jobness update : pixeldiva

As D mentions here, I had a bit of an adventure the other day.

D got called into one of those "oh FUCK" meetings (rather like the one I had not so long ago) and I could tell that he was quite seriously worried about how things were going to work out.

Now, some of you may recall, some may not, that I spent a long time as a secretary, and pretty much hated it and wanted to be a web designer instead. Which I managed to do. Until the aforementioned meeting. The only problem being that it very quickly became a "be careful what you wish for" situation.

I wished to be a web designer. I got my wish. I wished I'd never made that wish.

Sucks huh?

I hated doing web design as a job. I used to think I hated my job when I was a secretary. I used to think that I could never hate a job or be more depressed on a daily basis than when I was a secretary. Oh boy was I wrong about that.

I didn't want another job as a web designer, I wanted to be a secretary again. So that I could come home without being entirely drained of any creative urges I had, and do fun stuff on the web. Stuff that I wanted to do. Stuff that I've put off for months now. Stuff that I should have done and found myself entirely unable to do.

So, on Tuesday morning, at around 9:30 am, I sat down at my computer, pulled up the website of a large and well respected secretarial employment agency and phoned their largest and most prestigious branch: Oxford Street.

I asked if I could make an appointment to come and register with them. Told them I had about 8 years experience as a secretary, and that I was looking for either permanent or temporary work.

The girl I initially spoke to put me on hold for a short while, and I was transferred to a colleague, who I reiterated the information to, and shortly afterwards I had an appointment to go and see her at 12:30 that day.

Immediately, I went into interview preparation mode. Blow dried hair, makeup (bleurgh), smart suit with white top (bleaurghhhh). CV updated and angled towards my secretarial skills. Downloaded typing test. Took typing test (just to get some practice, because I'm always nervous when I do it) and got a score of 86wpm. Not bad at all.

Finally, I'm all ready. I head out the door feeling like I just stepped out of a salon. Actually no. But my hair was nice and shiny and bouncy, so I guess maybe kinda.

So. Walk out of Tottenham Court Road tube station and phone D to ask where the office of the agency is (since that's who got him his current job) and I tell him I'm standing opposite Virgin Megastores. He tells me to turn left and asks if I see the sign. I say no (because I'm looking far up the street). He laughs that laugh that usually tells me I'm being dense, and I change my field of view and laugh as I realise I'm about two doors away from it.

I'm also a good 20 minutes early.

So I wander up and down Oxford Street, not straying too far, looking for a place where I can surreptitiously brush out the hamsters that have returned to my hair during the journey.

I finally decide on the "France" subsection of the "Travel" section in Waterstones bookshop, and make my way into the building. The agency is on the first floor, and I spy a corridor leading round to a lift. I head that way, push the button and turn round to check that I'm entirely de-hamstered and looking relatively human. I am. Well, as much as I ever get.

The lift arrives and I gape in shock before stepping in. It is entirely the smallest lift I have ever been in. The only way you would fit more than one person in this lift would be if Kate Moss and Jodie Kidd decided they needed jobs as secretaries. I'm bemused for a second. Because I'm pretty sure the lift is there to make the building accessible, but there's no way on god's green earth that a wheelchair would fit in that.

Anyway, I climb out the lift, which, by the way, smelt, as these things often do, of piss and sweat.

I take a deep breath, plaster on my professional, friendly face and push open the door of the agency.

Whereupon I'm handed the obligatory clipboard with the obligatory folding cardboard form and the obligatory blue biro. I make my way over to the obligatory seating area where various magazines are thoughtfully placed to ease your boredom once you're done with the form filling and waiting for one of the Consultants to see you. I dutifully fill out said obligatory form and hand it back as directed to the receptionist, and then make my way back to the seating area with pile of magazines and choose one. A trashy glossy mag. Great.

I read the thing cover to cover while the consultant I'm waiting to see has discussions with three other people, two who were there before me (one of whom tried the worst flirting I've ever seen in an attempt to be allowed to register) and one who arrived after I did, apparently just off the street. Sans appointment. Hrm.

Finally, she makes her way over to me and we then make our way over to her obligatorily messy desk to have a chat.

As I sat down, she quickly scanned down the details at the top of the card and said "blimey! you're a fast typist" (I was modest, I put down 85wpm). Which I took to be a good sign. We then had the obligatory chat about what I'd done, what sort of person I was, and what sort of working I was looking for, at which point she started looking through her file and pulled out three or four jobs which we agreed she could put me forward for, and then she stopped at one which she said would have been perfect (PA to the Director of Personnel for a charity), only there were interviews taking place that day, right at that moment in fact, and that there had been a long process leading up to that point, including a rather large and thorough application form and vetting process.

After a bit of an inner argument, she picked up the phone and called the company to see if the woman who could make the decision whether to see me or not was actually interviewing the other candidate, and it turned out that she was, and so arrangements were made for my cv and test scores (for the tests I hadn't taken yet) to be faxed over to them, in time for the interview ending, at which point, she would phone to find out if they would see me or not.

In the meantime, I was to take the obligatory tests (typing and word) and go for lunch and phone back at 2:15... and off I was escorted to the computer room, where it was obligatorily bloody freezing. Despite my fingers siezing up, I completed the typing test and the word test and only missed two questions on the word test - both things that are rarely used that I figured out one click too late for the test program.

Finishing just before my fingers turned black and feel off from cold, I lifted my results off the printer to have a look and mentally prepared myself for the results. Hoping that my typing speed with their test wasn't going to embarrass me. Nicely enough, it didn't. I got 82wpm with 100% accuracy which was nice. The word test showed four bars, 2 of which were at 100% and two of which were slightly under (I'm guessing the two questions I got wrong). Relieved, I wandered out into the reception area again to find the consultant.

After standing about a bit because she wasn't at her desk, she came back through and I gave her the tests back, typing on top, word underneath, at which point she did a very gratifying double-take and exclaimed "my god! you really *are* a fast typist. What a STAR!" and we had a laugh about slacking on the intermediate section of the word test and I explained how I hadn't used the particular features for a while and got it just as it moved me on.

So with that out of the way, I agreed to call her at 2:15 and headed off up Oxford Street to meet D. Which I did, and called her back from a sandwich shop where I'd just thrown half a mozzarella panini sandwich down my throat. They had agreed to see me at 3, and so she gave me the details and I headed off down the street towards the address she'd given me, getting more and more impressed with the locale as I went.

It didn't take as long as I thought it would so once more I was about 20 minutes early. So we ambled back and forward a bit before D had to go back to work, and I decided to make a good impression by arriving early.

The woman who was going to be interviewing me came down and gave me a copy of the job and person specification that the other girls had had weeks to study and prepare on, and said she'd be back down in 10 minutes to start the interview.

She came back down accompanied by a colleague and we went through to an interview room where I was thoroughly grilled by both of them for over an hour. Then I was taken upstairs to the department where I was go be given some simple tests. Easy I thought. Type a letter, sort some stuff into alphabetical order. No bother.

Ha.

Ha ha.

Hahahahahaha.

A 6 minute audio typing test (with about two minutes worth of introductory waffling at the start, which if nothing else told me that the guy had a nice clear voice and a bit of a sense of humour, and also reminded me of the first guy I ever worked for), a 25 minute organisational test (with workbook, where I was to pretend I was new in a job and a colleague was off and I had to rewrite my diary for the next two weeks and include all his work and mine), and finally, a 5 minute spelling test (which I finished in about a minute and a half, and surprised the girl who was holding the (I kid you not) stopwatch.

She then thanked me for coming and pointed me in the direction of the stairs, and two hours after I entered the building I left it again, utterly exhausted. I made my way along the road towards the Starbucks I'd spotted on the way there, got money out, phoned D and then went in and ordered a Mango Citrus Tazo frozen tea thing, sat down, and phoned the agency for a debrief.

I then ambled back up the road, balked at the seething mass of humanity collecting round the entrances and exits to Oxford Circus tube station and decided to walk to TCR to get the tube home.

So how did it go?

I'm glad you asked.

I got a phone call today at nearly 6:30pm. I've been asked back, along with one of the two other candidates, for a second interview, ostensibly to meet the guy I would be working for. Which is understandable, because he has to feel comfortable with the person who's going to be his PA, and the way I see it is that if I don't get this job because we don't get on, then it's just as well, because it would have probably been hellish.

So anyway, my appointment is next Wednesday at 2pm.

Wish me luck!

jobness update

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