Post #2

Share a story about a memorable job interview.

Back in 2007, I’d just quit uni because it was causing me to lose the will to live. I was quite happy about this, but I was very aware that I needed to choose something to do with my life, even if it was a temporary job.

Of course, I had no qualifications to speak of, no references, no experience, and no interview technique. Nevertheless, I applied at the library, the one place I could actually see myself working. I’d applied there before for a job that was only four hours a week, and hadn’t got it, but that didn’t deter me.

That was actually a pretty memorable interview in itself, actually. I arrived and was told to wait in the closed cafeteria area, which I did, for 15 minutes, feeling spooked and out of place. When someone finally arrived (late), they took me through the back of the library–which contained more people than I’d ever seen out front–and into a room that was basically empty apart from a row of desks with the interviewers behind it, and a chair facing them … stuck right in the middle of this large, empty room. It was ridiculously intimidating. I didn’t feel too bad, though, as I thought back to my first “job interview” at the age of 8. I’d applied to work at the school bookshop. It was being run by my mother, there is pretty much no way I wouldn’t have got the job, but the headteacher insisted on doing interviews with no less than six teachers, and herself. She was a really, really intimidating woman (great headteacher, though) and it was a horrific experience that has enabled me to cope with most other interviews since then.

Anyway. Back to the actual memorable interview. I really, really, really wanted this job. I didn’t know where else I could work, and I knew I needed to work. There was lots of pressure from my mother, and myself, to get the job. Pressure is, of course, exactly what you need right after a nervous breakdown./sarcasm

My mother walked me from the car to the library. I don’t think she trusted me to actually go to it if I was left to my own devices. I crumbled under the pressure about two seconds after stepping through the door, and collapsed into a full-blown panic attack.

If you’ve never had a panic attack, you might not understand how utterly debilitating they are. You get physical symptoms, like hyperventilation, feeling faint, feeling sick, feeling hot, shaking, crying, and weak legs, but it’s the mental ones that really do for you. It isn’t panic like ‘OH MY GOODNESS I’M GOING TO FAIL THIS TEST WHY DIDN’T I REVISE MORE????!!!!’, it’s more like you know that everything is going to go wrong, that you’re a failure, possibly that the world is out to get you and you need to go crawl into a dark corner and hide because really nothing else will allow you to continue existing.

While having a panic attack, the very last thing you need is someone telling you to pull yourself together and go and do a scary thing like a job interview because you need to or your life will end. That makes the panic attack somewhat worse. That is, of course, what I got. I don’t know how long I stood in the porch area sobbing and feeling like I was going to die, but eventually my mother dragged me into the library proper, sat me on a chair, and then called over someone who worked there to get me a glass of water.

You know what else doesn’t help a panic attack? Having a load of strangers know about it.

So now I was sitting in a public area freaking out, with my mother explaining to someone the situation I was in and how she was worried I’d be late for the interview. So the receptionist person went to fetch the interviewer.

Now if I were an interviewer, you know who I wouldn’t hire? The person who’s applied before and been rejected, then shows up, has a nervous breakdown, and is reintroduced to me while bright red and sobbing into a glass of water, with her mother explaining how nervous she is. I wouldn’t put them through the stress of the interview, let alone hire them. This guy did not think like me.

I don’t know how I managed to calm down at all. Just the memory of this situation makes me go D: and squirm with awkwardness, horror, and quite a bit of anger. I did calm down, though. I wiped my tears and my nose, drank some water, and then followed the interviewer upstairs on legs that would barely carry me because my whole body was shaking. I then did an entire interview with puffy red eyes and a bunged nose, clutching a soggy piece of tissue because there was nothing else to do with it.

Maybe I was totally out of it, but I thought I actually did pretty well answering their questions (except the one about teamwork … I have no idea how to say ‘I love working in teams and this is the role I play!’ without lying, because actually, I hate working in a team, and generally my function ends up being to nag other people to do their jobs). I felt better as the interview progressed. My brain was probably trying to protect me from the horror of what had happened, but also talking about books and stuff always makes me feel alive and perky.

I didn’t get the job, obviously. The interviewers were lovely, but ultimately I can’t have been in the running at all. I’m glad now, as a month or so after I started working where I work now, and I love my job to bits.

That was one of the worst days of my life, and yet it’s actually one of the most positive moments too. I had an actual nervous breakdown, and yet was still strong enough to pull myself together, put it aside, and do ok on an interview. That’s pretty damn strong. If I can do that, I can actually do anything I like. And you know what? I’m going to.

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