After New Year’s Day, things started to look up a bit. I got a phone call from a cost accountant at a company I had applied to. He told me that he was impressed with my resume and we had a 20 minute conversation over the phone. The company he was with was a manufacturing firm that produced fixtures and other components. They needed another cost accountant for the company. Over the phone, I told him that I had two years of work experience in non accounting jobs. While I wasn’t an accountant, I did have some experience using accounting software, reconciling balances, and sending payments. He was eager to set up an interview with me and I was happy to go. After I got off the phone, I looked through my records to identify the company and position I applied to. I was excited to see the position paid from $45000 to $55000.
I put on my suit and drove out to the work site a week later. That day, I was interviewed by three or four people of the staff there. I did my best to engage everyone of the staff members and asked really good questions. What were the day to day activities? Why was the position needed? What sort of software would I be using? How have employees been successful at the company? Was the company growing and expanding? I also answered all of their questions and told them how I took control of a few teams back in college and delivered good results. I told them I was a dedicated worker and was eager to learn how to become an accountant. By the end of the day, I had my hopes up but I knew it would be foolish to stop looking for work and wait to be accepted or rejected. I was proud of the fact that it was the first time I had ever been considered for an accounting position.
During the same week, I was contacted by a different company. The position was of a property tax manager and the job paid between $45000 to $55000. Again I was excited because I had never had a chance to make so much money before. The position wasn’t necessarily accounting related but it did require doing a lot of data manipulation and analysis. The ladies there told me that it was routine to receive large amounts of data and then manipulate the data into pivot tables in order to produce different calculations. Producing pivot tables was on part of the interview that hurt me because I had never made them before in spreadsheets. I did tell them that I was eager to learn and that I could pick up the skill pretty fast. During the same format, I interviewed with either three or four people that day. They proceeded to ask me the stock questions. Do you work well alone or in teams? How do you work under pressure? Are you good with meeting deadlines? Where do you see yourself in five years? Once again, I had to put on a show for them and tell them that I did work well in teams, perform well under pressure, and had the ambitions of perhaps getting advanced certifications in the future. It was so exhausting that by the time I met with the boss of the company, I just wanted to get out of there and go home. I asked him maybe three or four questions and he showed me the door. The ladies told me that myself and the other prospective candidates would be invited to a lunch to better get to know us. After the lunch, they would decide who to bring on aboard.
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