I knew my lucky streak couldn't last forever, particularly after acknowledging it on the blog.
My most recent job hunt took longer than I expected. It consumed my life - monitoring listings, reaching out to contacts, crafting cover letters and tweaking my resume, over and over again.
Then the phone interviews (a nightmare to wrangle when you work in an open plan office with virtually no private spaces, and you don't drive to work) and of course, the in person interviews!
Here are a few highlights:
- The interview that never was. I had phone confirmation (but no email confirmation) and when I turned up the interviewer wasn't there. I'd left work early and gone all that way (it wasn't a super handy location) and she was a no show - she was in another city that day!
- The interview that started super late. I scheduled this one for my lunch break expecting to be back at work within an hour, give or take, even with travel time. Nope! I turned up on time, but they didn't. The longer I waited the more nervous I got, being painfully aware of time ticking on. We didn't begin until about 20 minutes after the scheduled start and their lateness really threw me off - I spent half of the interview worrying about making it back to work at a reasonable time, and the other struggling to keep up with their aggressive interviewing style. Just a disaster from start to finish.
- The interview on my birthday. I took annual leave so that I could have a day at home to chill out, but you know what? The day before I got a frantic email from a recruiter who had been 'trying to reach me for days' (they most certainly had not). Cue a phone call in which they declared that my birthday was the only day on which they were holding interviews. I opted for an early slot to get it out of the way, and trekked into the city and back on my birthday just for it. (I didn't get that job, but later that day I got a call about an interview - for another company I'd given up on ever hearing back from - for the next day, which wound up being The One.)
Now I can look back and laugh, but dammit, it was grueling and disheartening at the time.
And it all worked out perfectly in the end, as it always has in this regard. #praisebe
