Um, wow. Like, totally, wow. Awesome.
Give me a minute while I try and recover some command of the English language will you?
And I am back. Groovy. What is all this about, I can practically hear you mutter from all the way over here. Well, guess where I am going to be on Monday morning?
You’ll never guess (unless you follow me on Twitter, Facebook, or got bombarded by my excited SMS’), so I’ll tell you. I’m going to be working in a publishing house! A proper job, that pays money and has career prospects and everything! Not work experience, a job! Picture me bouncing round Oxford like a Tigger on speed all day, and you’ve got a pretty good visual on how I am right now.
I am considered employable in my career of choice – feel free to insert any and all feather/knocking analogies at your leisure. So it looks like the move to Oxford was the right idea after all (not that I was really in any doubt, I feel very at home here already and it’s not even been a week). The road to the job wasn’t the smoothest in creation but it wasn’t exactly rocky either. It went a little bit as follows:
- Cas toddles up to Oxford for an interview for a job which excites her just from the job description.
- Cas puts in a moderate (she feels) showing, managing at least to refrain from crumpling into a gibbering wreck (she hopes).
- Cas goes back to Southampton and refuses to talk to anyone about the job because she doesn’t want to jinx it.
- Cas gets offered a different job in Cambridge, goes with her gut and says no, keeping fingers crossed on the Oxford lot.
- Cas doesn’t get the exciting Oxford job, but still has nice things said about her in the feedback which at least confirmed she managed to maintain non-gibbering status and gives a nice boost to her confidence for the move to Oxford which is suddenly looming very large on the horizon.
- Cas moves to Oxford, registers with an agency, manages to shoehorn her belongings into a bijou room, keeps applying for anything that stands still long enough (including bar work!) and sets about with Plan B.
- Then the phone goes and it is the people from the Oxford job saying “remember us? Fancy just popping in for an informal chat, no pressure, I’ll tell you what it’s about when you arrive…”
- Cas dusts off the interview suit, reminds herself that all appearances to the contrary she IS a confident, mature 26 year old who is worthy of employment, and walks the five minutes from her bijou house to the offices.
- One large cup of tea, an “informal” interview, a brief conversation about the blog ( :O yes, the chap interviewing had read it!), an a conversation with an HR person later, I get offered the job I interviewed for way back in step 1!!!!
Holy smokes Batman, I got the job. I’ve never been so glad to be second choice in my life!
And… That’s it. I am going to treat myself with a lovely and extortionately priced manicure this afternoon, because the move has completely shredded my cuticles. If anyone can recommend a good, and NOT extortionately priced beauty parlour in Oxford, I would greatly appreciate it. There seem to be a dearth of them, which is mildly inconvenient. Plus none of them seem to do eyebrow threading which is just a big bother.
(If you want to read a related job/internet/interview/blog/private-public ramble, then if you hang on a little bit, it will be posted for your reading pleasure).
hey there, somehow found my way to your blog from pelf via twitter. 🙂
Congratulations on the job!
But how on earth did the interviewer know about your blog? Unless he googled you up or something, personally I would have found it rather uncomfortable if my interviewer wanted to sit down with me to have an informal chat about my blog.
What sorta questions did he ask you though, with regards to your blog?
Firstly, welcome to Bright Meadow and the comments 🙂
I am not sure how he became aware of my blog – it was either mentioned in my previous interview (because I felt it was appropriate), came up because he googled me (and people do do that before interviews) or he had one of the CVs where I mentioned the blog (some jobs it was appropriate for).
It was a little bit odd when he said “hello, I was reading your blog last night”, but I have actually been doing this long enough now that I am used to those sorts of conversations and feel comfortable talking about Bright Meadow as part of my life I am proud of. I made the decision a few years ago not to be anonymous in my blogging, so I am prepared for it.
As for what sort of questions, he mainly used it as a starting point to talk about books, the state of young adult fiction, then ebooks and fun things.
(I am in the process of writing a related post all about this topic, so check back in a few days for a more in depth answer!)
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What, pray is “Eyebrow Threading”? Does it involve beads, and how is it done?
Ever thouht that I am the one that has eyebrows with potential. I will avoid cutting them until I have the answers.
Eyebrow Threading is a way of taming the eyebrows using twisted cotton. I prefer it to waxing as (I think) you get a nicer line with more control over the shape.
But as the options in Oxford seem to be 1) waxing or 2) having hair caterpillars over my eyes, I think I might have to settle for waxing!