My first permanent jobs interview

Today was the first day in my whole life that I went for job interviews for permanent job. And quite a traumatic experience it was.

Firstly, I was kept waiting for one or two hours. That was still alright even though I was a bit peeved. But the unhappy part came when this senior manager came and talk to me and cut me down to size.

Before that, I was handling the interviews quite well with the people interviewing me quite impressed and one even making a remark that I was quite matured.

Until the last one where this lady came along and stunned me by asking me what my career goal and objective was and where I saw my self in my career in 3 times.

Which really stunned me because I had not thought of it. So I gave a very honest answer because I could see that this job required a lot of things and I did not want to smoke my way through, get the job and regret it later.

Like Zhimin, to be very honest, I am not a very ambitious person. To us, getting a job is just to support our family, we are not really that career-oriented and I said as much. The lady obviously though otherwise and she gave me a very condescending look as if I had done something wrong.

I was quite demoralised after that but upone further analysis, I realised the fauly lay with her and not me. First of all, I could see that she is a very competitive person, someone who probably know what she wants in life and will work towards getting it. Obviously a product-driven person. And of course she abhors people who do not share her view.

I can only say that my view of life really differs from her. I am someone who is less product-driven although I always feel that it is good to set goals and objectives to work towards to. I also if possible, try to make the process a good one. My personal belief is also that there are some things not within our control and there is only so much you can do.

In the end, for me, I just pity her because she is so product-driven that if something were to happen to her, people probably would not care that much for her because she neglected the process.

Before today, I actually already had a bad impression of the company already and to me, I only went for the interviews to gain more experience and to me, it was indeed a good learning experience because I learnt more about the labour market and learnt to set career goals and objectives for myself.

So all in all, it was not a day wasted although for me it is back to the drawing board and I really wonder whether I have to take up this job offer in the end. It seems really quite hard to get the kind of job that I want as the industry is very small and dependent on the pulling of strings which I really don't want to do yet at this point of time.

Andrew was looking through my resume and told me it was impressive, something to be glad about, I guess. The only thing I lack is results which when you think about it is only one line or two lines in your resume, I guess is not that important. I guess the more important thing is the skills-set which you bring to the job which to be very honest, for me, is not that good either because I don't have any additional skills nor am I very specialised.

Well, no point regretting it now, if I really cannot find the job that I want, I shall think about upgrading myself.