Journey to Self-Awareness: The Darkest Job Interview Moment and What Can You Do To Come Out of It as Survivor

Found on: Tenor.

Hello Readers! 

It is almost Friday! Are you excited about the weekend or are you lucky enough not to be concerned with days of the week? Is time something very solid and measurable or fluid and subjective for you? 

Yesterday I experienced something mildly traumatising. Something that I would prefer not to analyse, but rather to forget about, to throw into the dark depths of my mind, instead distracting myself with chocolate and TV series. But, as it is usually the case, I believe this is precisely the reason why I should write about it. After all, it is important to speak of these moments too. 

Found on: Red Wing Public Library website

Story time...

It was a sunny Wednesday afternoon. I was browsing through my usal pre-interview notes, drinking green tea and listening to some indie rock music. I knew that I had a call scheduled with my recruiter which I assumed (based on previous experiences) would be rather informal and introductory. I was ready to speak about my experience and expectations, listen to the details of the position and ask for advice. Meanwhile, the whole thing went just so wrong. 

First, it turned out the recruiter was calling my Whatsapp account which, inconveniently, my phone decided to block due to the lack of storage. When I apologised about the whole Whatsapp mishap, the recruiter lady invited me to join an online call instead, which I hastily did. What I wasn't prepared for was my camera turning on, showcasing me in my old jumper and gym pants, with no make up, all to the eyes and ears of not only my recruiter but also senior employees of the agency I was interviewing for. 

This completely distracted me. I felt exposed. I felt trapped like an animal in a cage. My mind was a blank canvas on which I started painting some kind of an abstract art piece with my very chaotic words. One moment I was following my previous jobs in chronological order, the second I was trying to crack a very bad joke, then all of a sudden I would get out of breath only to start speaking about my blog in a very Polish accent the second later... I stuttered and mispronounced at least two words. A minute into the interview I had this overwhelming sense of an absolute defeat. I just wanted it to be over but I had to go on for the sake of preserving my remaining dignity. My good first impression was forever lost. I knew it. I was sure they know it as well. In fact the recruiter lady just kept repeating "cool" in a rather monotonous voice after each one of my answers while the others stayed silent (possibly too shocked by my lack of professionalism to say anything). 

Of course, all of this can be just my imagination. Sure, I wasn't good. But maybe I wasn't distinctively bad. Then I remember how I ended each one of my responses with a nervous giggle or the moment I actually apologised for myself, mentioning that I wasn't expecting a video call interview. I remember how after all was done I just closed my laptop, laid on the bed and felt completely frozen. Then I texted some of my friends and my family chat, basically quoting Kurtz's character's final "The horror! The horror!" sinister whisper from Heart of Darkness. Then I borrowed my boyfriend's tape and covered the camera on my laptop to ease my suddenly developed anxiety about somehow still being under surveillance. 

Found on: Firstpost

My wise boyfriend told me I should release this negative energy because otherwise it will become more rooted in my mind. His advice was, as usually, gym and meditation. And while I have nothing against the good old treadmill (I do go to gym 3 times a week), I somehow doubt whether it would help me work through whatever subconscious thoughts and beliefs may be forming in my head. I also doubt whether spending half of an hour focusing on my breath will help me gain valuable insight from this experience. So, even though I recognise that he is right about releasing negative energy, I am just too stubborn and set on finding my own way to deal with this.

And my way is automatic writing. You start in one spot only to end up reaching some kind of unexpected conclusions. You may believe that whatever you write must have already crossed your head. But you know, for me writing in itself is a form of meditation or a state of flow. You can only focus on one stream of thought when it comes to writing. You have to direct your attention towards that specific current. In my opinion, it also resembles going to an actual psychotherapist. You sit down in a chair (like I do, behind a desk, right now), you start speaking about your experience and give yourself subtle nudges or ask yourself some questions in order to eventually gain enlightenment. 

Kung Fu Panda 

So, here comes my enlightenment. 

Yin Yang Panda by wuuge on DeviantArt

1. Once again, I will quote my own words and say: 

"Just because you haven't done something the way you planned the first time, it doesn't mean the whole thing is destined to be a failure." 

Let me also paraphrase it: 

"Just because you failed at something, doesn't mean you are meant to keep failing it. It also doesn't mean it was a failure in the first place."

Because what decides over whether this situation was my personal failure? Or who? It can be me, it can be them. One is in my control and one is not.

2. You can account for your own thoughts but not for the ones belonging to the others. For what I know, I may be creating a distorted assumption over how I was perceived. In fact, they may not have been thinking about my performance at all, simply putting a tick or a cross next to my name on a piece of paper. There is no point in taking it personally or making it into something more than it is. 

Moreover, if I make a mistake of seeing myself as a reflection of how other people may perceive me, I am not staying truthful to myself. I do not properly see myself. And here, I choose to stand on my side. 

If a devil can have advocate, so can I.  

3. One other thing I said before was that: 

"Failure exists only as a response to expectation and expectation is subjective in its nature. It is a reaction to a certain need or hope that demands fulfilment." 

In this case, the reason why I felt like I failed was because I had a certain expectation of who I am as a person and how I should perform, even under stress. I wanted to be perceived as a strong driven woman. My stumbling, my old jumper, my lack of make-up but an excess of nervous giggles, altogether made me feel quite the opposite of what I wanted to project to the world as a "truth" about myself. Which doesn't mean that I am only this or that. In this situation, I was this. But in many others, I am that. And both of these sides are the "true" parts of me, not to be rejected or shamed, but fully accepted, with no added judgement. 

4. The reality of the situation and the interpretation that I am assigning to it are two different things. 

The reality is simply that I was under false assumption that the call would be casual and so I didn't prepare mentally for an actual interview which - in turn - made me come across as unprofessional and nervous. 

Now, the meaning or interpretation I assign to this particular event can determine the kind of beliefs that will form in my mind over time. 

So, if I decide that this experience means I am just pathetic, this is how I will start to perceive myself even in situations in which I am not. If I decide this experience meant I wasn't prepared enough or I wasn't good enough, it will make me approach everything with much more tension and possibly make me develop self-esteem issues. This is not what I want. Perhaps, just like what happened with Whatsapp, all of this was just a mishap. I was prepared but I got stressed out and my mind was blank. It is not my fault I did not think of such possibility. I could but I haven't. It is also not necessarily the fault of my recruiter for not properly preparing me for what will come.  

5. (This one is potentially debatable). 

The right thing will feel right - which is not to say easy. 

While having my spontaneous interview call, my main concern has been for how I will appear to the world. It wasn't about the job itself. It may be easy to simply think "oh well, I wasn't that interested in this role anyway" to make the pain of a bad experience go away. But in my case, I do actually question my passion. 

I wasn't the one who applied for the role. It was the recruiter who contacted me. In fact, now that I analyse this in my mind, I don't think I believed in that I have big chances for it whatsoever, from the very start. A mistake perhaps. I felt like I know the kind of thinking these people would have and didn't see how I could jump up from my experience two levels up, without any personal projects on side to back this up. I have been skeptical. And while they are job offers that make me open my eyes more widely and say "wow, this would be cool", this one wasn't in this category. It was in a category of "potentially". 

Sometimes I wonder whether the universe doesn't create certain situations for us. Or if you don't believe in any cosmic forces, perhaps we ourselves subconsciously create such situations to force change or reflection over certain aspects of our lives. It may be procrastination, it may be "bad luck"... Or it may be a call to action. 

One other of such "unsuccessful moments" actually made me realise what I want and what I don't want to do. Namely, after two different stages of interview, I received an email saying that while I am "spot on" and "a great fit", my lack of knowledge of one software meant that I didn't get it. (Gosh, now I certainly will sound sad to you all, won't I? :D) But the truth is, after I got that email, I felt incredibly relieved. The only reason I applied for that role was because of my previous experience in the same type of role and the fact that the rest of my previous team moved there. I thought it was pretty certain that I would get such role. I spend the days before the final verdict with a sense of an upcoming doom. But when I didn't get it, I suddenly felt a wave of hope and motivation. 

Even before, when I was working in the same role for a different company, I felt unhappy. Not because of the company itself - the people there were absolutely great. But that specific role didn't demand much creativity or responsibility. With time it made me feel numb and as if I was taking a sudden step back. I wasn't progressing. I felt trapped and hopeless because a path I could see in front of me wasn't one I wanted to be taking. I felt my flame of passion for life getting smaller and smaller till it was just smouldering. I spoke about it to my family but all I could hear was that this is simply how life works, that in reality nobody likes their work and I have to learn how to deal with it. I thought I was condemned to follow this route. That there was nothing I could do about it because it takes incredible strength of character to cut oneself from it and I was sure I don't have that kind of unique strength. 

That's why, after getting the news, a part of me felt like I should feel upset. I felt guilty that I was relieved. Once again I proved I have difficulty when it comes to dealing with reality. But more than that, I felt like perhaps I am not cursed after all and that the sea of potential is still in front of me. All I need to do is to dive in it. 

Financial stability is important. But there are other external factors which often cloud our decision making process. Job is something that takes up a considerable amount of our time. Of course, everybody wants to be happy in it but not everybody knows how. Not everybody asks themselves questions about what exactly would make them happy or what motivates them in life. Not everybody accepts the risk. Not everybody is comfortable with rejection or hardship. Not everybody is comfortable with the necessity to constantly take action. 

6. You do not need to justify your life or yourself.

I will end up with this little gem. It proves to be truthful in relation to not only the career but also the other areas of our human existence. Personally, I often feel like I need to justify myself to others. Why do I work here and here? Why do I do that and that? Why did I finish such and such degree? Why am I like this or that? 

Partially, I think the socialisation process is the culprit. It sets expectations and announces what about us is acceptable and what is not. It makes us feel like all we do needs to somehow fit a wider picture, a plan or a role. That's because people tend to organise everything. Chaos can be confusing, especially if it is on a big scale. And a person feels limited to choices that has already been tested and catalogued before. But there is this one story that I like. It is not even so much of a story, it's just: There has been a person who liked food and travelling, as many of us do. Nobody believed that with such interests it would be possible to find a specific job linking the two together in a coherent way. But this has been before food journalism has became a huge thing. 

So don't feel the pressure to justify your actions. You are fine the way you are. Be yourself and it will bring you closer to the source of happiness. That's what I believe in anyway. 

Till the next time,

- A.

This post has been brought to you by pandas ❤️