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.

Surrealities of life

This is still a couple of months away (so my next few months of Toastmasters will come in very handy) but.... I am going to give a workshop/presentation on how to jobhunt, how to figure out what you want to do as a career after finishing school, how to find that perfect job etc.

Bwahahaha! I cannot stop laughing about this - too weird.

Less cryptic

Okay, I wasn't quite expecting that response to my previous post. Here's an attempt at explaining things more clearly.

In the back of my mind there have always been two careerpaths that I've wanted to pursue, that seemed like the best careers I could want, doing challenging, different and interesting work.

With the new job I'm now at the beginning of one of those two. Yay!

The second one of those is something I've always dreamt about but I have never seen a way of making it happen. It would demand a lot of discipline, a lot of guts, and I suppose I've been lazy or not confident enough in my capabilities - and have decided to pursue the first career actively. For the moment. With (belated) success. It's still in the back of my mind, and I have vague plans of returning to it at some point in the future when life is more settled down. The only way I would be able to start in this before is if a vacancy would come up, a position that would launch me in this career but would also give me an advantage as it would ask for some very specific skills that I definitely have. But clearly this would never happen.

THAT very job has just been advertised.

Ignorance

Some things you are better of not knowing. I really wish I hadn't seen a particular page in this weekend's newspaper.

What do they say? It's better to regret something you did, than something you didn't do?

Looks like we're back to writing a job application letter.... :-/

And another one

Another first experience in the jobhunting-debacle, that is.

I'm getting ready to start an on-line test as a follow-up to a job application that I sent out recently. I have no idea what to expect. Never done assessment or psychological tests yet, and this should supposedly only take an hour or so, so I'm not sure what they are looking to get out of it. I also don't know if all applicants need to do this, or if there has been a first selection already. I'm guessing (and hoping) for the latter, which makes me feel just a bit better about my recent attempts again.

As with phone interviews, which I talked about a while ago, I think there's probably a similar philosophy for these online tests to do from home: don't be lounging on your couch while taking it, don't be dressed in your pyjamas, etc.

So, here I am, awake after coffee and breakfast, dressed, at my desk, (almost) logged out of my various windows, ready to tackle this thing...

*deep breath*