The Journey to My First Job

Thomas Edison has been cited as having said that,

“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work”.
I could perhaps equally say that in a busy city like Pune, opportunity is a 45-minute commute away. Having taken a bus route on which the service had been reduced, I arrived at my first real job interview. The place was unfamiliar, the environment was fast paced, the staff appeared a well-oiled machine, and the combination was daunting.

My resume suddenly seemed paltry. Years of College level volunteer work and being the coordinator of various student clubs paled in the face of work with people I didn’t know. I alerted the staff to my presence and waited, nervous and a little afraid for the manager. His humour helped set me at ease a little, but ultimately, it aroused yet another fear I hadn’t been aware of: that I wouldn’t be able to respond in time, let alone correctly to the questions he asked.

The truth about the job hunt is that it is hard. I had been fortunate, only out of work about two months before I landed this interview. Little did I know that many of my unsuccessful attempts, explained to me after I was hired at my current job, were rejecting me based on my idealistic availability. Thinking that employers everywhere would be sympathetic to my hectic student’s schedule, I applied with availability for times I wanted to work, not times I could. Lesson number one I suppose.

Lesson number two was that research skills pay off. Much to my delight, the research skills acquired in the previous months of both high school and the beginning of my Engineering degree served me well. I knew basic interview questions, having done a paltry Google search, but I also knew background information on the neighbourhood I was applying to work in and the company I was hoping to work for.

Lesson three was another one gained at college: the value of network. My initial reference for the interview was someone very close to me who utilized their work connections to find out about out of the way places that were hiring. Admitting unemployment, though often deemed shameful in contemporary society, was one of my greatest assets in finding it anew.

The final lesson, and one I only realized the value of months afterwards, was honesty. Cliché though it may sound to say that one must always be themselves in an interview, the reality is that we often pander to authority and to pre-formed notions of who we should be or need to be for a prospective employer. A few times in my interview I needed time to collect an answer, or truthfully, didn’t agree with the stereotypically correct response. I answered honestly. I didn’t lie or edit. It was scary.
We often think that the job hunt is about finding somewhere to grind out your 9-to-6. A part-time job is just somewhere to pay your dues before you hit the big leagues. But the job hunt can also be a time of self-exploration, for the student and the adult alike. Maybe you become an adult looking for a job. Maybe you find out that you don’t like deadlines, require a certain ethical code of your employers, or are more interesting than you think.

You are interesting enough for that callback. You are driven enough to meet the deadline, grown-up enough to balance work and school, strong enough to turn down or walk away from a job that doesn’t respect what you do.If all of that’s the case, then someone, somewhere will notice, and just like me, you’ll get a call that makes your day. Someone will say, “Congratulations! You’re hired! And we’re so glad to have you.”