Will Someone Hire Me Already!

It’s been exactly two months since I started looking for work in Dubai and there has been some developments since the last round of rejection emails. A very very good development actually. Last Wednesday I was offered a job position and I accepted! Woo-hoo!

But I am superstitious so until I get the actual contract in my hands, I am keeping mum on the position and the employer from everyone. Only the husband knows (of course) and one friend who had interviewed with the same company.

I will say that this job hunting thing is just awful. It’s not exactly stressful as I’ve done it so many times before in New York, Miami, Puerto Rico, Chicago, New York again, and now Dubai. It does get easier each time in terms of interviewing and selling yourself but then again, with each job, you have more experience to sell.

But the parts that I hate are the getting-the-interview and the waiting-game part. For example, I started off by sending my resume to all the major recruitment companies in Dubai as well as applying to ads in Monster, RecruitGulf.com, Bayt.com and a bunch of others. Did any of them get back to me to schedule an interview? Not a single one.

I know I am a great candidate and any company would be lucky to have me. Now these are not my words but words from ALL my former employers as well from a recent interviewer. But why didn’t anyone pick up on my resume? Ah, that was a rhetorical question by the way. We all know the HR game: It’s something like 10% experience, 30% luck, and 60% who you know*. Wait, does that add up to 100%? Think so.

So a month and a half into job hunting, I was starting to get royally pissed off at the lack of response. There’s nothing like anger to get your ass off the couch and do SOMETHING. Drastic. Anything.

Well, I played the who-you-know card, which got me a few preliminary interviews. Then perhaps luck got me second interviews and experience landed me the job. Or, maybe luck landed me the job…who knows.

However, after those first prelim interviews, there was nothing. Nada. Nilch. Not a peep. One week passed. Then two weeks. Then a third. I thought they had forgotten about me. That’s when I got angry again and sent another flurry of resumes to the recruiters – this time I addressed them to the CEO’s and managing directors. I had nothing to lose, right? Seemed to have worked as I did get some responses. And guess what? I think this second anger event created momentum in the form of a second interview for the position that I really really really really wanted: The day after I sent out this second flurry of resumes, a recruiter called me for the first time and just 10 minutes later, I also got a call-back from one of my prelim interviews. Yes, it took them 3 weeks to do so. But I forgive them.

My recruiter interview went okay – though it was only 20 minutes and I felt sort of like cattle beind herded through the gates of job placement commissions. Whereas my other interview lasted an hour and a half and in the end, I was offered the position, and as much as I tried to play it cool and say that I’d think about it, I just blurted out, “I’ll take it!”

So that’s the update. Now I play the waiting game again – this time it is for my contract. Hope they don’t forget about me or wait another 3 weeks…

*not scientific…just my experience.