Vice

4: Now Hiring

The job search has not been going well and - as Natara sits across from a hawk-eyed middle aged woman with a sharp Karen haircut and her lips pinched in a no-nonsense expression - it looks like it's only getting worse.


It's her fourth interview this week, and none of the other ones have gone well, either. 

There was the one with the heavyset balding man who asked her repeatedly if she had any sort of experience - everything from volunteering to cooking meals for her family. There was a scrawny, thick bearded younger man who asked her questions that seemed aimed directly at embarrassing her. And then there was the plump rosy-cheeked woman who actually seemed friendly but had one of her assistants call Natara to tell her someone else got the job only ten minutes after she left.

Maybe there's no hope for her. What if there isn't a way for people without any work experience to get a job? What's the secret to getting started? Does everyone who had a job know somebody who got them in there, or did they all go to college first and use their shiny new degree to secure a position?

It feels hopeless, especially as the hawk lady adjusts her glasses high on her nose, narrows her eyes, and raises an eyebrow from across the desk. Her mere expression makes Natara squirm in her chair.

The hawk lady reaches out her hand and her long red claw-like fingernails snatch Natara's resume out of her hands. Natara gulps a lump down the back of her throat as the woman's sharp eyes slowly scan the document.

"Mm," the woman replies. Natara isn't quite sure what that means. Is it an, "Mm, you might work for this position" or an, "Mm, I'm wasting my time here"? She hopes its the former but somewhere deep down inside she knows it's the latter.

It feels awful. Natara had to fill out what felt like hundreds of applications just to get these four interviews, and they all were going horribly. She didn't even know what exactly she was doing wrong. Was it how she was dressed? Was it her age? Was it her lack of experience, or lack of skills, or lack of schooling? Was it the way she answered all of the confusing questions they asked?

"Why do you want to work for Cerafine Incorporated?" There's another one of those questions, and the hawk lady sounds bored as she asks it. It's like she already knows Natara's answer is going to be a bad one.

Natara grips the loose fabric of the dress pants she borrowed from her mom into a fist atop her knee. It's been almost a full week. Her parents are going to start pressuring her soon, even despite all of the phenomenal stalling excuses Macey has been coming up with. They're going to want her to find something soon. And, as of right now, she doesn't have any options in sight.

It's been hard, too. The applications that never call her back take hours to fill out apiece. She has to ride her bike into town for every interview - but still has to try to keep her hair and makeup perfect and make it look like she hasn't sweat at all on the way over. She's gone out of her way to directly call businesses, ask to speak to their managers, and sometimes even badger them into putting a manager on the phone just for a shot at an interview. 

And, somehow, the interviews are even more difficult than all of that!

"I just graduated high school and I really need a job." Natara answers honestly. Wrong answer. The woman seems even less interested in the conversation after the words leave Natara's lips.