Interviews

My posting has been scant. Here is something to make up for that:

So I’ve been on the job market for quite some time now trying to save up for some upcoming adventures. I had been thoroughly unsuccessful which was really discouraging for quite some time, until all of a sudden I got a call from Chapters and Future Shop on the same day. So, I set up interviews with both.

I have never really gotten along well with interviews. One of the more traumatic experiences in my life was when I interviewed for Sport Chek and they decided to make it a duel interview. Literally they brought two of us into a tiny room and asked us questions, instructing us that we had to explain why we would be the better hire. For every question you had to quickly think of an answer that was not only original, but had to somehow make the other person look bad. For a seventeen year old, this is scarring. I also was at a complete loss when the other interviewer said that her greatest weakness was perfectionism. Frick! There goes my classic one-liner. In the end we both got hired, and we never became friends while working together because we had both shut the other person down so much in the interview. Way to support “team unity”, jerks.

That anecdote is important because it set the tone for the feeling I experienced when I walked into the interview at Chapters only to see 9 other chairs set up beside mine. My heart stopped and I almost walked out right there. They called it a “Hiring Fair” and proceeded to ask us all questions where we had to show originality and quick thinking. If you were the tenth person answering the question, “Why do you want to work here?” saying “because I love books” for the seventh time is a pretty insufficient answer. Thankfully I was the only English major so at least I had something. All in all it wasn’t as traumatic of an experience as Sport Chek and I walked out feeling decent.

Two days later I had my Future Shop interview. Well, I should back up. In order to get to this interview, first I had to hand in my application. After I did that, I got a call saying that my application had been approved, and I would be participating in a phone interview with the manager. After a fairly awkward 30-minute phone interview with the manager, he informed me I had been approved for a meeting with the general manager. So I went to Future Shop and waited for the general manager.

The interview started off terribly with him accusing me of being an hour late, despite the fact that I insisted he had told me to come in at 5, not 4 (which was true, I promise. I wrote it down in three different places.) But he still didn’t believe me, and continued to reference it throughout the interview, so that wasn’t the best.

He then proceeded to ask me every single question that an interviewer could possibly ever think of. He was incredibly intense and incredibly blunt and would call me out if an answer sounded too cliché or vague.

I was doing all right until he asked me about a conflict that I had experienced in my life that I handled well. I immediately went to my go-to story about a kid who bullied me for many years in school. Finally I just approached the kid and genuinely told him how much I hated it and how I wanted him to stop. (Aside: I’ll be honest, this story is not entirely factual. In actuality, the result was he kind of laughed at me and ran off, but for the sake of the interview, the conversation worked wonders and we never had any issues and we became the best of friends forever and ever… or something like that.) To wrap it up I said, “Yeah, and it’s a good thing the talking thing worked out because otherwise I was going to have to beat him up, and if that didn’t work I was going to have to get my dad to beat up his dad.” We both laughed and he kept asking questions.

This would have been fine if my mind hadn’t gone into immediate panic mode. What if he didn’t realize that was a joke? What if he actually thinks I solve things by beating people up!? What if he actually thinks I get my dad to beat up other dads!?! In my desperate need for clarification, after a couple questions had already passed, I awkwardly spat out, “You know I was just kidding about the whole dad beating up other dads thing, right?”

He just stared.

I blushed. I’ve made a huge mistake.

“Yeah...” he said, “I figured that out.”

Ugh.

It’s hard to recover from that.

So the interview went on. At one point he threw down the questionnaire sheet and announced, “I’m not sold. You’re not selling me. I need you to sell me. You have ten minutes to tell me everything about why you deserve this job and why you think you’re a good person. Go.” So, that was a terrible time.

Then he asked me what it was about Future Shop that attracted me. I told him I was a bit of a gamer and I liked electronics. Big mistake. He asked me what kinds of games I play.

“Well, to be entirely honest, I… I really like the Sims…” Ugh. I've made a huge mistake.

“Oh. Uh, ok. Hmm. K, well Call of Duty just came out, why weren’t you at the midnight release?”

“I’m not really into games like that.”

“All right, then what’s in your playstation right now.”

"..................... Harvest Moon.”

“What’s that?”

“Well… you… you farm.” I hung my head. Seriously Michael!? You can make up an entire story about conflict resolution in high school and you can't think of a cooler game than Harvest Moon?! Never have I regretted calling myself a gamer in all my life.

At one point he also asked me if I could be any animal right now what would it be. My first thought: Haha, what is this camp? So I told him that a past employer had already asked me that and I had said I would be a tiger (Aside: This is also not entirely true. In truth I had said, quote, “a fox, because I’m so foxy,” but I felt like after the gamer incident I really didn’t need to kick myself while I was down. Apparently I lie a lot in interviews, who knew?) His response to my answer of a tiger was, “Tigers are lame. Everyone picks that. What else?” Considering how intense he was, I took the question into careful consideration. He had been so demanding and rude the whole interview so I didn’t want to mess it up. “I guess a horse, because they are known as being both free and really hard workers.” He laughed at me and told me he would be an effing T-rex because they’re awesome and people always take that question way too seriously. Frick.

The questions got even more intense and grueling and the interview went on for an hour and freakin’ forty-five minutes. At one point he declared that everything in the store was not necessary—“we don’t sell a single thing that anyone needs”—and demanded I attempt to sell him something that he didn’t need. It felt gross. At the end of the interview he actually began to sound very optimistic and told me that he actually really really liked me. Go figure! He said he liked me so much that he was going to approve me for an interview with the regional manager.

WHAT.

After a phone call, a 30 minute phone interview, and an hour and forty-five minute grueling interview, I had been approved for another interview!?! SERIOUSLY!?! The man who had spent the last almost two hours psychoanalyzing and intensely critiquing every decision I had ever made in my entire life was awarding me with another interview!?!?! YOU ARE FUTURE SHOP. YOU ARE A STORE IN A SMALL CITY THAT PAYS MINIMUM WAGE!! ARE YOU SERIOUS!?!?!

I hid my thoughts with a smile and left the interview rather frazzled. Over the next couple of days, I got calls back from Chapters and Futureshop. Needless to say, I can now proudly announce:

  

And I can’t wait to start. Because at Chapters, I can sell people knowledge, and I can be a freakin’ horse if I want to, and the people there WON’T MOCK ME FOR PLAYING HARVEST MOON.

Well they probably still would, but at least they’re never going find out.