I haven’t quite caught my story up to where I am today yet in terms of anecdotes, but I managed to forge one this very day, and thought it would nice to strike while the iron is hot in terms of memory. After all, I’m not as mentally spry as I was when I was twenty! That probably has something to do with a substance that we Americans are finally allowed to imbibe during our twenty first year, but I’m not a doctor.

Today I woke up at the crack of 10:30, and immediately checked my email. It’s a habit I have gotten into. I open my eyes, get really excited that maybe someone wants me to work for them, check and see if that is the case, then lie in bed goofing off on my smartphone for another ten minutes while convincing myself that living life is worth it, and spending the rest of it in bed would just be a very slow suicide. After ten minutes I have usually worked up the courage to put my feet on the floor, take a shower, dress myself, make coffee, eat breakfast, drink the coffee, and descend to the ever frigid dungeon that is… my den of unemployment.

The thing that made today’s email checking worth mentioning is that I had received an email from the media group currently known as Dentsu Aegis! I was invited to do a video interview. It’s not the same as a video call interview which would be scheduled, and would likely occur via Skype with a person talking to me. It’s just a few questions that they wanted me to answer as if I was being interviewed. So, it’s not as if I was looking at an opportunity to flex one of my only employable skills (schmoozing), but at least I knew that this video had to be viewed and sorted by a human.

Since I could guarantee that this video would be looked at by a person, and not some resume automaton, it was important to be prepared. I had an opportunity to make an impression, and I was not going to waste it! So, I looked up some interview questions, and rehearsed my answer for each one three or four times. I would recommend anyone who knows they will be doing an interview to engage in at least that much rehearsal.

Sometimes when I say things, I really wish I could take them back. Sometimes I think of something to say that would have been just a tiny bit better, and feel like I blew everything. I did NOT want to wish that, or feel that after this video interview. So I practiced. Out loud. Using my computer to record the video and play it back to me. That way I could watch myself being a bumbling buffoon a few times, before drooling out some semblance of coherent and professional sounding thought.

Now to mention my recently aquired passion for fashion. I like to tell my friends who ask me why I dress the way I do, ‘I always want to look the way I would want to look if I were to meet the love of my life today. Cause that could happen!’ But dressing for my ‘maybe someday’ life partner is not the same as dressing for my ‘maybe someday’ business partner. Jeans, a flannel, and shoes were not going to cut it. I’ll write about business professional fashion in another post, but for now, just think of the TV show, ‘Suits,’ and you’ll get the picture. Don’t watch it? Well what the hell do you think they wear?

Yeah.

Suits.

There are a lot of articles about how to prepare for an interview, but one thing which I firmly believe about interviews, but have absolutely no proof for, is that once you are a part of the interviewing process, one of the most important factors of whether or not the person on the other side of the table hires you is whether or not they like you. It’s like how people are more likely to vote for the presidential candidate with whom they believe they would more like to have a beer. Replace ‘people’ with ‘hiring managers’, ‘vote’ with ‘hire’, and ‘presidential’ with ‘job’, and I am pretty sure that sentence tells you everything you need to know about an interview. The trick is in the balance.

In my video interview I made sure to look directly at the camera even though it felt like looking into the soul of a machine, smile despite there being no one to share the smile with, and inflect tone into my voice which was meant to demonstrate a level of comfort which I simply did not feel. Fake it till you make it. Right?

In general, I think the recording went ok. It was only four questions long, but it was a good showing of some of the reasons that a marketing agency should hire a guy like me. That is, a determination to be a member of the Bourgeoisie.

Unfortunately, the interview asked me what my favorite excel function is. I know that excel is a really important tool for doing business, and I know that I should learn it, but I haven’t yet. My response to the question?

‘This is the part of the interview during which I unfortunately must inform you that I do not possess the level of Microsoft Excel proficiency which you are looking for in a candidate for entry level employment. So, I would have to say that my favorite Excel function is SUM, because it is the one that I know. However, I do not believe the challenge of learning Excel to be so daunting that it is beyond my capacity to overcome it, and I will happily prove that to be the case if given the opportunity.’

You can’t always tell the world what to throw at you, but you can almost always decide how you are going to catch it.