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Jun. 2nd, 2014 07:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hathycolSo apparently I was worrying for nothing. Not necessarily because I'm awesome either, but hell, I'll take what I can get.
To start from the beginning:
Today I left work at 1pm, cursing the very name of the District line. I had clear and concise plans and timings, but instead ended up going to the interview via Romford. Now, I am entirely sure that Romford has many wonderful places and people, but none of them were particularly in abundance between the train station and high street at 2pm on a Monday afternoon. One street with a Yates, a Wetherspoons and a Lloyds Bar. Gosh.
Not being entirely sure how long the train took to Romford, I arrived with loads of time for the bus connection, so hid in Costa and had a cup of tea instead.
After successfully catching the bus and making it to the college with lots of time to spare, I cheerfully wandered in. Aha. It is but one campus of the college as a whole and I still think the overall square metreage was probably more than St Andrews had in its entirety. Blimey. "Go right to the back," the chap at reception told me. It would have been helpful if he had mentioned 'go right to the back of this building, go through the garden, go right through the back of THAT building and THAT garden, and THEN go to the back of the last building'.
When I (eventually) arrived at the room, I was told by the very nice lady that the admin people had made a mix-up and that the CIPD lady wasn't even in on Mondays for interviews. "I do business management," she told me. Now, perhaps it was all the nerves, perhaps it was leftover Romford, perhaps it was sheer exhaustion from my walk through the building, but I pulled myself up to my full 5'3" and a half and said, very firmly, "I have taken half a day's annual leave for this," I protested. So she interviewed me, for all of about ten minutes. It turns out that finally, finally, my clutch of A-Levels has finally come good.
"Do you have any HR qualifications?"
"No, but I have an undergraduate MA in history and five A-Levels," I said.
"Ah," she said. "So you're fairly bright and I can see you're articulate."
In the end I had to insist on showing her a certificate ("Look, this bag is heavy and I've carried it from central London,") and when she spotted the A in English Language she gave in and told me I had an unconditional entry to the college. I am paraphrasing slightly, and there were a couple of questions about what I did for a living, but that was it. I had spent AGES that morning printed off some of the company policies I've developed and carefully redacting names from communications with staff but apparently this was not necessary. ("I've bought some case studies?" I offered when I did eventually pull out my certificates.)
Within 15 minutes I was sailing back down the endless corridors, and came home with so much time to spare I've managed to clean the house and get a load of laundry on too!
So... come September I will be spending two days a week in darkest Essex, getting some shiny qualifications. They'll even take an invoice from work rather than me having to dick about with cheques. It's basically REALLY AWESOME NEWS and is something of a relief but after all the build-up from my brain it actually feels a little anti-climatic!
Oh, and it's a lot shorter route from my house than TFL would have me believe, so that's good?
(Coming up soon: Star Trek Live HONESTLY,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tau_sigma's visit and also the tale of the murderous sparrow outside the bathroom window!)
To start from the beginning:
Today I left work at 1pm, cursing the very name of the District line. I had clear and concise plans and timings, but instead ended up going to the interview via Romford. Now, I am entirely sure that Romford has many wonderful places and people, but none of them were particularly in abundance between the train station and high street at 2pm on a Monday afternoon. One street with a Yates, a Wetherspoons and a Lloyds Bar. Gosh.
Not being entirely sure how long the train took to Romford, I arrived with loads of time for the bus connection, so hid in Costa and had a cup of tea instead.
After successfully catching the bus and making it to the college with lots of time to spare, I cheerfully wandered in. Aha. It is but one campus of the college as a whole and I still think the overall square metreage was probably more than St Andrews had in its entirety. Blimey. "Go right to the back," the chap at reception told me. It would have been helpful if he had mentioned 'go right to the back of this building, go through the garden, go right through the back of THAT building and THAT garden, and THEN go to the back of the last building'.
When I (eventually) arrived at the room, I was told by the very nice lady that the admin people had made a mix-up and that the CIPD lady wasn't even in on Mondays for interviews. "I do business management," she told me. Now, perhaps it was all the nerves, perhaps it was leftover Romford, perhaps it was sheer exhaustion from my walk through the building, but I pulled myself up to my full 5'3" and a half and said, very firmly, "I have taken half a day's annual leave for this," I protested. So she interviewed me, for all of about ten minutes. It turns out that finally, finally, my clutch of A-Levels has finally come good.
"Do you have any HR qualifications?"
"No, but I have an undergraduate MA in history and five A-Levels," I said.
"Ah," she said. "So you're fairly bright and I can see you're articulate."
In the end I had to insist on showing her a certificate ("Look, this bag is heavy and I've carried it from central London,") and when she spotted the A in English Language she gave in and told me I had an unconditional entry to the college. I am paraphrasing slightly, and there were a couple of questions about what I did for a living, but that was it. I had spent AGES that morning printed off some of the company policies I've developed and carefully redacting names from communications with staff but apparently this was not necessary. ("I've bought some case studies?" I offered when I did eventually pull out my certificates.)
Within 15 minutes I was sailing back down the endless corridors, and came home with so much time to spare I've managed to clean the house and get a load of laundry on too!
So... come September I will be spending two days a week in darkest Essex, getting some shiny qualifications. They'll even take an invoice from work rather than me having to dick about with cheques. It's basically REALLY AWESOME NEWS and is something of a relief but after all the build-up from my brain it actually feels a little anti-climatic!
Oh, and it's a lot shorter route from my house than TFL would have me believe, so that's good?
(Coming up soon: Star Trek Live HONESTLY,
tau_sigma's visit and also the tale of the murderous sparrow outside the bathroom window!)
