I've been dissatisfied with my current job for a while now (since about a day after I started) so last month I thought I would throw my CV into the job site stratosphere and see what would happen. Like a chip landing on the grass by the seaside, it was attacked by a hoard of squawking
seagulls recruiters. My ego certainly got a boost on that first day; they had all just about convinced me I was the hottest Java developer the world had ever seen (which I'm not).
After the initial flurry of activity things quietened down, until last Friday when I got a chase up call from one of the
seagulls recruiters asking if I was still available. A mobile banking company had just relocated some of their development team from London in order to save a bit of money. After the lack of recent interest I was caught a little bit by surprise, and without stopping to think about it, had accepted a request for a phone interview at midday the following Monday.
And then my
lizard brain kicked into gear. Every time I thought of the interview over the weekend my lizard brain would have me convinced it was a terrible idea to change my life: “Your job really isn't
that bad.” “You're not going to be good enough for this new company.” “Don't go through with it, you're just going to make a d*@k of yourself.” Even though the outcome of the interview had no real bearing or consequence on my life, I was doing my best to psych myself out.
By the time midday Monday rolled around I'd managed to work up a little bit of confidence, and during the initial chit chat I thought I was actually doing quite well. “Hell yeah,” I thought, “I think I might even know more than him.” But it soon became evident that my interview skills were desperately lacking. The technical questions came - thick, fast and difficult - and by the end of the interview about the only question I'd managed to answer correctly was “Is that Anthony? Do you pronounce the
h in your name?”
Question after question, I choked. My mind had turned to Mr Whippy ice-cream. I stumbled, I stuttered, I ummed and ahhed. I could picture him laughing on the other end of the line, I could see him calling the rest of his colleagues into his office and to join in the fun, struggling to contain the fits of laughter at the answers being heard over speaker phone. Everything that my lizard brain had warned me of, everything that I dreaded, was coming true. It was smirking ‘I told you so.’
But then I began to smile. Something clicked inside me and I began to realise that it didn't matter in the slightest, because what did I actually have riding on this interview? Nothing. What had I lost by stepping up and going through with it? Nada. In fact, I had gained, because not only had I learnt (again) that I should brush up on some technical details before an interview in future, but I had begun to see the world a little differently. Even if only briefly, the experience had removed my mind from the recent fixation on my career, and I was thinking about other things, like how some of my answers were so terrible they were funny, and that the weather was brilliant and summer was on the way. I relaxed and enjoyed the rest of the morning. I felt good. Happy. Not bad for someone who had just butchered a job interview.
So what's the moral of the story? Try not to take things so seriously, because chances are whatever it is that you're worrying about doesn't really matter. Your lizard brain is constantly trying to get the better of you, to keep your life the same. Block it out. And be sure to have a laugh at yourself whenever you can.
