ria_oaks | Entries tagged with job search

( This got long )

Also, I need to finish filling out my Fandom March Madness office pool brackets. Oh decisions. Buffy kept winning the damned rounds, and suddenly it was turning into a replay of last year. Which I can't imagine will actually happen, so maybe she'll get voted out early to prevent her winning twice in a row... I can't decide where to kick her out, though. Possibly against Dean, but I suspect people may vote him out, too, because he won once. So I don't know. Got until tomorrow, anyway, to re-evaluate. And stop obsessing over something stupid. XD

Current Mood: excited

Eh frak, I didn't get the job I interviewed for on Friday... at least she got back to me quickly; originally she'd said she'd call me on Wednesday. They decided to go for someone who has more experience, which I totally understand, but wah. :( On the plus side, I have a couple of other leads right now so we'll see... maybe it's for the best; cruising isn't really my preferred area of the travel industry. But hell, it would have been perfectly fine as an entry job!

Current Mood: disappointed

YAY I have an interview tomorrow! *hyperventilates* Here's hoping it goes better than the last one. o.o It's for a 'customer care specialist' position at a cruise selling company. Cruising may not be my #1 interest, but hell, it'd be fine right now! And hey, I like cruising well enough... I certainly enjoyed the Browncoat Cruise 3 years ago. Anyway, I think it may be more suited to me because it's not sales (though I'd be helping with overflow sales calls, which is fine and would give me some sales experience) and is instead the customer service/documentation/etc after. Course, that's also dealing with all the shit that has gone wrong, but... I shall deal. :) It's all good experience. Plus they're right downtown in a very convenient location.

Anyway, fingers crossed! Eeek. She sounded nice on the phone, anyway, and another bonus is that my teacher at the tourism college referred me to her. Hopefully she stressed how amazing of a student I was, lol. Hey, I did get by far the highest marks in the class... not to brag. ;) (not that any of it was particularly difficult, frankly - it was a nice change of pace from uni).

Current Mood: excited

Updates! Meant to do this days ago.... I sent off the long job questionnaire on Monday (took me most of the weekend!), and had a telephone interview this morning. Just got off the phone and am full of adrenaline, heh. It was really quite painless in the end - much less nerve-wracking than the lead up, as usual. Basically she pretended to be a client and asked me questions about the tour. I had thought up until 1 hour prior to the interview that I had read everything I needed to and was fully prepared, then I happened to look at her email again and found a 29-page document attached to it, full of tour details. EEEK. So, cue one hour of frantic reading, highlighting, and note-taking (fortunately a lot of it was just lists of train schedules/hotels/etc). I even typed up a super-quick table of contents so I could refer quickly to the right page. ^^ Ended up using barely any of it... but thank god I did it anyway, because I know I used some of the info from there that I had memorized, and I did refer to it once or twice.

Anyway. It's over, yay! *collapses* And I have a proper interview on Tuesday, so that's good. 1.5 hours (including a computer test) and the head of the company will be there too. o.o Yikes. But yay! I know I don't really have the experience for this job, but hopefully they'll be willing to take me on and train me anyway. I'm (mostly) sure that I can do it. ^^

Right now, I need to decompress... then try to get some other stuff done today, like applying to another job I've been intending to apply for, and maybe doing a bit of studying for the big freaking exam I'm taking at the start of March that I still have a ton left to read for. I kind of want to, like, go outside and run around to get rid of excess energy, heh. But it's icky and slushy out there. If it's gonna snow, couldn't it do so properly and then NOT rain the next morning?? Typical Vancouver.

Current Mood: relieved

Huh. So, evidently I'm going out with a guy tomorrow who I knew from my art history trip to Italy back in 2006. He messaged me on Facebook and asked if I wanted to go grab coffee. ^^ I figure sure, why not, it's been nearly 5 years and it'd be neat to see him again. We can reminisce over fond memories of Italy. ^^ We also, heh, have a bit of a 'history' (it was Italy after all...) so that could be interesting and/or awkward. But whatever, I'm not doing anything else tomorrow, barring getting called by the temp agencies. Was woken up this morning at 7:30 getting called in for a 4-hour assignement doing reception at HSBC downtown, where I did several monthes worth of horridly dull and depressing temp work last year. But on the plus side, a. it was very very quiet so I basically just hung out, studied a bit, and doodled, and b. I got an email from a job I applied to with a looong questionaire to fill out by Monday to get to the next interview stage. So yay? It's a lot of work, frankly, and includes research and writing mock email responses/newsletter posts/god knows what else, but hopefully it's a good sign... and I'm better with writing anyway so hopefully I can impress them. :)

...Course, now most of tomorrow is shot because I'm meeting this guy at lunch then going to get my passport which will... take awhile. -_- So I better get some work done on it tonight. ^^ It's going to take awhile... but fingers crossed! Must see it as a fun and exciting challenge, lol.

I HAVE AN INTERVIEW! WOOOO!

It's been a month since I had an interview! Well, except for the informational interview I had with someone at Tourism Vancouver, who is a friend of my former colleague and who agreed to talk to me about the company and future opportunities. But I haven't had a proper job interview since that job I wanted so much last month. So yaaaaaay! And here's irony for you... I was supposed to go to Seattle this week with mom, but I discovered my passport was missing while I was in the middle of booking it on Saturday night, so we can't go (not enough time to get a new passport). Which sucked, but then today I get an email asking for an interview on Wednesday and I would have been in Seattle if that trip had worked out. So. Silver lining, much? I swear, this happened to me last time a vacation got cancelled - back in August when I hurt my foot and couldn't go on that hiking trip, I ended up getting last-minute work from my publisher that took one week and made me as much money as I'd make in one month at, say, the job I'm applying to now... ^^;

Anyway, it's for a 'product assistant' position at a small company (which is actually located a block from my travel school, as it turns out) that sells 'ski and sun destinations' (namely a few BC and USA ski locations, and a few islands near the Caribbean). They only sell 6-7 destinations, so that's nice.. less to learn. o.o I wouldn't be doing reservations anyway, except for supporting the reservations team sometimes. Evidently I'd be doing 'competitive analysis' (seeing what products the competition has), and various data entry/other admin stuff. So yeah, fairly entry level (and low paying), but wtf ever I don't care. It's actually perfect for me, because it'd give me a chance to learn and work my way up...

Current Mood: excited

Stupid mistake of the day: I mailed a hardcopy prospecting letter to Gap Adventures about two hours ago, which I SWEAR to god I'd proofread multiple times, and I just looked at it and realized that I'd written the following line: "I have attached my resume as an MS Word document." *headdesk multiple times* Jesus. This is what I get for modifying a letter that I usually send by email into a real, mailed letter... so stupid. -_- Hopefully they just won't really notice?? I mean, my resume is attached... behind the letter. And it was, technically speaking, written in Word. -_- Um yeah.

Anyway. Just needed to share that. ^^ Dammit, I really want to work for them, to... though admittedly, the chances of them actually needing someone right now and calling me is fairly low anyway. Still. That probably didn't help. Heh.

Current Mood: embarrassed

And the rally starts! Ahh, still kinda wish I was there, but otoh... not crazy about big crowds and standing for hours. I like being able to watch it in the comfort of my own home and read people's thoughts online. :) The Comedy Central live stream is fantastic quality and YAY for it being available in Canada!

Gonna have to miss the end because I have my first swimming lesson at 12 (yeah, decided to take swimming lessons... I need some way to exercise that's low impact because my foot still bothers me a bit from that stress fracture I got in August, and also I kinda suck at swimming properly). But hopefully it'll be online to download after. I'm sure it will be, so I can watch the last half hour or so.

I wish they'd do a full pan-over of the crowd to see how big it is; but it looks pretty damned big.

In non-rally related news I have some good news that I totally forgot to mention the other day. I have an interview next Thursday! For an internship position at a small tour company that my teacher recommended I apply to. Internship's not ideal compared to full employment, but I can survive on the money I made this summer until the new year so it'd be okay for a short time. Hopefully it'll pay something! And at least it'd be a great opportunity to get my foot in the door and see how an actual travel company operates. They're very small and youth-oriented (backpacking trips to a few more 'exotic' locations like Bali and Thailand for 18-30 year olds), which appeals to me more than some big travel agency. Anyway, wish me luck. :)

Also, Halloween party with Vancouver sci-fi groups tonight! Woo! Going with

cerulean_pulsar and

jedinic, just sticking with my boring old Harry Potter costume most likely (but might go Slytherin this year...), but it should be fun!