A revelation

During the time I was jobhunting I got my hands on a lot of tips and suggestions on how to do good interviews. Good bodylanguage, ask questions, be confident, etc etc.

Not until this week did I realize how much of a difference it really makes. Over the past 1,5 weeks I've been doing interviews for a vacancy at our department with my manager. Very fun, but very weird to suddenly be on the other side.

And although I've always taken in the advice I've gotten and tried to keep it in mind and act on it as much as possible during interviews, it wasn't until I could see these tips and tricks from the other side that I could really understand the difference.

# Sitting crossarmed in a corner not moving is not the way to show you really are motivated for the job.
# No one asked questions at the end - I thought that was compulsory? I couldn't believe it.
# Only one person really came across as very confident, well prepared, knowing what he wants and so on. He's definitely through to the next round.

Interesting (and fun!) to do though... and I have lots more inspiration for the workshop I'm hosting in April.

Becoming famous?

Remember my post on the internet video?

It's been in the magazine for about two weeks now and slowly people are starting to react on it.

I've had comments from co-workers, a random email from someone unknown who's in a closely-related organization, my old boss, friends, a client I have spoken to on the phone a few times, etc.

See, I'm slowly becoming famous!

Video fame

I always feel weird seeing myself back on film - the voice is odd, the person on the screen doesn't look like me [or, at least not like the 'me' I think I am] etc.

I just watched back an interview I did in May. A simulated job interview for a national career magazine - for them it's to fill up pages in their magazine, for me it was purely to get feedback on how I interview and to use that to improve my interview skills.

So weird. Although, it didn't feel as weird seeing it now as I had expected, but still... not sure what to think at all!

On the good side, this was one of the meetings in late spring that finally pushed me into trying out new things and realizing more what I needed to do. And I have the job I want now. So it definitely wasn't bad.

And now it's up on the web and in print for the whole country to see. Yikes.

Changes

In preparation of the upcoming interview I've been looking through the first couple of months of this blog. That might sound strange but the interview is actually for an organisation that I did some work for while I was in Tokyo (which is really when I started writing here).

And as I started this blog off thinking of making it fairly intelligent, without the random touristy and weekend stories, I was looking to find more details on what I had done for them - my memory already seems to be worsening!

That lead to two observations:
* the attempt of

making it fairly intelligent, without the random touristy and weekend stories,

hasn't worked. So, I didn't find anything useful.

* I think I actually write much better now than I did back then. Some of the posts are just painful to read. Ouch.

A long five days

So, I have a new job interview scheduled. Finally! It's been months. And it actually sounds as if I have all the qualifications which probably is a first....

But... the consequence of all these meetings over the past few months is that I'm already freaking out about it. And mostly about: What To Wear.

I seem to have lost all objectiveness on my own wardrobe (if that were possible to have) and am completely confused about what looks good on me, what an appropriate outfit is to interview in, what colours I should wear to give off the impression that I want etc etc.

Gah!! This is gonna be a loooong five days until the interview. I'm calling in some people to help out I think.

As expected..

... I kind of knew that just earning money wouldn't be too much of a problem, and as it turns out, I guess it really won't be.

I have an interview for a new temp gig on Monday already! Gah!

I'm not sure if I'm happy about this though. I've told them that I definitely don't want to start working at anything before mid-April, and this is actually for more hours than I'd like but the organisation could be pretty interesting, the work sounds okay, and it could be a way to get into a bigger organisation. But still, this is much sooner than I want to think about this!

But first, time for the weekend. Wheee.