A few hours ago, as I was combing my unruly hair, pulling on my nice
slacks and finding a button up shirt, and otherwise preparing for my first job
interview ever, which happened to be at Sears, I was already anticipating
writing this daylog about how the interview went.
Unfortunately, I find myself able to choronicle only my lack of
said job interview.
I showed up at Sears about a half hour early, and asked the nearest employee
where the HR office was. The first thing I
noticed on the way there was that I was severely overdressed. All the employees
I saw were wearing dark shirts or sweaters and casual pants; I had elected to
wear black dress shoes and slacks, a short sleeve, button up shirt, and a black
tie. I spent most of the thirty minutes roaming around the store, feeling conspicuous and out
of place. I tried to fight off my sense
of impending awkwardness by reading the Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner boxes, but
failed.
When the time came, I walked into the HR office, and seeing no one who
appeared to be expecting me, told someone who didn't
that I was there for a job interview. He asked for my name, and checked a tray labeled
"First Interview." He couldn't find my file. The interview went
downhill from there. Not only had my file failed to make it to the
aforementioned tray, it had also failed to conveniently misplace itself in the
"Second Interview" tray; even more admirable was its complete and
utter failure to be found anywhere in the electronic system. I was asked to
wait outside, and did so for twenty minutes. Then the man who was helping me
came out and told me that they were having "printing problems," which
was encouraging, since I assumed that meant he had located my file. I waited
patiently for another ten minutes, and was rewarded with the printout of the
confirmation email that I had given to him earlier, plus a phone number and
instructions to call it the next day. Supposedly this will ensure that the HR
office is "better prepared" to interview me. This, combined with the
sight of many cashiers standing around doing a fat lot of nothing, made the entire experience rather disheartening.
Here's hoping that tomorrow's interview actually happens.
Update, March 21st, 2008: I called the HR Department as I was instructed. Apparently they had found my file, because they told me that they were not hiring seasonal employees for the summer. I'm pursuing other possibilities, such as
Target,
Toys R Us, the local
library,
Borders, and some others. I'm disappointed with Sears though. You'd think that their online application tool would be smart enough to not offer interviews to people that they can't hire.