My Recruitment Misadventure

So yesterday, I went for a job screening. Actually, it felt more like a military exercise. Okay, so maybe I’m exaggerating a bit.


Anyways. Exactly fifteen hours before the scheduled test, there I am at home minding my own business, back from a very exhausting day of errands and other sorts of things, when I get an SMS on my phone. I was going to ignore it, seeing as I was so tired and all. Actually, I did. Ignore it that is, for about an hour. But you see, the ring tone for my SMS is one of those loud, annoying beeps. You know the types now; those ones that last less than a second but can wake you from a valium induced sleep. So about 3600 seconds after I first decided to ignore it, my conscience (or was it subconscious) started to tell me that maybe it was about time I took a peak at that pesky text message. So I did.

It turned out to be an invitation from a mysterious (oh alright maybe not so mysterious) firm asking me to turn up at their office the following morning on the other end of town from where I live for a written test. I'd never heard of them before, I wondered if it was a scam but a brief conversation with my mum helped me realize it wasn’t. Apparently, outsourcing HR functions is all the rage now. Or maybe it has always been, what do I really know about these things anyways.

So anyways, turns out they are oh so pleased to invite me for their little shindig. There I was, less than half a day away from a recruitment exercise with possibly my future employers and I don’t have a clue how to begin to prepare for it.

As I tried to sort out a half decent, business looking outfit, I began to go through my mental list of companies I had recently applied to. After eliminating the impossible i.e. those from which I had already received the thank you but.....letters, I decided that it just had to be the test for a multinational I had applied to the previous week. I was quite certain about it, after all, my application essays were quite impressive if I did say so myself.

Fast forward to the next morning. I am up at 6am, and it is raining. Hard. Terrible drops of freezing cold water. Anyone who knows me well, knows that I absolutely despise being cold. I'd rather be sweating than freezing any day.

I got into the car and started my journey across town hoping the rain would soon calm down. It didn't. After a few wrong turns, I finally get to the place, 30 minutes late! Except it turned out I wasn't. I was actually an hour early. My test was actually scheduled for an hour and a half after I was told to be there. Sigh. So I am ushered along with a few other early birds to a waiting room, which is actually an outdoor parking space with a roof over it. It was more of a waiting space, than a room really. We are told to sit there, only there weren’t enough seats so most people had to stand. In the cold. While the rain continued to fall all around us. Then we waited, and waited, an hour then two, almost three hours after we got there, we were finally taken inside the testing centre. Then, we were informed just before the test that those of us who passed would be asked to wait behind for another test.

Fast forward again to an hour and some later, I am taken upstairs to another room along with four other people for the second stage which we find out is a practical test. More waiting, finally it’s time; we do a computer based test. Then of course, the waiting continued. At this stage my stomach is rumbling, I had foolishly decided not to have any breakfast, it was well past the fourteenth hour of the day and I was starving.

The other candidates and I bond and start to chat; actually it is more of a DISS-cussion as we complain about the terrible way in which the tests are being conducted, and how poorly planned and executed the whole exercise is. "Well" I say "At least it’s for a good cause. It'll be worth it if we end up with a job at that multinational company". There is a dead silence. Then my new friend in the gold neck scarf says, "Didn't you hear?”

"Hear what?" I ask. It turns out this test isn't for the multibillion dollar grossing multinational I think it is. It is for a GSM company seeking temporary contract staff to carry out SIM card registration exercises’ for six months. The pay is Fifty thousand naira a month, and the job so simple and routine that a Primary Six pupil could easily perform it, with minimal supervision after an hour of training.

I immediately develop a headache, which only worsens when the test instructor comes out to inform us that we will now be taken in for two separate interviews each, one at a time.

Two and a half hours later, I am finally on my way home, and as I sat in a four hour long traffic jam, trying hard to console myself for a full day wasted I thought to myself, oh well, at least I got to wear my favorite jacket.


Cheers.

By the way, I just received word that I got the job. I intend to turn down the offer.

Cheers, for real.