Oh dear blog!
You may have thought that with all the free time I’ve had lately that I might get it together with this blog…but then you would be very wrong indeed. The fact is I’ve managed to keep myself incredibly busy (for the most part) combing through job listings online, sending out resumes, attending a job fair, and undergoing interviews. As of yet there is still no job. There are possibilities, but no job. I blame this blog for that!
Oh my dear, dear blog. I have grown quite attached to you over the past year! You’ve been there through all my travels, for the good times and the bad, from near-death experiences to lewd acts and everything in between. And now, when I need you most in this difficult time of life, you have disappointed me! Don’t worry, I can’t stay mad at you for long.
To explain, I had been contacted about a job I’d applied for online for an Online Editor position for a sport diving magazine. When the woman on the phone asked me how much diving experience I had, I knew I was about two seconds away from being hung up on. I explained that I didn’t have any diving experience at all (but was interested in one day becoming certified!), and happily for me, she did not slam down the receiver, but said that while I was probably not qualified for that particular role, I might be a better fit for an Online Producer position that was also open at her company. When she explained exactly what the role entailed, I was having to keep myself from dancing around because what she described was the kind of job I had only fantasized about….working with three luxury magazines, one of which was a travel title!
After another brief chat on the phone I was invited down for an interview in Winter Park. The place was gorgeous…just like what I would imagine the offices of a hip magazine to be. As I was escorted by the HR recruiter to her office my eyes skimmed from the polished concrete floor upwards to the colorful poster-size magazine covers on the wall and on to the very mod exposed ceiling. First I spoke with the HR rep for a while and then I was walked over to the office of the woman who I’d spoken to on the phone. The interview lasted about half an hour or so, and I thought it had gone pretty well. I was understandably nervous after having been traumatized by my interview experience with Amazon, but I managed to hold myself together by sheer willpower. I actually felt pretty darn good thanks in part to my spot-on choice in interview attire–a chic-but-professional, not-too-businessy trouser/cropped jacket combo with freshly polished black heels. A far cry from the jeans and sweater days at Amazon, but it’s fun to dress up every now and then!
The next day I got an email from the woman I’d interviewed with. She had said she would be making her decision quickly so I was hoping maybe it would be good news. She wanted more information from me…specifically, she wanted a link to my blog. I’d included a line in my resume saying I’d done some writing in a travel blog, but I guess I’d never thought anyone would care to read it! As much as I love this blog, it’s definitely not what I would consider polished work by any stretch of the imagination. And I wasn’t all that thrilled about showcasing my personal problems with a potential employer either (although I seem to have no problem with showcasing them to any random strangers that come upon this). In the end, after scrambling to come up with an entry that showed a little bit about me and had the best example of my writing, I emailed her back with a link to the post from my trip last summer when we were all sick and in a state in Turkey and Greece…Sick, tired, and sick and tired. Once I’d hit ‘send’ I just had to pray she wouldn’t be deterred from hiring me because I’d sent her a story about how I once vomited on a bus.
Oh God, what did I do?
I found out yesterday I didn’t get the job. Whether that is due to the fact I got sick from eating Turkish-flavor Doritos or because I chose to write about getting sick from eating Turkish-flavor Doritos and then thought it would be a good idea to email to a potential employer, I may never know. Perhaps I plain wasn’t qualified. Or maybe it was my freckles…who knows! It was quite disappointing news to be sure because I know I could have done the job and would have loved every minute of doing it, but there was at least a tiny glimmer of hope in the crushing rejection email I received…while I wasn’t a good fit for that role, there is another she thought I’d be better suited for, and that one is working for a magazine dealing with island travel! If that isn’t right up my alley then I don’t know what is. I know I shouldn’t get my hopes up for this job either, but I can’t help it…I’ve seen Field of Dreams enough times to know that anything is possible.
Tags: blog, Florida, jobs, Travel
Administrator
Leave a Reply