The Proofreading Job

Yesterday I received a message from a staffing agency saying that I qualified for a job I applied to just two days ago.  Sah weeeeeet!!!  I called them back promptly and was transferred to a woman who informed me that since the job I was applying for required much more experience than what I had, they needed me to take a skills test as well as provide them with a few professional references.

Had the professional references on hand already. Boom.  Taken care of like a pro.  Now for the test.  I suck at tests. I suck real good.  This is pounding through my head as I go to the testing site, but I remind myself : I know this stuff.  I majored in this subject.  And then I looked in the mirror and said, "You are a strong, confidant woman..." No.  I didn't have a mirror.

The test is broken up into categories:  Word, Grammar, Markup, Spelling, and Typing.  Psh.  Word.  I use Word everyday!  I polish my resume up regularly.  It's beautiful and what program is to thank for that? Word.  And my expertise of Word, of course.

I may think that I am amazing with programs because I compare myself to my mom.

I can point out an icon to you anytime, anywhere.  You name the place and time.  I'll do it.  Obviously, I'm a Word expert.  

Turns out I'm not.  I think I may have gotten six right on a test of thirty questions.  In my defense, the questions were things which I have done very little of.  You know, things I would be doing in an actually job.  The things interviewers are looking for me to be good at.  The things that if I'm not good at, a job will certainly pass me by.  I think they did.

Once I finished all categories of the test, I realized I had an email from the woman who had asked for the references.  It read:

"Amber,  Do you have any letters of recommendation, or anyone from your internship, or professors, etc?  Essentially we are looking for at least 1 or 2 of your references to be someone that you reported to, either a manager/supervisor, etc..."

Of course that's what they wanted.  Of course it is! I gave them four references with two of them being my past managers, but I labeled them "past co-worker".  Why?  Dumb.  Just chalk that up to the mistakes I made in this chase.  As I'm typing a responding email, all I can think of as I am typing is that these people are looking at my test results.  That coupled with my lame references,  I pictured in my mind that they are doing this:

They haven't called.  

To avoid this for next time, my plan of action:

• Get a letter of recommendation from a past teacher or boss
• Be specific when referring to my relationship with my references
• Play around with other parts of Word, such as Table of Contents and charts
• Don't suck