Things just keep getting better and better!

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! Today I put on my three-season black suit, black control-top pantyhose my Mom brought me from the US (Thank goodness for Hanes! This reminds me I need to tell of my recent pantyhose crisis in the Copenhagen train station — that’s another post.) and new black pumps. I took the 8:55 a.m. train to Zurich. Ho-hum. I had a job interview with a big, highly respected Swiss firm. BIG firm. Global presence. The pride of the Swiss.

I had downloaded the interviewer’s resume off the Internet and they put their photos in Europe, so I knew who he was as he came down the hall. I reacted like he was a buddy or something — that might’ve surprised him a bit. (Note to Self: if you Google the interviewer and find stuff that may be incriminating, don’t lead with it…)

We started off well, and it just kept getting better. He started off by telling me they’d interviewed somebody yesterday and my interviewer friend would make his decision by the end of the day. We started chatting; we chatted some more. We chatted about the hobbies he listed on his resume; we brainstormed about the work. It was fun! After about an hour, he leaned back and said, “I don’t need any more time. You want the job?” You betcha, I do!

And guess what they want me to do?! They bring in the company’s top 200 global executives, staggered in small groups, to a lovely lakeside villa for a week-long leadership training program. On Thursday and Friday they stage a simulation — a scenario that involves a crisis in the Chinese market and actors representing Greenpeace, Tibetan monks, a competitor’s company, etc. They want me to act like I’m a news producer, walk in with a camera crew and ask all kinds of tricky questions, get the execs to say things they shouldn’t on film and make a news cast! How FUN is that?! And I get to stay in the villa, they pay travel, and the daily rate is about what I made in a week as a professor. Yee haw!

Like I said, things just keep getting better!

Tagged as: work