Went for my second round of interview with the recruitment agency sourced company yesterday and the interview was with the managing director of the company.
The interview itself went quite well, I was able to have a good chat with the MD and at the end of the interview, I honestly thought my chances of getting hired was quite high. Right after the interview, the recruitment agent gave me a call and asked me how the interview went, I told her the interview was very pleasant and the MD was a very nice guy, and when I went into this second round of interview, I knew there was another candidate also vying for the position, but aside from knowing that the other candidate is a girl, I knew nothing else aside from the fact that I had a 50/50 chance of being offered the position.
The agent then proceeded to share with me more information about the other girl and I ended up knowing how old she was and the amount of work experience she has, based on those information, I thought we both had pros and cons, my pro is that I have more work experience, my con is that I am much older, and hers vice versa, so it really boiled down to what the company really wanted, someone young that they can groom or someone with enough experience.
So it was really 50/50, that is until the recruitment agent told me that the girl had already went for her second round of interview last week and that I was only shortlisted because the company needed someone they can use to compare. To me, this just meant that I wasn't really considered a serious candidate, the company just needed me to make sure the girl they have probably already decided to hire was good enough.
I was still hopeful nonetheless after I learnt about all that, but then not even an hour later as I was having my lunch at Shake Shack, the thought of having to leave my current company suddenly felt all too real and I started hoping I wouldn't get picked for the position because I am not sure if I was ready to quit, I know I have to quit but to actually quit a company I have been a part of for 4 years and joining a completely new one just felt so overwhelming to me.
The recruitment agent sends me a text and tells me the company likes both me and the girl, but they will require a day to make their decision, so I was going to know the decision by the next day, which was so much earlier than I had expected. If I was offered the position, I will definitely take it, that means I will have to tell my manager I am going to resign, that all the leads I have gotten will need to be updated and passed to another designers, and that all the projects that I still haven't gotten paid yet will have to be settled, I have to make sure I can get a clean break from my current company within the next 2 weeks.
I could hardly sleep last night because the thought of really quitting kept running through my mind, I kept looking at the time until I did eventually fall asleep at about 3am, I woke up at 7am and was not able to fall back to sleep, I wanted 10.30am to come soon so I could know the company's decision.
The morning pass and I did not get any updates, a part of me thought maybe I had already been selected and the agent was busy negotiating my salary, then late afternoon comes around and still no updates, at this point, it just felt like it is taking a little too long for a salary negotiating, that maybe I have been rejected and the agent just didn't know how the break the news to me.
Evening comes by and finally I get a text from the agent and from the notification, I saw the word...
"bad news" and ":("
... in the message, I immediately knew what that meant, and I just felt relieved. I shouldn't be relieve, I should be upset that I didn't get the job, but I was relieved, like a weight was lifted off my shoulders.
I told her I was half expecting to get rejected for the position after learning I was only picked to be a comparison model for the other candidate and she told me she didn't expect that to be the outcome at all, I felt like I was the one trying to console her for not getting the job because I am feeling relieve and not disappointment.
It might take a while for the disappointment to kick in, because the scope of the position itself was something I was genuinely interested in as it was a mish mash of different job scopes from marketing to sales to basic space planning, but alas, my age probably devalued me a little.
Welp, here is hoping HDB will reach out for an interview because I am looking for stability and there is nothing more stable than working in the government sector. although I believe that stability will also come with the dread of the daily grind.
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