This is a guest blog by Hay Brunsdon who graduated from Royal Holloway last year with a degree in English and Drama. Not only is she a talented wordsmith, but also a skilled raconteur and all-round entertainer (probably why we get on so well, actually. Similar). Here she shares her interview experience at an ad agency, where she was going for the position of copywriter.
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Definition of 'Interview':
n. A meeting of people face to face (he scarcely looked at me).
v. An oral examination of an applicant for a job (he asked no questions whatsoever).
Things started badly when I somehow managed to force my way in through the layman’s entrance.
The man that interviewed me had shoved his head so far up his own proverbial that he had lost all ability to make eye contact with other inhabitants of the universe. After flinging some copy-tests at me, he dashed out of the room and only returned an hour later to gleefully circle my spelling mistakes, and promptly force me to flick through his ‘award winning’ portfolio like a precocious child manically bragging in an extended game of Show and Tell. He did not take kindly when I pointed out that since his involvement in DIY Focus’s marketing campaign, they had in fact gone bust.
The décor consisted of gentleman club-esque easy chairs mixed with hot pink lampshades that would not look out of place in Oceana (albeit, not quite classy enough to furnish one of their VIP areas.) Gaudy purple chintz chairs, and tacky wallpaper depicting an old fashioned bookshelf, desperately tried to distract one’s eye from the chandelier that was stencilled onto the wall. All it needed was a chaise longue in order to be an exact replica of Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen’s boudoir (though, maybe without the luxury of a Changing Room’s budget.) Now, pair all this with the interviewer’s ‘fun’/garish golfing jumper and is it really a wonder that I became dizzy with a migraine 10 minutes in? … And thus mistakenly wrote 'advise' instead of 'advice.'
The office was a dizzying labyrinth of questionable colour schemes and even more baffling egocentric characters; how DID such losers get to be so arrogant?! Irrelevant ‘buzz words’ were scrawled angrily over the walls; ‘from humdrum to humdinger’ inspires about as much creativity as watching paint dry. Yeah, so, that was great to aid me with writing my copy test – a spam letter on behalf of Halifax Halifax
The whole interview/ordeal made me realise that I am far better at gabbling away on the phone to people instead of trying to penetrate their disinterested force field through the medium of writing. (Do bear in mind that I was accidentally racist the last time I was required to speak to another human being in a corporate environment. Sorrrrrry!)
N.B. The opinions expressed in this blog are not necessarily shared by gainfullyunemployed inc., particularly those in reference to Laurence Llewelyn Bowen. This was a man who pulled himself back from the brink of a debilitating trompe l'oeil addiction, in which his family would often find him lying in a puddle of his own scumble-glaze, stippling brush still in hand. For this, he deserves our utmost respect.
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