This week I didn’t get a job. It took five weeks from starting the application process, through the two interviews, to learning the result. It struck me during the process that it might be interesting to share the various emotions I experienced through those weeks. Some of those emotions will be universal, some are more likely to be experienced by women, and a few no doubt, are just mine.
Stage 1 – Discovering the vacancy
I see the advertisement on Twitter. Yes, I think. I’d love to work with those people! After all, I already know some of them, so I know what I’m getting into. And it’s part-time so I can manage my disability. And it’s with an organisation doing something I believe in. I am excited. I start to imagine myself in this organisation. Out and about at events with them. Plotting and planning with them. In shopping parlance, I’m already wearing the outfit. Looking in the mirror, checking myself out in this fabulous new cloth. Yes, my bum looks good in this. Yes, it suits me. Yes, I’ll take it. Oh – how much does it cost?
Stage 2 – The person specification
How much does it cost? In other words, do I meet the criteria, and can I live on the salary? Let’s leave the salary to one side for the moment. Many person specifications have three columns. The first has the criteria, the next is the column for ‘essential’, the final is the column for ‘desirable.’ I can tick off most of the essential criteria. There are perhaps two or three that I can’t. But two of these criteria are knowledge-based. In other words, if I think about it rationally, I can learn what I’m currently missing on the job. I can also tick off most of the desirable criteria. No problems there. But, perhaps because I am a woman, I pause at not getting a perfect score. Perhaps I shouldn’t apply. Doubts set in. Then I remind myself how I look in the new outfit. And that I need the money. Surely it’s worth a punt. And anyway, the average man I tell myself, wouldn’t have any doubts at all.
Stage 3 – The salary
I cast the doubts aside. I am in the new outfit, striking off down the catwalk. And, as I have been on a career break for three years with no income at all, I start spending the money. Not actually spending it of course. But I plot. I fantasise. I’ll get the lights fixed in the kitchen, replace the linoleum floor, get someone in to help with the interminable silicon issues around the bath. I’ll pay off my missing years’ National Insurance. I’ll take the people out who’ve bought me lunch and dinner over the last three years. I’ll treat them and treat them and treat them to Edinburgh’s finest. Of course, during these fantasies I’m also sure I won’t get the job. I don’t meet the criteria. There’ll be someone better, younger, smarter, more suitable. So I’m spending the money and not spending the money because someone else better than me will be spending the money instead.
Step 4 – The application
Some vacancies require you to fill in an online form. In this case, it’s a letter and a CV. The letter needs to refer to the person specification – the essentials and desirables (here I’d like to say something amusing about deplorables but nothing obvious comes to mind). This is tricky. There’s an art to writing a succinct letter that covers a person specification. How much detail to give for each criteria? Detailed examples or one-liners? Should I write a short story about each one? Should I use the competency approach beloved of the public sector? Should I include my major strategic successes? Or stick to small specific examples? A two-year project taking a government’s climate change plan through from inception to publication? Or a blog for a local active travel campaign? Might I be considered overqualified for some of the criteria but underqualified for others? I decide that the letter must be no longer than two pages. And I rework my CV to suit the post. I submit.
Step 5 – The interview
The email arrives with the offer of an interview. It will be an online interview given the covid situation. More mixed emotions. The heft of success – hurrah, got through the first round! Then the anxiety. Since being run over by a lorry some thirteen years ago I’ve not been as effective as I might be at interviews. This, I discovered when taking part in some post cycle/vehicle collision research, is relatively common. I tend to overprepare, am overanxious at the interview itself, and don’t take enough time to pause and think when being asked questions. With this new self-awareness, I spend some time researching the organisation again, and rehearse some of the stories that I used in my essential/desirable criteria. Am I still trying the outfit on? Oh, yes. Am I spending the money? Oh yes. But I’m also talking myself down. Remembering other failed interviews. The interview with the Tramadol (not recommended but was essential medication at the time for pain control). The interview that was supposed to be online but the recruiter didn’t understand the technology so I only had audio but the panel could see and hear each other. That was, I believe, verging on the deplorable.
Step 6 – The wait
This interview is not deplorable. It is fair. As fair as an interview can be online. Of course, afterwards, I focus on all my negative aspects. The things I didn’t say but should have. My inability to read the room on Zoom. No facial cues to bounce off. No body language to check. Just thank you very much we’ll be touch. And then the wait. We are all waiting. I no longer dare to wear the outfit. I don’t spend the money. But I am caught in the coursing ebb of an unknown future now outside my control. Two futures. One in work, and all that that entails. And one that continues as is, free, loose, but without structure.
Step 7 – The second interview
OK – I absolutely did not expect this. I did not expect a second round of interviews that include preparing some content, doing a presentation, and answering more questions (provided). Initially I am surprised and perplexed. This hiatus of two potential futures is discombobulating. I apply myself to the task. Learn the basics of new software for the presentation. Prepare answers for the questions. I consider what to wear to the interview given 1) I’ll be cycling there and 2) what the panel are likely to be wearing. My choice of clothes involves entering my wardrobe for the first time in months or even years. I attend the hybrid interview in person (we’re all hybrid now). Once again the interview is as fair as an interview can be. It is a Friday. We’ll be in touch on Monday, they say. Thank you, I say. Thank you.
Step 8 – The news
I don’t think about it over the weekend. It is now, as they say, in the lap of the gods. My interview clothes are back in the wardrobe. I live my weekend without a possible new future. And then it is Monday. We all do it, don’t we? Make the calculations that is. We know that the successful candidate is contacted first. And that as the day wears on, we are less likely to be that candidate. My phone rings. This is it. But no, it isn’t. It’s the police (that’s a story for another day). And then, finally, the call. We know, don’t we. All of us. In the first second, we know. The gut punch. The rush of heat to the neck. We hear the explanation. We breathe. We are adult about it. We might take something positive from it. Or, if we are in the habit of beating ourselves up, we might not. In this case, the successful candidate has a different set of skills to mine. And those skills are the ones selected by the recruiting organisation. And that is fine. That is the best outcome for the organisation. And the things the organisation aims to achieve.
The gut punch doesn’t last. The almost future dissipates, dissolves, and disappears. For five weeks, my bum looked pretty good in it. But hey, there’s more than one way to dress a bum.
SANDERLINGS 