Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Moment of Glory

138 resume/cover letters, 4 coast-coast plane tickets, 37+ job seeking trips into the City, 4 subscriptions to job sites, 22 linkedin messages....oh and countless hours of bitching later I finally got the job. I am fortunate enough in this day to have landed my dream job (according to my where-I should-be-at-this-age-in-order-to-get-where-I-want-to-be-without-a-SugarDaddy...am open to this idea-plan). My rate of return on resumes sent and actual interviews is a whopping .014%...I got 2 interviews from my 138 resumes....and I was not applying for VP jobs....these were admin assistant, I'll order your lunch for you kind of jobs. (I've never been a numbers gal...so you might want to check the calc on that rate of return, actually I don't even know if you can apply that here).

Everyone said you have to know someone...and unfortunately...great as he is...my dad does not have the last name of Proctor or Gamble. So I tried this. Around lunch time I would venture around buildings that housed companies I wanted to work at. I pulled the old "do you know of a good bagel place around here?" Usually this led to a disgruntled point in some non-specific direction, other times it led to a business card, I obtained a fair amount of business cards/contacts thanks to this method (in your face people who voted me most shy in Jr. High). And the excitement and promise always ended with an e mail from my fellow bagel connoisseur reading "Melanie, your resume looks great, I will pass it along, I will be in contact with you within a week." A week of hope would go by and I would chalk it up to my contact's blood relative needing a job, or a Wharton graduate squeezing me out....understood.

But now all bitching and moaning has ceased, because believe it or not the company I got a job with did that thing where they keep your resume on file after you've applied there....I always thought this was just a line until low and behold I get a call for an interview. I get the position description e-mailed to me and if I could have written my own job description...this would have been it. I interviewed four times, and after three weeks and throughly analyzing my every gesture and everything that was said, I get an offer call. It was one of the greatest, happiest moments of my life...one of those times you truly realize everything in this universe does indeed happen for a reason. (To be honest....I sure was proud of myself, I immediately played Empire State of Mind...how lame of me.) My apologies for going heartfelt on you...but it was as good as a five year old who still believes in Santa getting a puppy for Christmas....maybe better.