Why do you want to work here?

I had my first interview ever, and it went great.

No sarcasm there… at all. Well it wasn’t that bad I don’t think, but it isn’t going to win the best interview ever award: too many umm’s, arrr’s and errrr’s and a complete inability to elaborate things to make them sound right: “I worked in a shop”, simple, direct and conveys the point. “I previously worked in a customer facing retail role”, completely unnecessary, complicated and not so direct.  So I don’t think I’ll be getting that job.

This brings me to my new pet hate, job applications.

Why is it that we can’t all just be honest when applying for a job? Well it’s because of this question:

“Why do you want to work here?”

Why we really want to: “Because I need a job/money”

But we can’t say that so we have to come up with creative bullshit: “I think working here offers a great new opportunity for me”. Yeah, it’s ASDA not Alan Sugar.

Option #2 is quite clearly a lie and everybody knows it, so why can’t we just be honest. You know, that thing we are always told we should be, but let’s face it from a young age we are all programmed to lie right from the “don’t tell mum”. And of course politicians set a blistering example of honestly.

So maybe we should all start being honest:  you want to job because you need the money, you have rent, bills and food to pay for, you have to, you know, live.

Next on the list of questions I hate is:

“What are your interests?”

My question is, why does this question need to be asked? What I do in my free time should not matter to any potential boss, so long as my outside activities aren’t being a mass murderer they are entirely my business. As they have no impact on work performance they should not be taken into consideration during the application process.

“Oh I really to cook, so don’t mind me if I casually stroll over to the bakery section to start cooking up a storm rather than stacking your shelves.”

Another one that I dislike is being asked what skills I have, mainly because I find it difficult to answer. I’m good at making a room a mess in record time, but I don’t think they want to know about that skill. All this talk of jobs just reminds me that the Job Centre is still top of my list for most useless people ever.

The Job centre seems to be incapable of keeping appointments and doesn’t seem to think that I need to know things in advance. I went 2 weeks ago to go to a meeting which turns out to have been rearranged but nobody told me that. I go to sign on two days later only to be told the time they originally gave me is wrong. I go today to go to that rearranged meeting and guess what? Cancelled. She re-books it then says that she won’t give me the letter with the appointments details on, and that she will give it to me the next time I’m there, (which I think she said was 6 days before this appointment, so mental note to myself: “Don’t arrange anything more than 6 days in advance I might have a phantom appointment”.) Oh and have I mentioned that if I don’t turn up to appointments my payment is stopped? I have to let them know a day in advance of my appointment, but they don’t feel the need to tell me when they’ve cancelled it. Sounds fair.