During a hot July in Milan in 2009 I was scheduled for two job interviews in one afternoon three hours apart. I still remember that day because of the heat exhaustion I got along with the stress of performance for trying to land a job, those types of meetings can really dissect you on the spot giving you no room for poor choice of words when asked a question.
You are nervous and afraid of making a bad impression because in the back of your head you know the person interviewing is x-raying you, paying a lot of attention to your speech and the way you sit and move. They want to know how you behave under certain quality of questions, there’s a script they are following to obtain specific answers and reactions from you for their right profile to hire.
The first interview took place downtown Milan in a very fancy and historical building, one of those places that are a few hundred meters away from the Duomo cathedral, near pricey lawyers studios that only assist large corporations and bill by the thousand per hour. I was around 25 years old at the time and without the confidence I have today at 39.
I sat in front of this lady who was in charge of interviewing candidates for a sales position and foreign client relations. One of the major requirements beside the standard ones for the position was good written and spoken English and I knew I had it, I also fit the profile. So I sat in this large office with a tall ceiling and the interview began with the usual questions: my education background, my previous job experiences, and so on.
As the interview developed I managed to catch a glimpse of the time gone by through the clock on the wall without looking at my wrist watch for obvious reasons. We were twenty minutes in and yet no questions to test my English proficiency, the set of questions of the interview was more of an interrogation than anything else, there was no goal to what I was supposed to work for if hired and the lady wasn’t interested in understanding my skills but rather to let me know the terms of the contract weren’t flexible, the pay for a full-time job was €800 gross per month. Gross.
Such nefarious low wage has been proposed in Italy fifteen-something years ago when government implemented new rules and new contracts under the false pretense of “contract flexibility”. A whole new ‘rebate strategy’ had been used to save money by hiring overqualified candidates willing to accept full time positions for a part time salary. No holidays and no benefits of any kind. Recruiters would prey on the candidates’ desperate conditions of being unemployed for long times or being their first job, so they would sign these type of below minimum wage contracts out of desperation.
Somehow I knew there was a trap along this meeting like there always are. With that salary I wasn’t able to cover any rent and so I had to delay moving out from my parents’ home. That sum didn’t reflect any of my skills, time spent learning them, commuting costs, and so on. I politely made the case for a higher salary highlighting my experience abroad, my high level English, to no avail, the recruiter was impassable and I knew that moment they were hiring on rebate to save money rather than investing on their employees to grow.
I thought they would invest in me, or at least partially, to build the skills they required in order to have the right candidate by training. I was wrong, they were looking for some ‘pick and choose’ candidate as if they were choosing a product off the shelves, as if they were selecting their snack in front of the cold glass of a vending machine.
The second interview was more disappointing with the recruiter in front of me asking generic questions and eventually closing the meeting in the most unprofessional way: he admitted he didn’t have any opening available yet they were setting up interviews yet I was there investing my time in the hope for a position. I went back home tired, almost getting a heat stroke and while sitting on the train thinking about the day, I felt disappointed because of the poor quality of job recruiting done by people who had no idea how to invest in candidates to improve their companies. It wasn’t the first time I sat through that kind of interviews and my fear was that this had become the new norm, the new standard, the way things are after the 2008 financial crisis struck and that’s how it was going to be.
I had the hunch things weren’t going to get better from there on with companies posting constant losses throughout Europe, and an unstable political landscape that gave little hope for the job market to get back on its tracks in the best of shape. However a bad day has always something to teach you, it was clear I had to shake the disappointment off quickly and focus back on the next interviews. I didn’t mind not getting the job, but it would have been worse getting it with a bad company who is there to exploit you asking you way more than they’re paying you without leading or inspiring their workforce in the wight direction.