Upside, Downside, Telephone Interview #2

My previous post was wrong, I did hear back from the recruiter about a week ago and she set me up with another telephone interview, this time with the senior finance manager.  I just finished talking to her and I fucked up bad.  For some reason, my home phone was getting a lot of static and I had to interrupt her and asked her to call my cell phone.  Just my luck, my home phone never had this problem before, but it just had to happen today.  Then of course, I was stammering like an idiot.  While my stammering wasn't as bad as last time, I still could have done better.  I swear she sounded uninterested in what I had to say by the end of the interview.  She said she'll refer to HR to see where we'll go in the next step.  Sounds like a 'Nope' to me.  Facepalm.

It's not all bad though.  Somehow, my dad managed to set me up with an interview with the tax manager at a large tech company.  Apparently one of his clients is an accountant there so I'll be doing multiple face to face interviews tomorrow.  Hopefully I'm a lot more graceful in person than on the phone.  Also, after applying for a part time accounting assistant position at an advertising firm last night, the company called me back this morning.  Strangely, I didn't stutter, stammer or become an incoherent mess while talking to the recruiter.  Really weird.  Was it because I didn't really care about the job or was it because I just woke up and my brain didn't understand the gravity of the situation?  It's something to investigate into.

On another note, none of the government accounting internships have responded at all.  No 'rejected', 'under consideration', or 'cancelled'.  It's been a month since I applied to some of them and there are no updates on their status.  I'm not sure if they found someone already and didn't bother to notify anyone else or if the status updates are slow as molasses due to government bureaucracy.

Note to self:  Keep working on telephone interactions.

Telephone Interview

Out of the half dozen internships I applied to, I received one hit.  It was from some pharmacy company north of San Francisco for a finance intern position.  After a week of emails back and forth, the recruiter and I scheduled a telephone interview for this morning to see if I would be a good fit for the position.  After four years of constantly trying to improve myself socially and in interacting with people, this was the moment I was preparing for.  Despite several years of improvement and psyching myself up for the last few days, my interview with her was a mess.  I felt like I was trying to rush through it and end it as quickly as possible.  While I did followed proper social etiquette, I stuttered a bit and was extremely nervous throughout the whole thing.  The recruiter stated that she will relay the information to the finance manager and contact me later, but I got the feeling that I won't be hearing from her again.  I found myself pacing back and forth for half an hour afterwards wondering what I could have said better.  I guess I should just write this one off and apply to more internships or even full time jobs.

On another note, I got accepted into SJSU again for computer science.  It's a plan B, if needed.

Note to self:  Work on telephone interactions.

Telephone, Grad School Application Redux

I'm a horrible telephone conversationalist and it's been three years since I realized that, but even then there doesn't seem like I have made any progress in fixing it.  Over and over again, when I talk to my dad's clients over the phone, it seems like I'm rushing the conversation or screwing up one way or the other.  How would I practice this to get better?  When it came to interacting with people face to face, I could practice every now and then just by talking to people, but talking on the phone is a whole different matter.  When I'm at work, I have a given list of what to say to a caller so I don't freeze up, but when it comes to saying what's on my mind, I tend to mess up over and over again for some reason.  But still, I had to call the same client multiple times and talk to her and I felt like I was getting better at it over time.  I didn't rush the conversation the last few times.  I hope I can make better progress.

On another note, I reapplied to SJSU for computer science graduate school.  If I seriously don't hear from any of the accounting related internships I applied to then I'm seriously going to SJSU, that is if they accept me again.