by Ella Knight

Created on: November 07, 2008

From 'Days in the Life'

Chapter 8

It was the time of sending hundreds of job applications. Sometimes, I just sent for the sake of sending, but occasionally I found something of interest where I've said to myself Oohh, that is a bit of me.' Such was the case with this ad for a famous press agency, looking for sales people to promote it globally. So I applied.. Three weeks passed, I already forgot about it.

Then one boring day, I came home from shopping and my answering machine, which is dead most of the time, kept blinking at me. I kicked off my shoes, lit a cigarette and pushed the play button. A female voice said: Hi, this is Esperanza, you applied for the sales position with our agency, please call me back for an interview' I strained to listen to the voice rattling a Spanish phone number.

I sighed.. After months of fruitless job interviews and silly telephone calls where they ask you questions such as what motivates you to do sales, how do you speak to a client you've met for the very first time.' I was happy. I say silly because I'm an international sales professional with 8 years of experience closing multimillion dollar deals. Excuse me, did you even read my cv? When I think of the types of people that interview potential candidates I decide that I wouldn't let half of them watch my dog. I'm sure you'll know what I mean.

The end of it was that I got invited to Brussels for the first interview. The company does not pay the costs of this first interview, but if you pass, you'll get invited to the second round which is in Madrid, and that you will get reimbursed for..' I rolled my eyes as I listened to her. I was painfully low on funds as it was, but okay, no pain no gain, right? I will have to if I wanted to be a posh representative of this firm, flying all over the world, selling and selling, making loads of bunce, and occasionally sipping a pina colada at some exotic destination.

I clicked onto the German railway website (the wonderfully efficient Deutsche Bahn) and found a Belgium online special and bought a return ticket for 92 Euro. Not bad, not bad.

Once you have a ticket on 'special' this means you're tied to those particular trains at those particular times, the ticket is invalid for any other train and/or time. So the journey was like this: Leave Heidelberg at 6:05 am, switch in Mannheim, switch in Cologne, switch in Brussels Nord and arrive to the final destination: Brussels Centraal. The return journey was on the same day leaving Brussels Centraal

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