So, let's do this ab ovo style. I found an ad on profession.hu about 2 and a half months ago, in which they were seeking applicants for a junior HR position. Last year, I talked to a recruiter who told me to always follow up on my application by calling the recruitment agency, and I decided to call them rightaway this time. I said I wasn't sure whether I should apply because I would only move back to Hungary later (this was a good excuse to talk to the consultant that was responsible for the position) and she said that I should send my CV to her anyway. Next week, I called her again to ask whether she had the chance to read it and we scheduled a personal interview for a couple of weeks later, when I was back in Hungary. Then, a week later, the same recruitment agency posted an ad, which said that they were looking for someone to join their team and once again, I called the consultant I had talked to before. She said that since I was going to meet her anyway, we can talk about that position, too.
The day of the interview was a cold, rainy and windy day. By the time I got to their office, my hair was a total mess, as if I was applying for the position of a scarecrow. Anyway, the girl I talked to on the phone seemed very interested in everything I said and after about half an hour, she said that she would like me to talk to someone else. She left the room and she returned with a tall, handsome, very neatly dressed guy who wore a huge smile on his face. He shook my hand, looked in my eyes and asked: Hoe gaat het? I was so surprised I could hardly answer. Goed, en met jou? This was the boss. We had a nice conversation in English, at the end of which he said that he would like me to meet a couple of other people in the office. I told the girl who initially interviewed me that I was going to go home in 2 days, so it would be best to get this over with as soon as possible and she immediately organized 3 other interviews: with the other boss, a team leader and the office manager. I left the office tired but I had a good feeling about how it all went.
In the following weeks, I mainly had e-mail contact with the company. Let's call them RA (recruitment agency). One week before I moved home, I had a phone interview with the guy who was going to be my team leader and I met him in person the day after I moved home. That was the toughest interview. I was lucky that I had a good night of sleep the night before because otherwise, I would have been likely to freak out at some of his professional questions. We had a nice conversation, nevertheless, and I had to wait for a day for The Phonecall. I was so happy I had to call Jani, my mother and Irma immediately after we hung up.
You know everything about the week after that, which is when we went skiing. We returned Wednesday evening and I was already in the RA office the morning after. Paperwork, training, introductions, information overflow. People were nice and I joined the girls from my team for lunch. Ever since the first day, I've been following a "yes" strategy, that is, I say yes to pretty much everything. Would you like to write that report for X.Y.? Yes. Would you like to call this person? Yes. Would you like to join us for lunch? Yes. Would you like to join us for a cigarette? Yes. It's been working out great. I learn a lot, I work a lot and I socialize a lot. The best combination.
I love the job. There are a variety of things I have to do: call people, talk to them about their professional background and their plans, browse databases for CV-s, interview people (from next week on), write reports about applicants whom I observed during interviews, administration. I do get very tired by the end of the day, but it's nice that I don't have to spend the whole day in front of a computer or the whole day talking, because it's a mix. And with the nice vibes we have in the office, I really feel very good in this role and this environment.
I think this is approximately how deep I can go into this topic because I signed a very strict contract of confidentiality, which can get me totally screwed if I share confidential information about how we do our job. So, I won't. In any case, it's interesting to sit on the other side of the desk at an interview and to browse CV-s for specific skills and background. It's tiring, it requires full concentration, but the feeling of meeting a good candidate, writing a nicely phrased report or finding a CV just like what you were looking for is very rewarding. The small pleasures of this job.
Saturday, 10 July 2010
Saturday, 3 July 2010
Hintertux rulez
I learnt that I had a new job on Tuesday and I had about a week till the day I had to start. Jani was still working for a day and his new project also started on July 1, so he too had a break and we decided to do something nice that week. It was his idea to go to ski. See, some of the glaciers in Austria are open throughout the summer, we did some research and decided that Hintertux was THE place to ski during the summer. I found a nice little B&B very close by the ski lift, with a view of the mountains and the glacier, called to make a reservation and we were set to go.
The area was gorgeous. The tiny town was 1500 m above sea level and the 3 main ski lifts took us 3200 m high. In the valley, it was completely summer, 20-25 degrees (you can imagine how we felt dressed up in our ski gear...), and around 2400 m high, you started to see patches of snow around you. From 2600 m on, pretty much everything was covered in snow, a lot of it melting (that's why there were so many pretty streams and waterfalls lower down the mountain), but it was snow indeed. On the top of the mountain, the temperature was between 2 and 6 degrees, depending on the weather and the sunshine was blindening. You wouldn't survive without sunglasses and strong sunscreen.
The first lesson I learnt about skiing during the summer is that sunscreen only works if you use it. And use it right. The first morning, I smeared the (factor 30) sunscreen across my face, paying special attention to my nose and my cheeckbones - those get sunburnt very easily. What I did not pay any attention to at all was my hairline, my ears and my neck. This was a total disaster. You feel the strength of the sun, but while you ski the wind cools you down, so it's not that unpleasant. By the time we got back, I collected the most horrendous burns, especially on my neck. The area turned purple (instead of red), then my skin started to dry out completely and wrinkle up, then it turned brown and it really started to resemble a rhino's skin. All that accompanied by lots and lots of pain. Well, that was a good lesson for the first day and of course, it still hasn't healed completely. Any time I touch my face, my neck or my ear, my skin literally falls off.
Besides the burns, it was fantastic, of course! Coming from the summer to the winter in half an hour is an exceptional feeling, especially if you can then ski the whole day. Well, not exactly the whole day, and that was the second lesson. I did do my research about skiing on glaciers and one of the things I read was that most of the time, you are not really able to ski after 2 p.m. due to the worsening snow conditions, i.e. the snow starts to melt and it's not that pleasant to ski on melting snow. From the second day on, we had breakfast at 7.30 so that we could spend as much time on the pistes as possible.
One thing I really loved was that there were so few people, as opposed to what you see at a popular ski region during the winter. No crowd whatsoever. Jani made the observation that there were only great skiers around us, and that, besides making us feel slightly inadequate, was entirely true. Most people on the slopes were professional skiers and children training to be professionals, doing their summer training. The Eastern block was very well represented: Bulgaria, Serbia, Ukraine, Russia, Poland (at least their ski suits said so), but there were also people from the US, Spain, Switzerland and Germany. Of the few people who were not professionals, we met a father and son from Hawaii who were on a Euro trip and wanted to do a couple of days of skiing in the meantime. Quite cool.
The sun was shining consistently, except on the second day. It was cloudy, the mountain caught a cloud and it just wouldn't let go of it. The snow blended in with the cloud, we had no idea where we were and you could see as far as 5 m in front of you. It was total whiteout. (I'm not sure whether you can call it a whiteout if it's not snowing plus the storm etc., but it was pretty much a whiteout - you couldn't see a thing.) 5 m when you are standing still is okay, but when you are skiing down a mountain... it's bad. When I was learning to drive, my instructor told me that "blind driving" is forbidden, that is, you have to be able to stop the car within the distance that you can see. So, if it's foggy, you have to adjust your speed to the extent that you would be able to stop within those let's say 50 m that you can see. This was almost impossible skiing downhill. 5 m is not enough to do anything, and Jani being bold and stuff just skied down pretty much with his usual speed, and I lost him immediately.
One thing that demonstrates that we didn't see anything is the story of how we wanted to slide from one drag lift to the other that day. There were 2 drag lifts on the two sides of a valley and, in theory, it would have been possible to just let your skis run when you were skiing down one side of the valley and end up at the other drag lift, which was, let's say 50 m far from the other one. In complete whiteness, you don't just let your skis run until you realize that it's really safe to do so, and by that time it was too late and we had to put some effort into getting to the other lift and we had to start walking (or "ski-skating", doing those skating-like movements on skis) on the flat terrain. We had an approximate idea of where the other lift was, so we passed the first lift, turned a bit to the left and started ski-skating. We saw nothing. We didn't even hear a thing from that direction. After a while, we stopped, started turning into all directions to try and listen to noises. Jani said that he can hear it, and as we went in that direction, the sound of the source was getting closer. Aaaaaand... we ended up at the first ski lift! We were so disoriented that we just walked straight back or in a circle or I've no idea how but we ended up where we started.
But the rest of the days were sunny and gorgeous, we walked around a bit, took lots of pictures, had some food outside, stood right in front of a big waterfall etc., so it was nice and we were exhausted by the end of every single day. It was a great, therapeutic holiday. I came home and I felt a bit out of place, the change was too sudden, but going away with Jani for a week, just enjoying each others' company and having fun together got me back on track and coming home after that really felt like coming Home. And once in a while, or quite often, actually, I was thinking about July 1, my first day at work, and a nice kind of excitement spread over me, an anticipation of what it was going to be like to go to work, meet the colleagues, learn all the things I need to learn and all the rest... That's what the next tale is going to be about! Good night, children!
The area was gorgeous. The tiny town was 1500 m above sea level and the 3 main ski lifts took us 3200 m high. In the valley, it was completely summer, 20-25 degrees (you can imagine how we felt dressed up in our ski gear...), and around 2400 m high, you started to see patches of snow around you. From 2600 m on, pretty much everything was covered in snow, a lot of it melting (that's why there were so many pretty streams and waterfalls lower down the mountain), but it was snow indeed. On the top of the mountain, the temperature was between 2 and 6 degrees, depending on the weather and the sunshine was blindening. You wouldn't survive without sunglasses and strong sunscreen.
The first lesson I learnt about skiing during the summer is that sunscreen only works if you use it. And use it right. The first morning, I smeared the (factor 30) sunscreen across my face, paying special attention to my nose and my cheeckbones - those get sunburnt very easily. What I did not pay any attention to at all was my hairline, my ears and my neck. This was a total disaster. You feel the strength of the sun, but while you ski the wind cools you down, so it's not that unpleasant. By the time we got back, I collected the most horrendous burns, especially on my neck. The area turned purple (instead of red), then my skin started to dry out completely and wrinkle up, then it turned brown and it really started to resemble a rhino's skin. All that accompanied by lots and lots of pain. Well, that was a good lesson for the first day and of course, it still hasn't healed completely. Any time I touch my face, my neck or my ear, my skin literally falls off.
Besides the burns, it was fantastic, of course! Coming from the summer to the winter in half an hour is an exceptional feeling, especially if you can then ski the whole day. Well, not exactly the whole day, and that was the second lesson. I did do my research about skiing on glaciers and one of the things I read was that most of the time, you are not really able to ski after 2 p.m. due to the worsening snow conditions, i.e. the snow starts to melt and it's not that pleasant to ski on melting snow. From the second day on, we had breakfast at 7.30 so that we could spend as much time on the pistes as possible.
One thing I really loved was that there were so few people, as opposed to what you see at a popular ski region during the winter. No crowd whatsoever. Jani made the observation that there were only great skiers around us, and that, besides making us feel slightly inadequate, was entirely true. Most people on the slopes were professional skiers and children training to be professionals, doing their summer training. The Eastern block was very well represented: Bulgaria, Serbia, Ukraine, Russia, Poland (at least their ski suits said so), but there were also people from the US, Spain, Switzerland and Germany. Of the few people who were not professionals, we met a father and son from Hawaii who were on a Euro trip and wanted to do a couple of days of skiing in the meantime. Quite cool.
The sun was shining consistently, except on the second day. It was cloudy, the mountain caught a cloud and it just wouldn't let go of it. The snow blended in with the cloud, we had no idea where we were and you could see as far as 5 m in front of you. It was total whiteout. (I'm not sure whether you can call it a whiteout if it's not snowing plus the storm etc., but it was pretty much a whiteout - you couldn't see a thing.) 5 m when you are standing still is okay, but when you are skiing down a mountain... it's bad. When I was learning to drive, my instructor told me that "blind driving" is forbidden, that is, you have to be able to stop the car within the distance that you can see. So, if it's foggy, you have to adjust your speed to the extent that you would be able to stop within those let's say 50 m that you can see. This was almost impossible skiing downhill. 5 m is not enough to do anything, and Jani being bold and stuff just skied down pretty much with his usual speed, and I lost him immediately.
One thing that demonstrates that we didn't see anything is the story of how we wanted to slide from one drag lift to the other that day. There were 2 drag lifts on the two sides of a valley and, in theory, it would have been possible to just let your skis run when you were skiing down one side of the valley and end up at the other drag lift, which was, let's say 50 m far from the other one. In complete whiteness, you don't just let your skis run until you realize that it's really safe to do so, and by that time it was too late and we had to put some effort into getting to the other lift and we had to start walking (or "ski-skating", doing those skating-like movements on skis) on the flat terrain. We had an approximate idea of where the other lift was, so we passed the first lift, turned a bit to the left and started ski-skating. We saw nothing. We didn't even hear a thing from that direction. After a while, we stopped, started turning into all directions to try and listen to noises. Jani said that he can hear it, and as we went in that direction, the sound of the source was getting closer. Aaaaaand... we ended up at the first ski lift! We were so disoriented that we just walked straight back or in a circle or I've no idea how but we ended up where we started.
But the rest of the days were sunny and gorgeous, we walked around a bit, took lots of pictures, had some food outside, stood right in front of a big waterfall etc., so it was nice and we were exhausted by the end of every single day. It was a great, therapeutic holiday. I came home and I felt a bit out of place, the change was too sudden, but going away with Jani for a week, just enjoying each others' company and having fun together got me back on track and coming home after that really felt like coming Home. And once in a while, or quite often, actually, I was thinking about July 1, my first day at work, and a nice kind of excitement spread over me, an anticipation of what it was going to be like to go to work, meet the colleagues, learn all the things I need to learn and all the rest... That's what the next tale is going to be about! Good night, children!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
