How I Got The New Job

It's already Monday and I have only 3 more days left to proudly remain as the unemployed *sigh*. I have been meaning to write about my job-hunting experience; the trauma of interviews, the waiting, the ray of light that came in the form of a phone call, etc, but was either too busy or too lazy to do it. So now that I have all the time in the world to spare, let's do it bebeh! *Warning - I might get carried away with the details, so this could possibly be one of my rare long entries.*

I've been working in the same company since I graduated in 2005 and was generally happy with things at work up till the last 6 months of my 5th year there. I mean, it's not all sunshine and rainbow throughout the past 5 years, what with the working on weekends, on ungodly hours and what not, but the good, fun days sort of drowned the bad days when you have great colleagues/friends and teamwork. However in the beginning of 2010, due to many reasons I shall not disclosed here for fear of my safety (chewahhh macamlah ada rahsia kerajaan sgt pun, just malas nak citer panjang actually hahah!), things in the office has become figuratively and literally toxic that I just HAD to get out of there asap.

So I updated my resume, emailed it to all ex-colleagues who were still in my radar hoping that they could get me something good, dropped it to as many companies as I could find in the cyberspace, even went to some career fairs (first time ever - sgt jakun and pening okk) to try my luck. It was all emotionally draining, plus it totally messed up my self-esteem, "Why didn't I get any reply? Am I not good enough or am I over-qualified for that job?" that sort of stuff. This went on for about 2 months until that one fateful Monday afternoon in April 2010, I went into this particular company's official website, clicked on the 'Career' section, typed in my profile, answered some background questions and uploaded my resume. And then I sat and quietly waited, just like I did for the previous couple of months.

Then miracle happened and it happened so fast, on the same Monday to be exact, that I honestly didn't have enough time to process everything. On Monday evening, approximately 3 hours after I deposited my resume in that particular company's website, I received a call from their HR who said that they had looked over my profile and would I be interested to come in for an interview? Okay, that was super-fast. Of course I'd be interested! Are you kidding me?!! On Thursday, they called again to confirm that the interview would be on the next Monday.

That weekend, I was literally a nervous wreck. I haven't been to a job interview in almost 5 years so of course my 'jual diri' skills were a bit rusty. So I googled all possible interview questions and the corresponding bombastic answers, practised with dear SRB to make the answers sounded more natural than rehearsed, completed some mock-up IQ, analytical and even statistic tests just to be ready coz gotta admit, nowadays I could no longer count without a calculator or excel sheet.

So how did the interview go, you might ask. And I will answer you my friend, in my definition, it was a DISASTER!!! I came on Monday all psyched up to ace some aptitude test just to find out that nope, there's not gonna be any pick-one-from-the-four-available-answers-below test before the interview. Just the plain, old "Hello, here's a case study for you to read and please prepare a presentation on your recommendation in 40 minutes, thank you very much". Say whaaattt???

I did not expect this AT ALL, so of course I was not ready to calmly read some case studies and come up with a creative solution to present to an audience. And I had only 30 minutes! (The first 10 minutes was unproductively spent hyperventilating, recovering myself from shock and reading the first line over and over again). So once again ladies and gentlemen, I found myself in the nervous-wreck mode; my body shaking, heart racing, palm sweating and all that. I couldn't really remember what happened after that coz I think my brain subconsciously blocked the whole interview nightmare from registering into my memory hehe.

Then four days later, a bigger miracle happened. I got a call from the same HR lady and jeng jeng jeng, they offered me a job woohoo!!! And then three days later I received the official offer letter, Alhamdulillah. Okay, maybe I exaggerated a bit on the interview being such a disaster and all (but I honestly thought it was!), I guess they saw a potential in me somehow, somewhere in between my stuttered presentation.

I was thrilled and excited at first but then it dawned on me that working with one of the Big 4 companies would possibly require long hours and hard, hard work. Can I survive? Can I cope? Am I making one of those keluar-kandang-buaya-masok-kandang-harimau mistakes? See I told you, this whole finding-a-job thing could really mess you up, man.

After a series of sembahyang istiqarah and self-reflections, I decided that yup, I was up for the new challenge and I was sooo done of feeling like shit at my previous job. So I accepted the offer, tendered my resignation, served and completed my 3-month notice period and tadaa...here I am.

I have no idea how demanding the new job's gonna be - people always say that auditors from Big 4 companies work like crazy, but I'm not gonna be an auditor. I have zero expertise in that area. From what I understand, I'm gonna be a consultant, giving advisory services in IT implementations, whatever THAT means. I'm not gonna bore you with the specifics of my job, no worries.

Nevertheless, I've decided that I'm not gonna give up before I try. No matter what people say, however hard or easy it'll be, I've decided that I'm gonna try to do the best that I can, in whatever challenges thrown at me, for as long as I have to, Insya Allah...

Gambatte to me huyeahhh!