Received the call at 11.30 am and was expected at the office at 3.00 pm,when they called me and told me about the boss wanted to talk to me today, I had to double confirm if they actually meant today, talk about last minute.
I reached the office at 3.00 pm sharp, after an hour transport, or as Google likes to call it, "34 minutes". The first time I went for the interview, the trip didn't feel as long, the only thing I remembered was that it was sweltering hot, so realizing that it would actually take an hour to reach the office was a bit of a buzzkill, just sitting in the bus, wondering...
"Are we there yet?"
... and learning that the journey isn't even at it's halfway mark. My motion sickness can only take so much before I have to throw up in my mouth and swallow everything back down.
If it was a direct bus, I would still be alright with it, it sucks to have to travel so far, but at least I don't have to worry about missing my transfer bus and having to wait another 10 minutes for the next one to arrive, with this trip, the transfer bus takes an average of 15 minutes to arrive and I do not ,and did not, enjoy waiting under the hot afternoon Sun. Every time I look for a job that is located a great distance away from home, I will make sure there is at least direct bus to make my journey smoother, this time however, I did not and that was a mistake.
As I entered the office upon reaching my destination, I pretended I didn't know where I should go and started asking the people around just for the sake of asking, my mouth was asking "Where?" but my legs were already bringing me towards the stairs leading up to the second storey.
The girl who called me took notice of me as I reach the second storey and directs me towards a meeting table where I was told to wait until the boss was ready to see me. I was expecting maybe a 5 to 10 minutes wait for the boss to quickly finish up whatever he was in the midst of doing, I was called to arrive at 3.00 pm, it's not ridiculous to assume that the boss would be ready to see me at 3.00 pm, if he needs a few minutes to prepare, then fine, take 5 to 10 minutes, every interview I had gone for, the interviews will always start on time, you ask to schedule the interview at 3.00 pm, at least be semi-ready when I arrive for my interview at 3.00 pm. I ended up waiting a whole half hour.
I actually thought they had forgotten about me at one point because I was literally left alone at the meeting table until 3.35 pm when the boss finally comes out from his office and heads to the toilet. The girl then comes up to me and leads me into the boss's office to wait for the boss to return from his toilet trip.
The boss finally returns back from his toilet trip after I had plopped my bag down on the chair next to me and he introduces himself to me, he informs me he of an annual employee review he was doing today and I guess that is the reason for the half an hour wait. I would have appreciated it if someone had told me about it instead of just asking me wait aimlessly for half an hour.
He asked me what I knew about Interior Design, what my expectations were and I don't think I gave him the answers he was looking for, I just told him what I had learned from ID3, the design process, the renovation process etc, I thought that by sharing all this knowledge with him, he would be impress by my understanding, since I was applying as an Entry level candidate, but instead he goes....
"Don't be so rigid. There's no such thing as a perfect renovation process. What will happen if the sub-contractor gets held up at his previous site, then what will you do? You have to be flexible when it comes to the renovation process."
.... Ummm....okay.
There were a lot of pauses during our conversation that made the whole interview feel very disjointed, he spoke Mandarin and I spoke English, it was quite hard communicating efficiently with him and I think every time I spoke to him in English, what he ended up doing was slowly translate whatever English I had said to him into Mandarin in his head, but the one thing I remember him telling me during the interview was...
"I actually asked for them to look for an experienced Interior Designer, I have no idea why they chose you. But it's alright, when I look at you, I see potential."
... after that revelation of realizing I'm not the ideal candidate they have been looking for, the idea of working for them suddenly felt uncomfortable.
If you are looking for an experienced designer, then hire an experienced designer, don't hire me and expect me to have the standard of an experienced designer, adjust your job as a "Junior Position" and not an "Entry Level" position. My main aim is to learn first and sell later, I want to learn the ropes and not be expected to know the ropes on my first day. The boss tells me to learn from the other designer, but I'm not going to be attached to anyone team leader until my second month, so I'm worried that he doesn't actually have a proper training program for people like me and I will end up be learning stuff from the junior designers.
I have been "trained" by these Junior Designers before and 100% of the time, it always ends in frustration because they can't provide a proper paced out training for fuck, the only things these "trainers" know who to say is either...
"No, this is wrong."
or
"Wrong, all wrong."
... tells me everything I do is wrong but never offers me a proper solution, if what I had found isn't exactly what they are looking for, it's considered wrong. Or even worst, gives me the wrong information without even realizing and make me waste my time searching for the wrong images.
When the boss tells me that I had potential, I felt like he was overestimating my abilities because that's not the feeling I got from ID3 when they fired me....
"Your trainer said she saw potential in you, that is why she chose you."
...and then she gave up on me and my contract got terminated 2 weeks later. Well, to be fair, it was the boss who told her that I didn't have what it takes, and from what I've heard from HR, my trainer did contemplate on continuing to train me further and give me a chance, but still ended up throwing in the towel.
Later I learnt what the boss really meant when he said I had potential was that my face had the potential to attract customers because I didn't look like a con-man who would cheat customers off their hard earned money, the face of innocence. It's not the potential to becoming a successful interior designer, it's just potential based purely on aesthetics.
As the interview was about to come to an end, he finally asks me when I would be able to start work, I wasn't really excited about the idea of working with them after our interview, I told him that tentatively, I would prefer to start on the 2nd of January, I have been looking for a job for a month now, so I was desperate to say yes. He tells me he wants me to confirm fast, preferably the end of today and inform the Hiring Manager of my decision, I thought that means he will give me time to think about it at home after the interview, but instead, he sends me to the Hiring Manager right after the interview to speak to her.
She was confused when I walked in with the boss, he explains to her that he was busy and couldn't really spend too much time with me, so she put her work aside, looked at me still a little confused and I gave her a brief summarisation of my interview with the boss. I wasn't ready to confirm with her about the job offer yet, but I told her my tentative starting date and as the conversation went on, I realize she was talking to me like I had already accepted the job, so I asked her if I have been confirmed, and she goes...
"Yeah, you have been confirmed."
... there goes my time to think about the offer. I was a bit flustered when I realize I had been confirmed, I didn't agree with the confirmation, but instead just went "Oh! Okay". Looking back, I probably should have asked to be given a bit more time to decide, but I wasn't really thinking at that moment, I felt relieve to finally be receiving a job offer when she told me I had been confirmed, but as I was on my way home in the bus, when that sense of relief starting to fade, I realize I wasn't actually happy with the job offer.
This would be my fourth attempt at trying to make this career work, my confidence level isn't exactly at it's highest right now, when I first decided to try to do Sales again, I was optimistic that this could work out, but after a round of quitting and another round of getting terminated, my optimism level is really at an all time low, especially after getting terminated.
I would like this to be my last attempt at trying to make this career as a Sales Designer work, so I want the next company I join to be the perfect one, I don't want to have doubts about it before I even join them, I want to be sure it will be able to offer me the best chance to flourish as an Interior Designer, so if it still doesn't work out in the end, at least I can tell myself, I have tried my best and move on without any doubts lingering at the back of my mind.
I was never interested in joining this company, prior to the interviews I had with them, it wasn't a company I was dying to be a part of, the vibe I'm getting from this company is very similar to the vibe I got from working at ID2.
ID2 was offering me a $1500.00 basic on top of a 20% commission, at that time, it was the most stable salary offered to me by all the companies I had interviewed at. I didn't really like the company and a lot of their design styles shown in their company portfolios are not my to my taste, but I decided to join them anyway because of their salary scheme and my first day ended up being the most regretful and dreadful experience.
This is very similar to what's going on with ID4 right now, nothing about the company attracts me, when I went for my first interview, for some reason, I already wanted out, until I was told of the 2 day work week schedule. I'm attracted to this company for all the wrong reasons and now that I have accepted the job offer, I'm starting to realize that this is probably a very bad move.
This would be my fourth attempt at trying to make this career work, my confidence level isn't exactly at it's highest right now, when I first decided to try to do Sales again, I was optimistic that this could work out, but after a round of quitting and another round of getting terminated, my optimism level is really at an all time low, especially after getting terminated.
I would like this to be my last attempt at trying to make this career as a Sales Designer work, so I want the next company I join to be the perfect one, I don't want to have doubts about it before I even join them, I want to be sure it will be able to offer me the best chance to flourish as an Interior Designer, so if it still doesn't work out in the end, at least I can tell myself, I have tried my best and move on without any doubts lingering at the back of my mind.
I was never interested in joining this company, prior to the interviews I had with them, it wasn't a company I was dying to be a part of, the vibe I'm getting from this company is very similar to the vibe I got from working at ID2.
ID2 was offering me a $1500.00 basic on top of a 20% commission, at that time, it was the most stable salary offered to me by all the companies I had interviewed at. I didn't really like the company and a lot of their design styles shown in their company portfolios are not my to my taste, but I decided to join them anyway because of their salary scheme and my first day ended up being the most regretful and dreadful experience.
This is very similar to what's going on with ID4 right now, nothing about the company attracts me, when I went for my first interview, for some reason, I already wanted out, until I was told of the 2 day work week schedule. I'm attracted to this company for all the wrong reasons and now that I have accepted the job offer, I'm starting to realize that this is probably a very bad move.
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