A couple weeks ago I got a call from a recruiter back east. Normally I don't bother working with out-of-state agencies because it has been my experience that it's a complete waste of my time and resources: I send them everything but a blood sample and I never hear a word back from them. But this one sounded a bit different (and actually spoke English), so I went ahead with all the required paperwork and actually landed an interview with a local company. The position was described as "customer service/deskside support." It was with a well-known financial services company that ironically occupied the same building of the company that summarily dismissed me twelve years ago after I received my cancer diagnosis.
The recruiter was serious about getting me in there and hired, so much so that the account manager coached me on the phone yesterday at length about the type of questions I'd be asked (he had actually worked for this particular company prior to going into recruiting) and offered some very useful tips about how to turn the interview to my advantage.
I was still nervous as hell when I arrived at the today because I hate selling myself—and as experienced I am in my field, I am notoriously bad at answering off the cuff technical questions. ("Where in the Windows registry do you find x?") As it turned out, however, I shouldn't have been so worried. The position they were interviewing for bore no resemblance at all to the description they'd given the recruiter. It was a call center help desk position and I'd be on the phones 100% of the time. It was also third shift.
Needless to say, it was the shortest interview I'd ever had. I explained this was not what had been sold to me by the recruiter, and thanked them for their time. Even the I.T. Director who was sitting in on this said he was surprised that with my background and experience I'd was applying for this particular job.
I went out to my car and called the recruiter. I explained what had happened and she verified the job description they'd been given. Nowhere did it mention "100% phones" or that it was third shift. She apologized profusely.
And to think I lost sleep last night worrying about all the possible interview questions that would be thrown at me today.
I'm disappointed, yes. But more than anything else, I'm angry. I'm angry because I thought this might actually be "the one." As I've quipped on Twitter, "Looking for a job is like looking for love. You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince."
Adding insult to injury, while sitting in my car talking to the recruiter who sent me to this debacle, I received a call from a local recruiter I'm working with who informed me that I was not selected for the State job I'd interviewed for last week. This was the second time I'd interviewed with those folks, and the second time I did not get selected. And of course, the recruiter got absolutely no feedback from the client as to my performance in the interview, so I have no idea what I could've done differently to win them over.
I hate interviewing because you never know what kind of crazy ass questions you're going to be asked. Two weeks ago I interviewed for a short-term contract at a firm I'd contracted with back in the late 90s that also went nowhere. I was asked to describe how to make a PBJ sandwich. Seriously. (Okay, now that I know why that particular question was asked it does make a little bit of sense in the Alice-Through-The-Looking-Glass environment that is modern Corporate America, and I'll have the proper response ready if I'm asked it—or something similar—again, but it caught me totally off guard at the time.)
Just as a job seeker you're looking for your prince, companies also seem to be looking for someone who fits their pre-defined glass slipper perfectly, and I'm starting to feel like one of the ugly step sisters.
But I am trying to stay positive. I keep reminding myself that after my position "had been eliminated" following my cancer diagnosis, it was nearly a year before I was working again full time, and we're not even halfway to that point yet. And I also gained a few good interviewing tips from this experience that I hadn't known previously.
Still, I'd like to get back to work because every day that I'm away from the enterprise computing environment, the more my skill let deteriorates and my ability to answer those off-the-cuff technical questions with any degree of accuracy gets even worse.