Getting a job in the UK - at 18 years old (Part 3)

It's been another week since my last post on the blog where I told you I had two interviews to attend. Take a look at that post here. I am actually over the moon as I passed both interviews! Granted these were not extremely competitive positions but there are jobs out there guys and gals!

I actually ended up having both interviews scheduled for the same day, the one I really wanted being the job at the bus tour company job (I shan't be mentioning the same as I don't want to make out that I am in any way representing the company).

Before the interview there was a presentation from the employers getting down to the nitty-gritty of the job and it soon became obvious to me that although the pay was VERY good, this would be a lot of hard work. There are 8.30am starts which means getting up at 6am, 9pm finishes which means getting home around 10.15pm, working 3/4 weekends, and a lot to learn. I also had to sacrifice my holiday abroad and my parents and brother are going without me to an amazing place.

I am however very excited about this and took the job here. The pay is excellent, the team is really friendly, it's full time which will keep me occupied, I'll get to learn about London (in fact I have over 70h of training to complete in the next two weeks) and really share my enthusiasm about London with people. I think I'm going to be genuinely sad when I finish the job at the end of September/start of October and have to go to a mundane, much lower paying job at uni.

The interview was very much a chat which I enjoyed about what I wanted to do in future, I was also tested on my knowledge of a couple of landmarks, where I would take friends to in London, and it was actually I guess more of a judge of my confidence and skills than a pre-determined list of questions to answer, and to know that I knew London at least somewhat. We had to fill in an application form beforehand with special, experience, etc and I guess they looked at that a lot. I left the employment section blank and clearly that was not a problem. I love my course leaders and bosses, they really were very relaxed, fun and informative and I can tell I am going to love the job. I love forward to training starting next week.

I also had an interview for a football club (I have ZERO interest in football) which was rather different, despite being a simple retail job and being for around 4 hours a week, the questions were a lot more formal: give us a situation where you have helped someone, what is good customer service, what is the difference between good and great customer service. The interviewer was saying that she was tired of asking the same questions all day as everyone got the same answer. I passed the interview, got invited to the induction but then I called saying I couldn't go an hour before as I'd just got a call from the other company offering me a fulltime job.

Both were one-to-one interview which I fell I do much better in than group interviews. Speaking of group interviews I've just been invited to Chessington World of Adventures for a group recruitment day. I shan't be attending.

All-in-all a very successful week. Praise God. I guess I'll continue this series when I get to uni, where I anticipate the competition for jobs will be a lot fiercer! For those who are still looking for a job, keep looking, apply for everything, email asking for vacancies and good luck!