Sunday, 30 October 2011

• Dating and Interviewing (or, My Life Since College)

  
  Early in the summer, I read a book about 'finding, landing and keeping your first real job.' The chapter on interviewing compared the process to dating. Both supposedly have various components, including a - strangely enough - pheromonal one. (Luckily, I've never had a potential employer sniff me. Dates are another story, unfortunately). Dating and interviewing are two things I've done pretty often over the past three months, and recently, I've had better first dates, and more second ones. And for the first time today, I got a second interview for a real job - full-time, and with a salary that I could actually live on. So I'm hoping there's something to the comparison, and maybe I'll end up with both a job and a boyfriend. 

  My experiences with both interviewing and dating are patchy and strange. For my first job I stayed at longer than a month, the interview consisted of me rolling into the office in jeans, saying hi to my future boss, and filling out a W-4. It ended up being a great job, where I learned a lot for only being a work-study student, and was always treated with kindness and respect. I'd had a few short periods of employment before that, where I was often mistreated, but still had never gone on a real interview for any of them. At the end of my first school year working, I had an interview for a summer job on campus. I had no idea what to wear or what they would say, and it was terrible. But I've pretty much blocked the experience from my memory.

  That was my last interview until this July, about a month and a half after I graduated. I thought it went well, but I never even got a rejection phone call or letter. But I was one of only five interviewed out of more than 100 applicants. Close, but no cigar. Which I guess has been my experience with a lot of guys, too. One date that seemed amazing, but no second date, and sometimes not even a follow-up text.

  When I first started going on dates, it was kind of like that awkward summer job interview. I didn't know what to wear or what the guy would possibly say or how I should respond. I'd get super nervous beforehand. But this summer, the tide suddenly changed. I pick out an effortlessly stylish and sexy outfit usually in less than a half hour. I don't get butterflies in my stomach or get flustered about the standard questions they usually ask about what I do in my spare time and what I want to do with my life.
  

  I'm the same with interviews now, too. After going on a few more this summer, I'm able to easily pick out a professional outfit and walk in without having rehearsed my answers to the standard bullshit questions about times I've been in difficult situations and what my best and worst qualities are.

  I think my approach has altered from a fatalistic one - If this guy doesn't like me, who ever will?; If they don't offer me this job, how will I ever find one? - to a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants one. And consequently, I was offered jobs from the last two interviews I went on, and have a third date and second date both lined up within the next week, along with the second interview.

  This was probably the worst summer of my life. But I have a lot of hope for this fall. Without those bad dates and bad interviews, the thrill of when it works out wouldn't be so, well, thrilling. Like John Steinbeck said, "Don't worry about losing. If it's right, it happens. The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away." What are they looking for, anyway? What's so wrong with me? Nothing. A better fit will come along. And when it does, whether it's a job or boyfriend or both, none of the related disappointments of the past will matter any more. All the rest, the nervousness and embarrassment and disappointment, were just practice for the real thing.

  Have you ever thought about the similarities between job interviews and dates?
  

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