I didn't get the job. again. This continues my unbroken track-record of never having got any job I have been interviewed for. I don't know with this one how many interviews there would have been, if there were two and I failed to make it to the second round, or if it would have been just the one but I fell at the first fence.
They told me -- via the recruitment consultant I don't expect to ever hear from ever again -- they were very impressed with all the research I had done into their company, and that most people don't normally do that much. I had a bad experience once with a newspaper when I didn't realise I was required to know anything, didn't even realise the "informal chat" they'd invited me to was an interview. Ever since then, I always make sure when they ask me what I know I can say "Founded in 1837...". But anyway, they liked that I did my research. There was no comment on my suitability for online entertainment PR, whether they liked that I can talk about the pros and cons of legal music downloads, renting DVDs online, nor what they thought about my question on if they had considered setting up a "virtual" agency in second life, to support their clients in the virtual world.
What they did say was they felt I didn't have enough experience with entertainment PR, and that they felt I might be too nervous with some of their bigger entertainment clients. I wonder if the whole "meet the director" thing after my interview was a test to see how I react to someone "important", having been so amazingly cool in the interview. If I was noticeably nervous, maybe I couldn't hack meeting a client -- but it's not the same thing. If I'd known they would come out with that, I'd have brought up how I once interviewed the rock band Terrorvision for my student magazine.
It frustrates me, being told I don't have enough of the right experience. I wasn't entirely clear what level the position was going to be I was being put forward for -- whether it was Account Executive or Junior Account Exec, or if they even really bothered that much with job titles. I didn't want to make out my previous work to be more important than it was, but I thought I did a good job of showing I had paid my dues as an intern/assistant, and was capable and confident in a real position. But maybe not. When it comes to the "right" experience, what can you do?
After over six months unpaid work in PR for the experience, I ended up being over-qualified for a job I prompted them to create, and a job I had already been doing. But now if I apply for a sector I'm more interested in, and I don't have enough of the right experience. It's enough to make me quit the call centre and go back to being an intern, but there's only so much work experience you can do.
I have sitting on my desk a letter from the writer's bureau college of journalism, offering me reduced course fees, but hurry the offer must end soon. I'm tempted since they offer a full money-back guarantee if you don't earn back your course fees through selling your own work. I'm rarely as content as when I'm left alone to write -- being a newshound didn't work for me, I never got the shorthand, didn't pass the important exams in public affairs, and really just hated walking the streets in the cold and the rain, looking for a story. I can think of few times in my life I have been as unhappy as when I was "training" to be a journalist in Leicester. Except maybe that whole period when my grandmother died and Fiona didn't want me back and my flatmates were arguing and I had a dissertation to write and I was self harming.
So where do we go from here? I'm not sure. I've learned by now that when it seems like all doors have closed to you that often you can find yourself somewhere you never dreamed of being.
I passed a manager at work today, as I was crossing the office carrying armfuls of folders, and we said a polite "alright?". She then commented that she didn't really know me, that I'm so quiet and all we ever say is hello or goodbye and she doesn't know who I really am, behind it all. I think I just shrugged in reply. What's to say, really?
...summer will come again, I can be happy.
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