Progress?

Want to hear how Friday's interviews went? Well, I set off early for the first one and it took me a full 1.5 hours to get there - walk, train, bus, walk. I had applied for two positions with the organisation and they seemed to like me but it turns out the pay was less than I thought and the hours are longish: 9-10 hour shifts. I've decided it's not going to be worth it to spend 3 hours a day commuting for that job.

However, my afternoon interview, which was within easy walking distance, was more promising. It was in a very nice downtown office with a company that does the 'Private' part of Public-Private Partnerships - i.e. they are an investor, developer and operator of public infrastructure such as hospitals, universities, courts, roads etc. The job is senior administrative assistant and part of the job description mentioned putting together presentations and running AV equipment. And I thought, why don't I show them I know those things? So the day before, I whipped up a PowerPoint presentation about why the job appealed to me and about my relevant knowledge, skills and experience. They have a website so I decided to use their company logo and colours for my slide templates. I emailed my friend Jiana who is a graphic designer in NZ and she did a fantastic job of putting together a template with the colours exactly matched and the logo just right, and emailed it back to me within a couple of hours! Thanks Jiana!! So I took my laptop along and asked the woman who interviewed me if I could show her the presentation and she was happy for me to do so. It was only about 6 slides long and I included some photos from previous projects and they were useful for generating discussion.

The interview seemed to go really well. I was reasonably relaxed and we got along well. The woman said that the previous interviewees hadn't even looked up their website, let along knew anything about their projects, a couple of which I discussed with her (it pays to do your homework!!). There are some great perks with the job, like the fact that the standard amount of annual leave in Canada is 2 weeks, but because one of the bosses is Australian, they all get 4 weeks! They socialise together a lot and have Pilates classes once a week that they all attend (funnily enough, on Fridays just like I was doing back at home!). I'm pretty hopeful of getting a second interview and she told me that if I get another offer in the meantime, to give them a call and they'll see if they could speed things up for me at their end.

We did have a discussion about how their one concern would be about me being on a working visa. I am getting really tired of hearing that - it seems like any kind of professional roles are out of reach of those of us on a visa. Travellers with degrees and several years professional experience are working in cafes, shops, bars etc because that's all they can get here. And yet the cost of living is so high that you end up just scraping by and not saving anything. If I miss out on this job because of being on a visa, I'm going to think seriously about heading home sooner rather than later and just trying to get a couple of months temp work in the meantime. I don't think I have any unrealistic expectations about getting a dream job or anything, and I've already simplified my resume and targetted admin-type roles. So, we'll see what happens.

It rained all weekend so I didn't do a whole lot. I went out for a 'rain walk' on Saturday morning and was surprised how many other people were out walking and running in the rain. But i guess if you don't like rain, you won't like Vancouver because it gets so much of it. People are just used to it.

Last night I caught a bus across the city and met up with Kylie and her roommates. We went to a movie and then back to their place for a roast chicken dinner - yum!! They are all Aussie girls and I had to put up with a bit of stick for being a Kiwi! All their rooms looked just like mine - bare apart from a bed, computer, maybe one piece of furniture, and a suitcase in the corner spilling its contents onto the floor. Ah, the travelling life, eh?

Positions applied for: still 23. Interviews: 3. Job offers: 0.