When It Rains It Pours

About every two months I get a whole slew of emails offering me interviews. I don’t know why it happens in a cycle, but it always does. I wont hear a word from a single company, not a single positive response and usually not a single response at all. Then suddenly in the same week, I’ll get seven emails offering me interviews.
And so the rush begins again! The interview suit comes out, resumes get reprinted by the dozens, and if it were possible, I start getting even less sleep.
To me, interviewing is like craigslist, and craigslist is like a blind date. You absolutely never know who or what you might find on the other side of the door. And any one of those experiences could change your life forever.
Whether the interview be a 15 minute meet and greet, or an hour of resume nit picking, for that time you get a glimpse into the other side of your situation. The employed side. And you get caught up in the moment! You even start to feel important just to be interviewing for these intern positions. And why shouldn’t you? These interviewers are making a sales pitch to you (obviously because they want you to work for free) and trying to convince you that you should be honored to be considered for such an exciting time at their company. And then you get excited, and start selling yourself to them. Here is my resume! Here is what I can do for you!
I guess I am what they call lucky, in that I have actually been offered a variety of internships, and I usually get to choose where I want to devote my hardworking free time to. However, it is a harder decision than it seems. Each of these companies is probably excellent, and sometimes, when you are working for free, it all boils down to convenience. Which office is closest to the train? Which company has the best hours for my schedule? But personally, I think the most important question to weigh is: which company is going to give me the best connections? Which is the one I’ll be able to look back and say, if I hadn’t done that I never would have met _____ which eventually led me to ______ which eventually introduced me to the position I end up finding my self in…. successfully. Sometimes, I think I choose wrong. Other times, its easy to remember why I made the decision I did. But mostly, I can easily see where my first impressions of a place are skewed. It’s easy to get caught up in an interview when the interviewer is presenting their internship as the stepping-stone to your future. But it’s hard to remember how this internship is helping your future when you are making copies and getting coffee.

And so it begins! Let the runaround continue!



Bob, let's see what's behind Door Number 3!

CBS Sports: You haven’t heard the last of them!

So nothing came from my first interview with CBS Sports. We said hello, we said goodbye, and we left things open for the future.
But remembering back to the way I first landed that interview at CBS Sports, (the aunt’s friend’s neighbor who works there and sent out my resume to his colleagues?) and we realize that while I thought I had used up the connection, really those forwards that he sent out were still circulating through West 57th street.

About a month after the bittersweet ending with the first guy from CBS Sports, and the day after I still hadn’t heard from Letterman, I once again got a call from an unknown number. This time, on the other end of the line, was a researcher from CBS Sports calling to schedule an interview with me for a position opening in the fall. Knowing that CBS Sports and I probably aren’t destined to be soul mates, I didn’t rearrange my travel plans to fly in to New York for the 25 minute interview. Instead, I scheduled a phone interview. And again, like all the others, it went great. Well, mostly great. We spent over 45 minutes on the phone (which is a helluva lot of time considering it was an international call) and I could tell he liked me for the position. Just as we were saying our goodbyes with the ‘we should definitely be in touch next week’, he hit me with, ‘Oh, one more thing.”
“Sure,” I said, trying to keep the nervousness out of my voice.
“Did you watch the Superbowl last year?” he asked.
“Yes of course,” I answered, leaving out that it was only for the commercials.
“Who won?” he shot at me.
Well, I froze. I'm sure that somewhere in my head I knew the answer, but at that moment, I got nothing. So I told him what I did know.
"Well," I said, "In 2008 the Giants won."
"Yes, but what about 2009?"
I blanked.
Then I got drilled on sports trivia for the next 6 minutes. Which is a long time when you don't know who the UMD basketball coach is, or the names of all of the American players going to the US Open, or who won the World Series in 1999.
Finally, the questioning ended. But I couldn't just let him hang up with that weak last impression of me. So I said, "Listen, I have not spent the past years of my life filling my head with sports trivia. I was in college, and I spent my brainpower on other things. But if given this opportunity at CBS Sports, I know I am capable of learning all of this information. If this was my job, I would do it right. If given the chance to immerse in this culture, I would absorb everything."
He told me not to worry about it, and less than confident, I hung up.
About 3 weeks later I received a call from him, telling me that the position had been filled. Shocking. However, they still needed help and I had left an impression on him, therefore he would like to offer me a chance to freelance for CBS Sports during the NFL Season.

So yay! Woo Hoo! But working three hours on a Sunday afternoon is no incentive to give up on the rest of my job search.

You Turned Down A Job....in this economy?!!?

Now re-read this post's title in Fran Drescher's voice from The Nanny. Better?
It's a work in progress.
Well reader(s?), I dare say it's true. Only, the job was really just an unpaid internship. That they have conveniently retitled: an entry level position.
Which brings me to a point that I have been trying to hold in. Since when is it ok to not pay people for real full time jobs just by calling it an ‘internship’?
Exhibit A**:

“Intern needed for film production and finance company based in New York. Responsibilities include answering phones, writing script coverage, and general office duties. College students or recent grads preferred. The position is unpaid, but hours and dates are flexible.”

First off, I would like to point out that not only do they want someone to come into their office and be their receptionist/gopher bitch, but they want someone to actually apply for the privilege to do it for free. While I would understand if this was a minimum wage job (being as a trained chimp could perform it) to vie for the opportunity is even slightly demeaning. All the more so if you just graduated with a Bachelor's degree, and you have just invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in a college education.

Now I sent my resume to these people. They called immediately for an interview. And why wouldn't they? My resume is awesome, and they aren't going to pay me shit. After some prodding questions, I got them to admit that by 'hours and dates are flexible' they really meant, we can't give you a contract because we can't pay you, but we still want you to verbally commit to working for us a full five days a week.

So even though my semi-supportive parents are not going to let me take a fake job full time, who am I to turn down an interview? Well, my grandfather got wind of this and let me know in a very slow, carefully prepared fashion that ones value to a company, is determined by the amount they pay you. And therefore if I 'interned' for free, I was worth nothing. His words, not mine. Truth be told, I had heard this speech from him every time I had an unpaid internship in college (7 times) and each of those times, I argued with him about 'getting credit' and 'gaining experience'. Although it pains me to admit it, this time he is absolutely 100% right. While I do not think I am worthless, I do feel (quite strongly) that I have paid my unpaid intern debt to society. The things I have done for these internships...but more on that later. And stay tuned- because those stories are go-ood.


**This is not the job I turned down. The job I turned down was an unpaid position at an art gallery. Within 15 minutes of the phone interview, my interviewer offered me the position. How good of an interviewer must I be in order to translate my love for television into a study of visual digital art?