I was speaking with a friend yesterday and the conversation swung around to life’s most embarrassing moments. You know those times that with the passing of the years remain with you as clear as day? Those crystal clear moments like the sick feeling in the pit of your stomach when you realized too late what you’d said or done?
In the spirit of sharing and with the intent of warning you not to follow my example, I’ll share two of my most embarrassing career moments that a bit of pre-thinking and preparedness could have prevented.
The first: My first job after I’d graduated. I’d blitzed the interview and returned home cheerily optimistic. My best friend at the time said that she’d call to see how it all went so when the phone rang, I assumed it would be her. A haughty, falsetto voice said “Miss V? This is X Company here”. Laughing out loud, I said “Sure Anna! You can change your voice all you like but I know it’s you”. “No”, this laughable voice replied sounding more like Miss Piggy by the second “This is X Company advising you that you have the position”. Filled with teenage giggly immaturity and a healthy dose of dumb, I laughed. “Nobody has a voice like THAT Anna!” I said to my shame when the lady then chose to convince me by offering the name of the man who had just interviewed me–something my friend Anna would never know. My stomach churned. How could I recover? Instantly I was transformed Ha-de-haha Gayle to serious, polite and mousy Gayle. “Oh thank you” I mumbled having difficulty removing the foot from my mouth! Goodness knows what that woman thought, but I know I worked it over in my head a million times and my face went red just thinking of it. Moral to the story: never mess around on the phone when you’re job hunting.
My second “wasn’t prepared” story. Fast forward many many years later. Lack of political savvy to read the current business environment and identify a master manipulator with her eyes set on my job, left me first vulnerable to attack, and then out of job! Quickly securing an interview, I was confident and self-assured. I was good and knew it — no matter how much my ego had taken a belting and I’d been undermined. The interview was going to plan until the zinger question was left until last. “So” said the interviewer coldly “I’ve been speaking to your last employer. He told me what happened”. My stomach turned over and my mouth went dry. What had he learned? What had he said? I muttered something vague about two sides to every story before the interview quickly came to a close with me feeling shocked, angry, and teary. Why hadn’t I thought that in the same industry, the employer would check when receiving my resume? Why wasn’t I prepared? Why didn’t I have a confident, assured response at the ready for when this inevitably came up? Moral to the story: never arrive at interview without thoroughly preparing yourself with answers to questions that may be asked.
None of us can ever prevent life’s embarrassments or spare ourselves from those flashbacks that fail to dim with age. But in the job seeking world, you can most certainly limit the opportunities by thinking in advance of what awaits.
