I Applied for 100 jobs (Today 15 Aug)

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I applied for 100 jobs

… and I only landed four, says Venessa Lee
05:55 AM Aug 15, 2009
by Venessa Lee

IT WAS a case of mixed signals when my boss asked me to look for another job.

On the one hand, he told me to apply for 100 jobs. On the other, he said I would be chained to my office desk if I tried to leave.

While it’s always nice to feel wanted, this writing assignment meant that I would have to confront some pointed questions. How many job offers would I get? I enjoy my work at this paper’s Foreign News desk, but newspapers around the world are slashing jobs. If I were one day laid off, and there wasn’t another journalism job going, would I be able to find work in a completely different field?

How employable am I, really?

After all, it’s not as if I have any instantly appreciable skills. I’m not qualified to argue a case in court, or operate a crane, or fix broken bones. Heck, I couldn’t fix a broken zip.

Besides, we are still in a global economic crisis, despite blips of tentative recovery. A similar job hunt in the United States had yielded mortifying results for a writer from Esquire magazine. Would I fare any better in the Singapore marketplace?

With trepidation, I plunged in.

After scanning the classifieds and job websites (JobStreet.com and JobsDB.com), I embarked on a scattershot campaign. I applied for positions in sales, advertising, human resources and education. I also tried my luck with jobs in public relations, marketing, F&B, customer service, tourism and retail.

I sent my CV to the National Heritage Board and to Robinsons. I applied to work at Kinokuniya (“English book department”) and to handle “guest services” at St Regis.

I signalled my hopes of being a researcher, a conference producer and a “boutique associate”. I stated my intention of becoming a headhunter, a secretary and a telemarketer. I asked to be given the chance to sell watches and jewellery, and to man the front desk at a backpackers’ hostel.

With vague fantasies of looking like a make-up counter girl, I applied to be a “beauty adviser and fragrance associate”. I didn’t stand a chance but answered an ad looking for a “PR Coordinator cum Ambassador (ex-cabin crew welcome)”. I applied to be a children’s fitness instructor, and a copywriter for a firm that distributes traditional Chinese medicine.

In hopes of serendipity, I answered ads that said nothing about the job (“executive officer”, “business associate”), and applied for posts with job titles I didn’t understand – “QA Executive” and “Continuous Improvement Specialist” (laudable aim!).

There were some ground rules. I would not deprive someone else of a job by accepting any post I was offered. I also didn’t apply for jobs that asked for a professional degree or technical accreditation I didn’t possess (I have an honours degree in English Literature but no other formal qualifications). I tried to take up as little of a potential employers’ time as possible, never going for more than the standard two rounds of interviews.

I’d updated my skills-based CV, a resume format that is supposedly the best way to highlight Transferable Skills. (It was heartening to discover that “good communication skills” were requested in plenty of job advertisements; journalists communicate, oui?)

In cover letters and face-to-face interviews with prospective employers, I emphasised these Transferable Skills and papered over my lack of relevant experience with a can-do attitude. I would do all it took to learn the ropes and agreed to anything legal they asked. (Nobody seemed to demand very much of me save the occasional “Would I be willing to travel, even though I have a months-old baby?” No problem, ask me another.)

Of course, there was more madness than method. In instances where my Transferable Skills meant nada, I brazened it out. I applied to work at a French restaurant, for example, saying I was “an admirer of French cuisine”.

I also found that I was consistently applying for positions with job titles similar to mine (“assistant spa manager”, “assistant restaurant manager”). Apparently, the illogical hope was that employers might imagine that an assistant foreign editor like me could segue into another industry and carry on assistin’. Quite rightly, this didn’t get me anywhere.

Before I heard from any employers, though, I had to sort out my cover story. Why, after all, was I applying to do something completely unrelated to my job?

I decided to pose as a restless mid-career professional. I told interviewers I was “considering options outside my industry” and sometimes embellished this basic theme.

I claimed that I was trying to decide if I wanted to try something new, or stay in journalism forever. After all, I was already in my 30s, I said, and it might be too late if I left this decision for later. (The pre-feminist sentiments implicit here were regrettable enough. What was even more disturbing was how interviewers took this at face value, and how I myself trotted out this alibi with aplomb.)

THE JOB OFFERS

Within days of applying, I was surprised to receive a flurry of interest but some suitors turned out to be teases. Two recruiters offered to consider me for jobs other than those I’d applied for – I might be more suited to these other posts, they said — but the initial enthusiasm fizzled.

And then I met John, a senior property agent with a leading property firm (all names have been changed to protect the innocent). His job ad was the friendliest I had ever seen, inviting applicants for “a friendly chat over a cup of tea”.

John and I met for coffee. I gave him my spiel about why I was applying to be a real estate agent, but that side of business was swiftly dealt with. He was soon regaling me with stories about the property trade, revealing how he managed to sell flats that had been splattered with loanshark-red paint. He’d once developed a strategy for selling “haunted houses, loanshark houses and suicide houses”, he explained. John also spoke about his “kiasu” use of namecards and advised me not to enter the industry “with a ‘try, try lah’ mentality”.

It was the most diverting afternoon but I was bemused, before it was over, to receive a job offer from John. Hanging out in cafes doesn’t translate into proper work, does it?

Despite my misgivings, I was pleased to get my first job offer, a feeling of expansiveness that increased with my next few interviews.

I’d applied, variously, to be a financial services consultant, a wealth management executive and a relationship manager. When all three firms involved contacted me, I was flummoxed to learn that the work involved selling insurance. (I was later told that insurance agents are more accurately referred to as financial services consultants.)

Two of these companies are famous insurance brands and I was intrigued to discover that their recruitment process involved virtually identical personality tests.

Now, I love personality quizzes. (I’ve been hooked ever since I took a “What Hogwarts house do you belong to?” online quiz and discovered, to my horror, that I was a Hufflepuff.) But I struggled with the insurers’ profiling test.

It comprised clusters of adjectives and I was asked to assess which word in each set described me best, and which was least applicable to me. But was I more “fussy” or more “unconquered”? Was I a “good mixer” or was I “vigorous”? I ended up giving different responses for each quiz. (Some days you just feel more “vigorous” than others.)

In both cases, after finishing the test, I was asked the usual questions like why I was applying and what made me think I could sell financial products. Then, interestingly, they started talking money. My interviewers each showed me a breakdown of how much top-ranked company reps earned (gazillions). At the end of the interview with Insurer A, I was asked: “Do you hunger for success?” Laughing slightly hysterically, I replied in the affirmative.

I was invited for a second round even though Insurer A had given me a negative score for salesmanship, as revealed in my personality profile. (How is it possible to get a negative score, I asked Franklin, the pseudonymous Insurer A rep. “Now you know your weaknesses, you can improve,” he said kindly.)

Both insurers offered me a job, which I declined. “Dennis”, the rep from Insurer B, asked me to consider working part-time instead. I refused and he then asked if I wanted to buy any insurance — I was charmed.

I now had three job offers but my suspicions had grown. Why would prospective employers make what felt like a sales pitch to an interviewee? Property agent John had also mentioned million-dollar sums.

I realised that the magic word was Commission, the engine of the property and insurance industries. While I may well have been employable on my own merits, perhaps this was secondary. Real estate and insurance agents work on commission and if most employees, including new recruits, don’t need to be paid a basic salary, wouldn’t it make sense for firms to employ as many agents as possible?

There were other flickers of interest. I was invited to what turned out to be a job-seekers’ cattle call at a third firm, where my jacket-and-pumps outfit was eclipsed by someone sporting boobs-and-boots. (Cleavage at an interview: you go, girl!) This firm sold insurance as part of its range of financial planning services. A group of eight of us were given a presentation and interviewed separately.

The presentation included demographical fun facts, about civil servants, for instance. “They like to write will, they like to save money,” a company executive claimed. It was a definite-maybe as I was asked to sign up for an external financial exam, before being considered further.

A firm that organises conferences also seemed keen. I was asked to prepare a brief outlining how I would organise a conference for the pharmaceutical industry. But when a Google search threw up words like “life-cycle management”, “co-crystallization” and “Fc receptors”, I told the HR lady I couldn’t go on.

Finally, a company that sold toilet products and fittings called me. (I was impressed, skimming their catalogue, to learn that they sold toilets with flushing systems that used sea water.) I’d applied to be their Export Manager and we discussed weighty issues like how I lacked the basic skills for the job. My interviewer also said women tended to have a second child quite soon after their first (I recently had my first child), and that maternity leave represented “a disturbance in the workplace”. Somehow, I must have convinced him of my sincerity and my (really) Transferable Skills, as I was invited for a second interview.

To my surprise, I was asked to consider another role and offered the post of a Branding Manager. The work was challenging and the pay — I would have to take an entirely reasonable pay cut — was fine; I declined with some reluctance.

This then was the cold, hard truth. I’d applied for a hundred jobs and got four job offers, notwithstanding several expressions of interest and two could-have-been offers. I’d been worried about appearing a smug middle-class prat who was pretending to look for employment while others were out of work. But I now know that I’m not that employable anyway. And if I were made redundant, it remains to be seen whether I have the gumption to work my heart out in a job that was far from ideal.

URL http://www.todayonline.com/Singapore/EDC090815-0000033/I-applied-for-100-jobs