After buying a new motor bike (see and admire below), Kirstie Nicols discovered she needed to make another big purchase. Hunting on two fronts
For no reason whatsoever, this week I had a sudden mad urge where I decided I really couldn’t live at home any more; I needed to get out and start being vaguely independent again (of course I’ll still bring home my washing). After all, there’s only so much talk of who kissed who from my teenage twin sisters that I can take… This meant, after looking at various places in my so-called price range, I decided I really needed to get going on the job-hunting front. I think I applied to around 50 jobs in the space of two days (although this was probably largely made up of those elusive Recruitment Consultant positions), in a desperate bid to land a lucrative role and finally ‘fly the nest’. For a while, I managed to get myself back into the ‘I’m-a-graduate,-who-could-turn-me-down?’ state, and started imagining what I would buy with my amazing new salary. I even started looking at houses to buy; imagining myself decorating an entire house instead of just repainting my bedroom within my parents’ strict guidelines. I saw myself throwing huge house parties, inviting friends round for sophisticated dinners, and spending all my spare time browsing round Ikea. By now, it seems I had apparently forgotten that in order to live the dream, I would first be needing to find the amazing job that was going to change my life. Instant interview A few days after my ‘apply for anything going’ frenzy, I was sitting at work daydreaming (again), when my phone went off, flashing up a number I didn’t recognise. I had a feeling it might be someone wanting to conduct one of those thrilling telephone interviews, so I ran off to answer it out of the way of distractions. I managed to struggle through it, although I had applied for so many different positions I wasn’t exactly sure what kind of a position I was being interviewed for, and was promised a second call the following day. I headed back into work, feeling pretty good (though slightly bemused), and spent the rest of the day being too distracted to work.
After spending the next day running in and out of work in order to answer my phone, I finally made it through the second telephone interview, and was asked to come in for a proper, face-to-face interview a couple of days later. This gave me plenty of time to think, and I managed to eventually get round to looking up the company and working out what role it was that I had applied for. It turned out to be a sales position for a small company close to home; the salary wasn’t amazing, but the amount that could be earned in commission was pretty amazing. However, sitting at work watching the sales people running around, seemingly always stressed, made me start to doubt how much I actually wanted the job. It’s not that I’m lazy and don’t want to face any hard work; just that I’d rather work hard in a position I was passionate about, without spending five days a week feeling stressed simply to earn more money. Once the doubts set in, they weren’t going to leave, and I started thinking about how much I would actually enjoy the job. After all, you spend a lot of time at work throughout the year; I didn’t want to get the job then leave two months later because I dreaded getting up in the morning. No moveThe more I thought about it, the more I decided that applying for any job that paid well had not been one of my best ideas. I called the company that had asked me to come in for interview, and explained that really I didn’t want to work in sales so if I joined them, I would just spend the time thinking about moving on. I would be messing them around, as all the effort they put into training would be wasted. The place where I am now has been so good to me, and very understanding, that I wouldn’t want to mess them around either by leaving them to do something I don’t really want to do. Although it would be nice to be earning more money, in all honesty I don’t really need it right now. And as much as I would love to have a whole house to fill with my bad taste in furniture, I don’t really want a mortgage. I’m still planning to move on from my current company; if my ideal job comes up at the other end of the country then I can’t move straight away. I have compromised though, and I’ve managed to get together a few friends; we’ve decided to look for somewhere to rent. On the job front; I still want to get a move on and find a new position, but I’m now only looking for work that I’m genuinely interested in. Read Kirstie's previous blogs |
