We’ve all been there. Sitting in front of that ominous symbol of discontent and emotional reckoning in the form of a man(or woman) who staring at us from across that hardwood mahogany table assaults us with a barrage of nerve wrecking questions, determined to make us give in so that victory shall his alone

Still haven’t guessed what I’m hinting at? Well, folks I’m talking about that very memorable first part time job interview and I’m about to give you a rundown of my very first job interview as an international student here in Canada.

Okay so where I come from, people between the ages of 15-22 don’t normally work at all .So when I heard that there was an upcoming career fair in my neighbourhood I wasn’t the most excited of people. Nevertheless I still had to give it a shot since I needed a job.

The day started out pretty well. I had spent the night before reading up internet articles on “how to appear confident during your first interview”” “ten interviewer-interview questions for first timers” and “JerseyShore-news, video and gossip”.Don‘t judge me.

Anyways I had just about one more piece of information that I had to go through to fully prepare myself for the interview and that was the companies background information (anyone who’s applied for a job before know that the employer expects you to know the details about where you’re applying to).Unfortunately I was running out of time (I’m a slow eater), so I just printed a copy of that and tagged it into my jacket pocket. Next I opened the door to my house, only to be welcomed by the cold hard embrace of a snowstorm! Here’s the funny part…it was supposed to be a non white-early spring in Ottawa up until today that is. I sucked it up however and stepped into the great white terrain. On the bus I realized that somewhere along the way I had dropped that important piece of paper I was supposed to review. With that in mind I decided to go with what I already knew.

I got to the building where I was supposed to have my interview. The guy at the front desk handed me an application form and asked me to fill it up. Halfway through that I put my hand in my pants pocket in order to retrieve my cell phone so I could get an ex-employers reference number from it. Only to realize that it wasn’t there. I had lost it somewhere along the way! At that point I was pretty much just about to give up and run off. I however once again managed to not do that (since the snowstorm outside wasn’t clearly going anywhere). After finishing the application made my way towards my interviewee who happened to be nice old lady, aged 40 or so by the looks of her. I was pretty sure I would do badly since my mind was still worrying about my lost phone was. But as I sat down and started talking I couldn’t help but not think about it. Suffice to say my interview went better than I expected apart from a couple of verbal bumps here and there. I also got a good “thumbs up” from the woman who judging from her constant bursts of laughter found me pretty entertaining.

At the end of the day I managed to turn a potential bad day into a good one. And I think I have a solid of getting a call-back..now if only I had given them my home number instead