Hire Me

It’s that time of year where students scramble to find decent summer jobs, before summer sneaks up and it’s too late. It’s a bit awkward for us first year students trying to get jobs in our field, were all a little half-baked. Half of a program doesn’t mean a whole lot; most people don’t have much experience or skills to bring to the table. A summer job is more like a four month interview; you try not to make an idiot of yourself so they’ll consider hiring you when you’re actually useful to them.

I’m doing my share of scrambling. I turned down a job with ATCO because I don’t want to spend my summer in Grand Prairie. I had a job interview with Suncor last week and I’m really hoping to get it. I’d be working at what used to be the Petro Canada refinery near Sherwood Park. I would be working with a team of electrical techs making sure everything electrical in the plant is working and fixing anything that breaks. Myself and six other guys in the program are fighting over a single opening.

I think the interview went very well; I like to think I’m good at making an impression. I believe I have a good shot at getting it... I should know very soon if I did, maybe even tomorrow. I like to think my resume looks good, partly because I put Kung Fu related things on it. For instance I put down how I’m a black belt and martial arts instructor which demonstrates strong leadership. I even put down my participation in the UBBT programs which I threw down under the title of “Lifestyle Challenges”. I was hoping my interviewer would ask about them actually, he didn’t though, unfortunately, and the opportunity to talk about it didn’t really come up.

I did surprise myself a little when they were asking aptitude questions. One of the interviewers asked me to give an example of a time I had put in allot of effort into completing a large project. The first thing that popped into my head was the 1000 push-ups/sit-ups challenge we do on New Year’s Day. I explained how those participating don’t need to; we do it to challenge ourselves, to push our limits and try to do accomplish a simple goal that many would write off as unattainable. I told them how I set my mind on doing it. How even though I had a late start and was admittedly a bit hung-over, I set my goal, strategized how to get there, and kept with it. Even if I was still doing push-ups up till 11:00 o’clock at night it was all worth it just to get there.

So I used push-ups as an answer to a job interview question. I think I even managed to do it without sounding silly. How cool is that? I wait anxiously to hear from them, if I don’t get it I’ll have to get back to scrambling.