Job searching is not a pleasurable process. It stimulates me negatively. I feel I have to be the CANDIDATE. You have to tell people what you think they want to hear. I can't do that. I don't know what people want to hear. I can only be who I am. Which may not be good in an interview. Where I think I sound confident and empowered may come off as conceited and arrogant. It's not my fault I am so great!
I don't like the dog and pony show aspect of the interviewing process. You dress the part. I always "Suit up" as NPH would often tell Ted in How I Met Your Mother. I put on a cheerful persona and a happy face, even though, I'm miserable and dying inside. I understand the hiring process requires this uncomfortable pas de deux. My issue is after forty years in the workforce when do you get to cut to the front of the line and just get the goddamn job based on the merits of your resume and a few phone calls to former employers. The answer is: Never.
Face to face interviews suck. You're meeting people for the first (and possibly the only) time in your life. You don't know what they like. You don't know their expectations. You don't know what prejudices and opinions they've already formed. You are at an extreme disadvantage. And yet, like the Powerball Lottery, somebody wins and gets the job. It may be you. And then it may not be you. In most cases you have about a half hour to dazzle or baffle them. What I do for a living is difficult to call dazzling or to elucidate dazzling events in my, an Accountant's, career. Often, there are few. Our ilk tend to perform functions by rote day after day, month after month. It's the nature of the beast.
The best I could do is shine my abilities through a verbal picture portrait like a Monet watercolor or a Picasso Cubist painting. Actually, the best I can do is not sound like a rube or bumpkin that just jumped off the turnip truck in from off the farm. "Yeah, ah, I done dat before." You want to speak confidently without being verbose. Sometimes less really is more. I try that, but often find myself explaining too much about my past performance. I learned in the sixth grade when I received one of my few A's in my Language Arts class for an oral book report. Tell only as much of the story as needed to give them the characters and the plot and leave out the ending. I received that A because I was ill-prepared and only read half the book. No one knew this. But I knew enough of the story, etc. that I was able to bluff my way to the finish line. The teacher and most of my class were impressed. I was flying by the seat of my pants. I was quite relieved and impressed with my ability to "half-ass it." Unfortunately, while in an interview, I forget this lesson and often runoff at the mouth.
However, in a job interview, you can bluff only so much. Sometimes you need some hard facts, figures and experience. You can't expect to become an astronaut going to the moon when the closest you've ever been to that science is bouncing in a Moon Bounce on your fifth birthday. You need to be all that they need you to be. I have found over the last year that there are so many different roles Accountants play. Lately, I found that I fit into none of them. I am either too experienced and want (need) too much money or am grossly lacking in experience (the case of Governmental, Tax and Fund accounting). Then there are jobs where they try to disguise themselves as Accounting when they are really Sales [of Financial instruments] (insurance, 401k, stocks, bonds, etc.). I am not a salesman.
The following are three recent interviews. One that I thought I was brilliant (good). One that was awful (bad). And one that was, by far, the worst interview I ever had in my life (the ugly).
The Good
This morning I had a phone interview. Once my interviewer phoned me, she first apologized for being late, we took a minute or two for small talk about the I-95 traffic nightmare caused by the DNC, the reason for her lateness. She asked me about my background. I proceeded, hopefully, to impress her with my past record and abilities. It's not hard to sound intelligent and capable when you are telling the truth and speaking of your strengths. You leave out how you've had to deal with a lot of assholes and incompetents. A half hour later we rung off. I felt I learned what I needed to know about the company and the position. I believe I conveyed my abilities and strengths and hoped I impressed the knickers off her. Now I sit back and wait for a call.
The Bad
I received a communications a few days ago from a recruiter through my LinkedIn account. He was recruiting for a Sr. Accountant role. He said that my experiences would fit well for this role. I sent him my resume. He needed it. The LinkedIn resume doesn't download or print out well. We planned for an interview with the VP and President for that afternoon. This was yesterday. This was the quickest I ever submitted a resume and received an interview. All for a job that I had no idea what it entailed. That should have been my first warning. I got there. Walked in the front door. There was no receptionist. My second warning. A few minutes go by and I receive a call from the recruiter. I answer and he says I can come anytime I am ready. I told him I was sitting in the lobby. The third warning. I knew right then and there, that this was not going to go well and that I had wasted about two hours of my time. Not that I was doing anything important. I wasn't. I was in the middle of a James Bond binge watching event. (A subsequent blog for another day to follow this one.) He meets me in the lobby. We shake hands. He says he'll get me in to see first the one guy who will pass me off to the Big Man. Before he takes me back, he says, (as I paraphrase) now just emphasize that you know Government Contract accounting. If that scene was being filmed, I would have had the look of a comedic buffoon much like Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber. It may have been funny, but I wasn't the one laughing. He takes me back, introduces me to the first guy and disappears. I sit and start to sweat. This guy asked questions about my experiences. Repeatedly told me that the job required a strong understanding of Government Contract accounting. My resume clearly states that I HAVE NO FURKING GOVERNMENT CONTRACT ACCOUNTING EXPERIENCE. Here's where I try to do my best to bluff a little and elude that I have no direct experience but am familiar with some of it. A BOLD FACE LIE. Government accounting is one of the reasons why I failed miserably the CPA exam for FAR. The other reason was non-profit accounting. You can only study and retain so much. The CPA is a snobby, stuck-up club for snobby, stuck-ups who can pass a series of tests through memorization and regurgitation at a test center. I'm just not built like that. I can solve real life, real time problems. Not problems designed for someone who has an Eidetic memory. You change one word in a statement/question; it changes the whole meaning and the answer to that question. Trickery. I say. I'll get off the soapbox for now.
After I'm done with this guy. (Side observation: This guy either was cross-eyed or had a lazy eye. He just plain creeped me out.) He passed me on to the President of the company. Shortly after, I thoroughly underwhelmed and unimpressed him. He asked me a few things about my background. Impressed again that the position required a high level of Government Contract accounting of which my resume showed no experience. Really?? Are you just seeing it for the first time? He then decided to test my accounting knowledge by quizzing me about Retained Earnings and Taxes. WTF?!?!? I'm sure I failed miserably. I looked the shit up when I got home and couldn't tell if my answers were close. Let's face it, folks. I don't remember shit about my early years college Accounting courses. Accounting, like foreign languages, will only become stronger with constant use. I haven't created a Balance Sheet statement, Income statement or Statement of Cash Flows since my college days. Even if I used these daily, today's accounting software spits this stuff out. I can look at one and identify the parts of each of the above statements. But don't expect me to commit this to memory. There's absolutely no point in it. Real world businesses are not classroom hypothetical businesses. Companies don't necessarily follow what you learned in your accounting books. I know. I have been there. I have seen what is out there. Needless to say, I doubt I'll get a call back or a job offer. Chances are the money would not meet my needs. And most likely, I wouldn't want to work there. The atmosphere was what you might find at a Funeral Home. I may have heard some weeping too or it may have been my imagination.
The Ugly
A few months ago, I had another face to face interview. I was given very little information. (Side note: Don't take interviews without all the information. You will only be disappointed or pissed off or both.) The job was in Princeton, NJ. A little far for my liking, but I took the interview anyway. I get there early. I'm as polished as a turd can be. I sit down with two gentlemen. Nice guys. We go over the position and the company.
At this point, let me step back a bit and fill you in on the back story. The recruiter told me that they placed the current person in this position six months ago. It appears she is either not working out or they needed someone with more experience and expertise. Chances are I could be replacing this person, if all went well in the interview.
On with the interview: We chat about my abilities, work history, etc. Then they drop the bomb. They envisioned my role to work along side with the person that was in this role. They told me who the person was. My Arch-nemesis. I spoke of this person many times before in my blogs. I had to deal with this mentally and socially challenged individual for seven flipping years. Each day was a misery. The one guy asks me if there would be a problem working with her. He had noticed the astonished shocked look on my face when they dropped her name. I told him there would be. The other guy asked (paraphrased) would you be able to fill both roles. We still hadn't decided what we wanted to do. My answer was "This is just not going to work for me. I apologize. I don't want to disrupt your business." With that I was out of there.
Let's take a quick break. I already lived my life in hell in cover this person's terribly lacking accounting abilities. So now, a new company wants to offer me the opportunity to do it all again. For less money. Further away from home that I care to travel. Why not sign up for it, right? Orrrrr, take over the role 100%, doing two jobs for, you guessed it, less money annnnnnnd, fix all the screw-ups I'm sure she made over the prior six months. Does this world have a warped sense of humor? Or What?
Once I was outside, I called and verbally blasted the recruiter. She quickly bum-rushed me off the phone with some excuse. The fact is she should have never sent me on this interview. Her feelings were that if I was a friend to Arch-nemesis I might tell her. Well, duh. What do you think friends do? They talk and tell each other shit. If I didn't know that I was interviewing to replace her and told her I was interviewing at XYZ to replace the accountant, and she was the accountant, wouldn't that have been an uncomfortable conversation. And if we were sworn enemies, why would you risk throwing two hostiles together. Let's hire the mongoose to work with the cobra. They'll get along just fine. Dumb-ass recruiter. I have since scratched them off the list of recruiters who I will work with.
That's much of what my life has been since being laid off last July. It's been a year and a week since my departure. I had one short-term consulting gig in Jersey for an even shittier company than the one that laid me off. Is that how you say that, laid me off? Seems weird. I persevere and hope that my unemployment doesn't run out before I get a job. Any job. In a month or so, you may see me bagging groceries at the Giant Supermarket. Furk help me.
I don't like the dog and pony show aspect of the interviewing process. You dress the part. I always "Suit up" as NPH would often tell Ted in How I Met Your Mother. I put on a cheerful persona and a happy face, even though, I'm miserable and dying inside. I understand the hiring process requires this uncomfortable pas de deux. My issue is after forty years in the workforce when do you get to cut to the front of the line and just get the goddamn job based on the merits of your resume and a few phone calls to former employers. The answer is: Never.
Face to face interviews suck. You're meeting people for the first (and possibly the only) time in your life. You don't know what they like. You don't know their expectations. You don't know what prejudices and opinions they've already formed. You are at an extreme disadvantage. And yet, like the Powerball Lottery, somebody wins and gets the job. It may be you. And then it may not be you. In most cases you have about a half hour to dazzle or baffle them. What I do for a living is difficult to call dazzling or to elucidate dazzling events in my, an Accountant's, career. Often, there are few. Our ilk tend to perform functions by rote day after day, month after month. It's the nature of the beast.
The best I could do is shine my abilities through a verbal picture portrait like a Monet watercolor or a Picasso Cubist painting. Actually, the best I can do is not sound like a rube or bumpkin that just jumped off the turnip truck in from off the farm. "Yeah, ah, I done dat before." You want to speak confidently without being verbose. Sometimes less really is more. I try that, but often find myself explaining too much about my past performance. I learned in the sixth grade when I received one of my few A's in my Language Arts class for an oral book report. Tell only as much of the story as needed to give them the characters and the plot and leave out the ending. I received that A because I was ill-prepared and only read half the book. No one knew this. But I knew enough of the story, etc. that I was able to bluff my way to the finish line. The teacher and most of my class were impressed. I was flying by the seat of my pants. I was quite relieved and impressed with my ability to "half-ass it." Unfortunately, while in an interview, I forget this lesson and often runoff at the mouth.
However, in a job interview, you can bluff only so much. Sometimes you need some hard facts, figures and experience. You can't expect to become an astronaut going to the moon when the closest you've ever been to that science is bouncing in a Moon Bounce on your fifth birthday. You need to be all that they need you to be. I have found over the last year that there are so many different roles Accountants play. Lately, I found that I fit into none of them. I am either too experienced and want (need) too much money or am grossly lacking in experience (the case of Governmental, Tax and Fund accounting). Then there are jobs where they try to disguise themselves as Accounting when they are really Sales [of Financial instruments] (insurance, 401k, stocks, bonds, etc.). I am not a salesman.
The following are three recent interviews. One that I thought I was brilliant (good). One that was awful (bad). And one that was, by far, the worst interview I ever had in my life (the ugly).
The Good
This morning I had a phone interview. Once my interviewer phoned me, she first apologized for being late, we took a minute or two for small talk about the I-95 traffic nightmare caused by the DNC, the reason for her lateness. She asked me about my background. I proceeded, hopefully, to impress her with my past record and abilities. It's not hard to sound intelligent and capable when you are telling the truth and speaking of your strengths. You leave out how you've had to deal with a lot of assholes and incompetents. A half hour later we rung off. I felt I learned what I needed to know about the company and the position. I believe I conveyed my abilities and strengths and hoped I impressed the knickers off her. Now I sit back and wait for a call.
The Bad
I received a communications a few days ago from a recruiter through my LinkedIn account. He was recruiting for a Sr. Accountant role. He said that my experiences would fit well for this role. I sent him my resume. He needed it. The LinkedIn resume doesn't download or print out well. We planned for an interview with the VP and President for that afternoon. This was yesterday. This was the quickest I ever submitted a resume and received an interview. All for a job that I had no idea what it entailed. That should have been my first warning. I got there. Walked in the front door. There was no receptionist. My second warning. A few minutes go by and I receive a call from the recruiter. I answer and he says I can come anytime I am ready. I told him I was sitting in the lobby. The third warning. I knew right then and there, that this was not going to go well and that I had wasted about two hours of my time. Not that I was doing anything important. I wasn't. I was in the middle of a James Bond binge watching event. (A subsequent blog for another day to follow this one.) He meets me in the lobby. We shake hands. He says he'll get me in to see first the one guy who will pass me off to the Big Man. Before he takes me back, he says, (as I paraphrase) now just emphasize that you know Government Contract accounting. If that scene was being filmed, I would have had the look of a comedic buffoon much like Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber. It may have been funny, but I wasn't the one laughing. He takes me back, introduces me to the first guy and disappears. I sit and start to sweat. This guy asked questions about my experiences. Repeatedly told me that the job required a strong understanding of Government Contract accounting. My resume clearly states that I HAVE NO FURKING GOVERNMENT CONTRACT ACCOUNTING EXPERIENCE. Here's where I try to do my best to bluff a little and elude that I have no direct experience but am familiar with some of it. A BOLD FACE LIE. Government accounting is one of the reasons why I failed miserably the CPA exam for FAR. The other reason was non-profit accounting. You can only study and retain so much. The CPA is a snobby, stuck-up club for snobby, stuck-ups who can pass a series of tests through memorization and regurgitation at a test center. I'm just not built like that. I can solve real life, real time problems. Not problems designed for someone who has an Eidetic memory. You change one word in a statement/question; it changes the whole meaning and the answer to that question. Trickery. I say. I'll get off the soapbox for now.
After I'm done with this guy. (Side observation: This guy either was cross-eyed or had a lazy eye. He just plain creeped me out.) He passed me on to the President of the company. Shortly after, I thoroughly underwhelmed and unimpressed him. He asked me a few things about my background. Impressed again that the position required a high level of Government Contract accounting of which my resume showed no experience. Really?? Are you just seeing it for the first time? He then decided to test my accounting knowledge by quizzing me about Retained Earnings and Taxes. WTF?!?!? I'm sure I failed miserably. I looked the shit up when I got home and couldn't tell if my answers were close. Let's face it, folks. I don't remember shit about my early years college Accounting courses. Accounting, like foreign languages, will only become stronger with constant use. I haven't created a Balance Sheet statement, Income statement or Statement of Cash Flows since my college days. Even if I used these daily, today's accounting software spits this stuff out. I can look at one and identify the parts of each of the above statements. But don't expect me to commit this to memory. There's absolutely no point in it. Real world businesses are not classroom hypothetical businesses. Companies don't necessarily follow what you learned in your accounting books. I know. I have been there. I have seen what is out there. Needless to say, I doubt I'll get a call back or a job offer. Chances are the money would not meet my needs. And most likely, I wouldn't want to work there. The atmosphere was what you might find at a Funeral Home. I may have heard some weeping too or it may have been my imagination.
The Ugly
A few months ago, I had another face to face interview. I was given very little information. (Side note: Don't take interviews without all the information. You will only be disappointed or pissed off or both.) The job was in Princeton, NJ. A little far for my liking, but I took the interview anyway. I get there early. I'm as polished as a turd can be. I sit down with two gentlemen. Nice guys. We go over the position and the company.
At this point, let me step back a bit and fill you in on the back story. The recruiter told me that they placed the current person in this position six months ago. It appears she is either not working out or they needed someone with more experience and expertise. Chances are I could be replacing this person, if all went well in the interview.
On with the interview: We chat about my abilities, work history, etc. Then they drop the bomb. They envisioned my role to work along side with the person that was in this role. They told me who the person was. My Arch-nemesis. I spoke of this person many times before in my blogs. I had to deal with this mentally and socially challenged individual for seven flipping years. Each day was a misery. The one guy asks me if there would be a problem working with her. He had noticed the astonished shocked look on my face when they dropped her name. I told him there would be. The other guy asked (paraphrased) would you be able to fill both roles. We still hadn't decided what we wanted to do. My answer was "This is just not going to work for me. I apologize. I don't want to disrupt your business." With that I was out of there.
Let's take a quick break. I already lived my life in hell in cover this person's terribly lacking accounting abilities. So now, a new company wants to offer me the opportunity to do it all again. For less money. Further away from home that I care to travel. Why not sign up for it, right? Orrrrr, take over the role 100%, doing two jobs for, you guessed it, less money annnnnnnd, fix all the screw-ups I'm sure she made over the prior six months. Does this world have a warped sense of humor? Or What?
Once I was outside, I called and verbally blasted the recruiter. She quickly bum-rushed me off the phone with some excuse. The fact is she should have never sent me on this interview. Her feelings were that if I was a friend to Arch-nemesis I might tell her. Well, duh. What do you think friends do? They talk and tell each other shit. If I didn't know that I was interviewing to replace her and told her I was interviewing at XYZ to replace the accountant, and she was the accountant, wouldn't that have been an uncomfortable conversation. And if we were sworn enemies, why would you risk throwing two hostiles together. Let's hire the mongoose to work with the cobra. They'll get along just fine. Dumb-ass recruiter. I have since scratched them off the list of recruiters who I will work with.
That's much of what my life has been since being laid off last July. It's been a year and a week since my departure. I had one short-term consulting gig in Jersey for an even shittier company than the one that laid me off. Is that how you say that, laid me off? Seems weird. I persevere and hope that my unemployment doesn't run out before I get a job. Any job. In a month or so, you may see me bagging groceries at the Giant Supermarket. Furk help me.
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