A Third Tilt at the Interview Windmill

This afternoon I went to an interview somewhere in the wilds north of Unter den Linden, in the hopes of being employed as an intern in the office of a tour guide company. I printed out a copy of my c.v., double-checked how to get to the interview location, put together the papers that a potential employer might want to see, etc. As for my clothing, I decided that it's best to wear something on the formal end of what I would wear anyway, so it was a fine chocolate brown corduroy skirt, a dark blue knit sweater, green tights, and a pewtery necklace inlaid with black and red enamel, orange carnelian, and purple amethyst (?) .

Originally I had intended to arrive at the nearest S-Bahnhof by 1:30 (half an hour early), but the weather was rainy though in a half-hearted manner and it didn't turn out that way in any case, so it was around 1:30 when I stepped into the U-Bahn. It was the A***straße 5a where the interview would take place; I found the A***straße 5 soon enough, but realized that it wasn't the right place and (after asking a lady who was sitting on a bench eating her lunch and who could only inform me that she wasn't from the area either and that she would advise me to look further along the street) continued on down the street.

With dismay I found that the 5a referred to a vast and near-abandoned courtyard, ringed in garages and workshops and former factory offices, shuttered in by a metal gate with a door suspended in its centre, and adorned in graffiti. The scene was peculiarly anachronistic and looked as if no one had been there since before the fall of the Berlin Wall, though the glossy handful of cars assuaged the sense of temporal misplacement. I walked warily through the middle of the scene and headed toward the building at the back, where an old and stately red-and-yellow brick cupola rises at the corner, and a young man in a (?) purple and pink sweatsuit was idling and gazing at the ground underneath a porch, perhaps on a cigarette break. Fervently hoping that I would not end up walking into a bizarre underground club, I entered the building and climbed the stairs until a sign pointed me in to the company office.

Once I entered the office, at pretty much exactly 2 p.m., the scene changed. The rooms were expansive and the ceilings at a lonely height, but there was bright furniture and two or three people were milling about, including the perhaps Australian girl who greeted me. The interview began, funnily enough, with the question which career direction I was trying to work toward. Altogether the focus was rather on what I would like to do and could do well, on what it would be like to work in the company, and (implicitly) on which work within the company might suit me, rather than on determining whether I fit a predetermined slot. This was a great relief, and I no longer felt so humiliated and intimidated by the job-seeking process; besides, it was refreshing to be told that I would surely do the work competently and that speaking French is useful, since the tendency of the job-search is to firmly convince its victim that he (or she) is of no use at all. So though I was still nervous the interview was much more relaxed and enjoyable than expected.

The advertisement already mentioned that the remuneration for an internship would be 400 Euros per month (this is fine by me, since it would neatly cover my monthly expenditures and even, I think, provide me with an employment health insurance plan). What I learned today is that the working hours would be from 10-5, the overall length of the internship anything from a month onwards, and the tasks diverse and a mixture of dropping off mail at the post, answering phones, and more challenging things.

In a day or two I should find out if the interview was successful. At least it already means that I will no longer automatically associate the word "interview" with the fiasco of April. (Deo volens.)