Tuesday 17 October 2017

Google Business Intern Application Experience...Hardly

For some reason I always feel the need to recap the weekend like a few hours of Monday blurs the memory of the days prior and this post is no different. Except, is it?

So the better part of  Saturday evening was spent bumming on the couch, t.v in the background as white noise. I stole an occasional quick glance at the t.v, catching a  glimpse of the latest season of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, WAGS, The Middle and a movie, Cool Runnings. Okay, so maybe, it wasn't just white noise.

 I spent a greater chunk of my time reading and re-reading a job description for the Google Business Intern position.I am not particularly sure where the uncertainty stemmed from. Come to think of it, that is a straight up lie, it's Google, known for hiring Ivy League alum and then there's me, just another individual who likes to dream big, think of the unthinkable, go beyond borders.

This may sound utterly ridiculous but at some point while watching KUWTK I knew for sure that I was destined for the  good life. I am fully aware that this is consumerism at its best but hear me out, who wouldn't like to jet set between destinations on a whim, own a private jet because of the convenience,, know people, have people know them, have a walk-in pantry, home gym heck, I'll take a gym membership for starters and a home with a view. If wanting the finer things in life is wrong then I don't want to be right!

Once the episode ended and I was back to reality,the irony, is when I realized it's not so much about the material things, the fame and the status that comes with it. I am a self proclaimed homebody, jet setting as thrilling as it sounds would largely take away from this. For me all these things are just a representation of success, my shallow representation of success, but success nonetheless. Although the line is thin and blurred, it's the success I crave, not so much the privilege that comes with it like having whole restaurants closed down to exclusively serve me and my posse.

The more I scrolled and re-read the same information over and over again, the more daunting it became, the more real it became.

 I got wind of the internship through the MyNetwork, Daily Nation pull-out a local Kenyan daily. The truth is, I was frantically looking through it to see if there was any word on the content creator position I had applied for a few weeks ago. Ridiculous, I am sure,but come on, you apply for the same position thrice; once last year and twice this year, get no feedback whatsoever, besides letting the desperation mount, child, imma give it room to spill over. I always give a quick skim through their careers section and when all my hopes were dashed after my little search, that was the page I turned to.

Yesterday, I took the plunge. I did my research finding resumes that have made the Google cut in the past, taking notes from here to Timbuktu all in an effort to be the very embodiment of a Googler. The first agenda on the table was formatting my resume to fit in to one page.That took me a cool four hours, I say cool but mark my words there was nothing cool about it. It took half an episode of Churchill Show, one episode of the new season of KUWTK, a couple of sitcoms, some movie with Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence bits of it at least and a good chunk of a Femi Kuti documentary and then Eureka! a one page resume was born.

The thoroughness and hard work that went into this one is one for the books. After the upload came the basic info., no big deal there and then, there it was, transcript request. There is no sugar coating this, I am not a star student, never have been and anytime a job application process requests for this just makes me more aware of how true this is.Whatever happened to the "grades shouldn't define you" battalion, oh  yeah, that's right, they just marched past carrying the star students along with them.

The lesson here, if you take a way anything let it be never, ever get a grade you have to explain and just to clarify if you are making Bs and anything above that you are in the all clear my friend. I am at that point in my life where I would give anything for a do-over. If we are being honest, it all started with this work-study situation, for a while I tried to find the perfect balance and in the process my grades suffered a great deal. The damage is done and there really is no option but to soldier on.

A little piece of my Google Business Intern dream died when that transcript request popped up but I had to or should I say have to keep the fire burning.

Crunching my resume down to one page as I previously mentioned was no easy fete as I had already mentioned but these American kids, they are quite the force. Valedictorian, programming languages, members of philanthropic organizations, and besides just being a member of their clubs/societies/organizations and what not, some of them are presidents, others founders of clubs that attracted up to 200+students, all this while holding leadership positions of multiple student organizations. If you thought I was done, think again. Besides their load of coursework, they have projects they are working on out of their own initiative on the side and don't get me started on their awards and accolades; scholarships worth thousands of dollars is the order of the day.

Compared to them I am nothing, but the little I had, which I really never thought to be little until  I started going through their resumes, still went on.

During the course of the day I went through my newest prized possession, my resume, my one-page resume. Only, I realized I left out something crucial  and had a  typo, well, of sorts. Of course I am not going to rat myself out here lest someone actually follows the link to this website that was so obviously placed smack dab in the center header.

Let me save you the trouble and say it, it's all downhill from here.

Next course of action, go home, make the necessary corrections, mope around for a while, you know just marinate in my feelings a while and pray for a miracle. Of course, when these things happen I always figure that there is a reason behind it. There must be. Maybe it's not the right fit for me or this is God's special way of letting me know that there is an underlying issue that I am refusing to acknowledge and getting away from it is not the answer or this is just my wake-up call to proof read my work a thousand times over. You can bet your bottom dollar that I will spend days, weeks, months even trying to figure out the why.

Is it crazy that I am still hopeful?

Follow the link to apply if you dare, at least one of us should get it.

Have a good one!

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