Today I'll share with you my experience with the Bout of Books Read-a-Thon and how my reading went this week. First of all, I've got to admit, that I didn't read as much as I wanted to. - I wanted to finish The High Lord by Trudi Canavan the day before Bout of Books started. That didn't happen. So I read the last 250 pages I had left on day one. (Review >>) Also I wanted to read the whole The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J. R. R. Tolkien, but I only read halfway through book one.
This was about the most unsuccessful week of reading I ever had this year. But I have a quite fun and pretty odd story to tell you:
Wednesday afternoon a "friend" (let's call her Simone) suddenly called me and said: "Hey, Jenny. My boss just told me, that they are still hiring and I was thinking of you." Since I am looking for a mini-job for my holiday I was instantly accepting the offer. So she then told me, that I had kind of a job interview the next day and that I shouldn't be nervous at all. She still hadn't told me, what this job was about. I kept asking her, but she kept saying that her boss could explain it better than her tomorrow. After a while she also told me the job had something to do with consultation, expertise, team management and personal recruiting. Since the job should be at a huge life insurance company I wasn't thinking about that being a little bit odd for a student job.
So I went there the next day, expecting something like a secretary job. And here it started getting strange: I arrived at the building Simone told me and she came to pick me up. We took the elevator upstairs and arrived at the "office". So fist of all, this "office" wasn't an office at all. The first thing I thought was, that I felt like being in our sitting room at Uni, where we chill between our courses. Simone's boss was lying on one of these black leather lounge chairs, visibly chilling and doing nothing. This guy wasn't older that 25! - And in my opinion he was too good looking.
When he recognized me and Simone, he stood up, we shook hand and he introduced himself with his first name. - Let's call him David. - So we then went to his office and sat down at some kind of conference table. Simone was sitting next to him. I don't have much experience with job interviews or anything like that, but I don't think that an employee, especially a new employee, is sitting next to her boss while he is leading a job interview.
David starts talking about the company and is explaining to me, what the company is doing. Still, I was overlooking all the odd things that happened before the interview because this guy giving me the feeling he knew what he was doing. He kept asking me every once in a while, if I had any questions and since I thought he was explaining anything pretty well, I didn't had any.
And now the real oddness begins: David now starts talking about what this department is doing that I'm applying to. - The thing is, that he didn't tell me at all what my job would be. I asked him about three times, but he always wiggled around my question and told me nothing.
Then he told me how much I would earn in what "stage" of my job: The sum of money he offered me was too high for a student in her second/third semester with no work experience at all! I'm still under age and I still get child allowance money. So I told him, that I could only earn 450€/month to still get my child allowance money. David said, that this would totally be fine, but in the next sentence he is kind of telling me that I could drop some insurances (which are an obligation in Germany when you work for someone and earn more that 450€/month) and still get my child allowance money even if I earn a lot more than the normal mini-jobber. - The only possibility to get around all of that in Germany is to register yourself as self-employed.
So now I was kind of alerted since David wasn't taking up my requests and questions at all. My last request was, that I would only work until October because then Uni starts again and I wouldn't have any time to work part-time anywhere. He first said, that would totally be fine. But then he just passed over that and was talking about employees working more before important exams and not working at all in their exam weeks. He just ignored my request!
In that moment my head was screaming at me: "You have to get out of here! This is the oddest thing that ever happened to you!" At this time I was just thinking about my poor friend Simone, who fell for the constant fake flirting David was doing. - Yes, he was gorgeous! But I know now, that it makes it easier for him, to trick people into this contract.
So the interview ends after about half an hour and David is looking at me and expecting me to say: "Yes, I want this job! When can I start working?" - But the only thing I said was: "I have to think about all of this." Suddenly David's face is full of shock and he just exclaiming: "Why?" He totally fell out of his concept of being the chill, young, flirty boss. - I'll never forget the shock in his eyes. For me this was the best part of the interview. I still have to laugh when I think about his face in that moment! - I'm pretty good at acting that I'm interested into something and I'm good at hiding when I think something is weird. I also don't ask many questions. All the time he must have thought, that I was this quiet, shy and maybe a little bit dumb and young girl. So I try wiggling myself out of this situation by saying, that everything came quite suddenly and I still have to think about if that job is really the right thing for me.
We shake hand, I hug my "friend" Simone, and I just leave the building as fast as I can.
When I was back home, I told my mom everything about the interview. She said I reacted just right and that this interview really was pretty odd. (My parents where so proud after we found out what was really going on!) - So we start googling about the company. One of the first entries about an odd job interview in that company just sums up everything that happened to me! The job interviews were exactly alike. In the comment sections under that post somebody wrote that if you would have signed a contract, you kind of would have sold your soul for the next five years to that company! If you would have bad luck, you wouldn't even get any money at all!
From that article I also know, that my "friend" Simone would have gotten about 100€ just to recruit me and sitting next to her boss during the job interview. So this department is especially searching for students who (desperately) want to earn some money and don't think too much about the consequences. David knew, that I was under age, but he would have let me sign a contract without an eye-blink. And my Simone know isn't my "friend" anymore because she wanted to sell me to a company without hesitation. (Another odd thing: Simone and I weren't even real friends ... we just talked every once in a while at Uni. - So she was just randomly calling people she knew to get money from sitting next to her boss during the job interview.)
"I don't think that an employee, especially a new employee, is sitting next to her boss while he is leading a job interview."
ReplyDeleteI had a job interview recently where an intern sat next to the boss as well. They wanted to do some HR stuff as a job and used that as a learning experience.