Jul 6, 2012

Job Hunting Ironies

Ever since Semester 1 of my final year, I've embarked on job hunting. It's not too early to start, I thought. And so, with reference to my earlier blog posts here and here, I became well acquainted with the mixed feelings of eager anticipation and abject dejection.

The whammies came one after another; the crushing body blows dealt by the unforgiving human resource managers didn't let up. Despite an hour long interview which I felt pretty good about, the property investment arm of Henderson Fund Management turned me down. Perhaps 'turned me down' is too kind a phrase to describe what happened. To be more precise, he ignored me. Trust me, indifference hurts more than rejection. He ignored all my emails telling them how I appreciated them taking time out to interview me and of me looking forward to hearing from them soon. He ignored my later emails (sent two weeks later), querying about the muted response. Did they not receive my email? They must be too busy. Perhaps they will get back to me tomorrow? I wouldn't let myself acknowledge the hurtful truth, and so I protected my fragile ego with these comforting delusions. In the end, that tomorrow never came. All my correspondences were sucked into their human resource black hole, never to see the light of day again. Like the dirt in his eyes, I was to be rubbed out and flicked away. The sooner the irritant was cast out the better. Now that I think about it, I can only laugh at myself. How could I allow myself to appear so desperate, so spineless?