Hello everyone. This is a blog for all of my fellow
jobless 20-something-year-olds. For me, every day is an uphill battle. Every day
I force myself to wake up at the crack of dawn to begin a full day of job-hunting.
Yeah, I know you know what I'm talking about. It's time to stop being in denial
- if you haven't already. To no surprise, the economy sucks and we have Wall
Street to blame for it. I'm not going to spend time ranting about Wall Street...yet.
What I'm going to talk about is the PAINFUL experience that I had
yesterday, when on a second interview at a "blue chip company." I'm
not going to sell them out even though I want to because they will continue to
get away with what they did to me.
Well rested, I got out of bed and had my usual
breakfast. Next, instead of heading back to bed with my laptop and typing in
one of the typical job search URLs, I took a hot shower and dressed to the
nines for what I thought would be a life-changing interview. Well, I guess that
it was life changing, but not in the positive way I was hoping for. Full of
marketing passion, I rushed out the door with a protein bar and a notepad to
prepare for a day of observation. Now, my MAJOR mistake here was that I failed
to ask what the observation entailed. ALERT: DO NOT OBSERVE A COMPANY WITHOUT
ASKING WHAT YOU WILL BE DOING WITH THE COMPANY DURING YOUR OBSERVATION!
Fast forward. I walk into a Wall Street building and
before I know it I am leaving the building with the person I am shadowing - off
to an undisclosed location. Let's just say that I am very lucky that he wasn't
a serial killer. Eventually, we ended up in some random part of Brooklyn going
DOOR TO DOOR. That's right. Why was I so surprised you might ask? Well, this
company offered a 12-month training program to become a manager. Apparently the
initial phase of the entry-level marketing position involved learning about
sales. Now, I understand that a lot of direct marketing has to do with word of
mouth, but I was not prepared to go door to door in a sketchy neighborhood, for
hours on end, in 100 degree weather, while wearing a suit. The heat soon made
me incredibly ill and I decided that phase 1 was over – at least for me.
It took me 20 minutes (feeling like I was going to
pass out,) before I found a town car, which abandoned me after I stopped it to
RUN to a (broken) bathroom. Thankfully, a man took pity on me and helped me find
a subway station.
I couldn't wait to shower and rest in bed once I got
home and promised myself that I would never put myself in that position ever
again. So, how do you make sure this doesn’t happen to you? This life lessons is
to make sure you thoroughly read EVERYTHING on the company’s website and ask a
million SMART questions before you even begin to think about walking in the
door.
Good luck.
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