship position.
I didn’t even have to think about it. I said no.
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