Someone else

When you start chatting about David Bowie trivia, you know a job interview is going pretty well.

A few months ago an interviewer asked me about a claim on my CV: I make ‘an occasional profit buying and selling CDs online’, demonstrating my ‘commercial awareness’. I explained how I do it, without telling him how occasional and how small the profit is.

By an odd fluke, I had just bought an album from a charity shop, so I pulled it out of my jacket pocket and showed him. It was Bowie’s Space Oddity, and my interviewer was a fan. He asked which two Bowie songs mention Major Tom (answers at the end). I got them both, but not the job. Perhaps another candidate showed greater knowledge of Bowie’s Aladdin Sane character.

Last week, I got another interviewer talking about music. Again it wasn’t enough to win me the job, which this time was customer assistant at a health food shop.

The interviewer was about my age (22), and very friendly. She apologised in advance about her questions, explaining that some were quite stupid, but that they were chosen by head office. That put me at ease, so I gave pretty confident answers. Example: Why is it important for a shop to have staff with good sales skills?

Me:‘To sell more? That’s the point of running a company.”

Her: You’re the first person I’ve interviewed who’s said that!

I took that as a good sign. We both made plenty of eye contact and smiled a lot, except when I went on a mini-rant about a previous interview, and lost her for a while. In general she seemed to be on my side, and gently steered me towards a couple of right answers. One question was: How does the company make sure its staff know so much about the products they sell? She told me the question was ‘not as difficult as it sounds’, while subtly glancing towards the thick staff training manuals piled up on the desk. Another question asked me to describe myself in three words. Having got two, I was clearly struggling:

Her: Would you say you’re passionate?

Me: Yes!

I told her about my passion for music, and obsession with listening to an album the whole way through. She felt the same way. I told her a pointless anecdote about how my brother recently skipped a few songs on Electric Ladyland because they took a few seconds to get going. She actually seemed interested by this, maybe even sympathetic.

As she showed me out, we exchanged smiles and ‘nice to meet you’s, and I left feeling like I'd finally done enough to get the job. In my interviewing career, it was my best performance so far. I almost seemed employable. I even made a good attempt at being keen. It was the first time that I might have employed myself. However, I would then have offered myself a generous redundancy package, accepted it, and re-hired myself a week later on a higher wage, so it’s probably best that the decision wasn’t up to me.

Steven Wright has a much better version of the joke I just attempted: 

“I saw a sign at a gas station. It said ‘Help Wanted’. 

There was another sign below it that said ‘Self Service’. 

So I hired myself. Then I made myself the boss. 

I gave myself a raise. I paid myself. Then I quit.”

The following week, I got the call: “Just letting you know that we’ve hired...someone else.” Apparently I came across well. It was just that someone else came across better.

(The songs were Space Oddity and Ashes to Ashes.)