I finally decided to book a date for my GRE exam so that I won’t be able to give myself excuses to delay it further again. I booked for late October which should give me plenty of time to study for it… assuming I don’t end up in a job requiring plenty of OT anytime soon.

Anyway, I went for an interview earlier today. It was for an online advertising role. But the pay they are offering is mediocre (40% lower than what I expect to get) – an amount that I could have easily gotten 5 years ago right after graduating with a polytechnic diploma. Except for the salary discussion part, I guess the remaining parts of the interview went pretty smoothly.

I told them candidly that although my passion and interest is in online advertising, I am already 26 and I need a job just as they do for money to support my current and future family needs.

Kinda felt like a waste of time once it became apparent that our salary expectations were so far apart. But well… I’m taking it easy because even before I went for the interview I figured that as a small private sector company they probably wouldn’t be able to offer salaries which are on par with government and investment banks’ standards. Anyway, who knows… maybe I impressed them enough for them to offer me what I want (probably not).

And oh, for those people out there who face the problem as I do with performance anxiety during job interviews… I think  I found the solution – don’t over prepare for an interview, even if it is a very important one… I think the most important thing is to be relaxed… go in without pressuring yourself to perform well and speak just as you would to your friends or family members. That’s what I did today and I felt no stress and was able to be more proactive in selling myself. I remember during my last two interviews I was so uptight that my mind went blank and I wasn’t able to say anything else besides those things I memorized so I wasn’t able to answer the unexpected questions (of which there were plenty) well enough.

Anyway… more trip reports to come… stay tuned!

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