About two and a half weeks ago, I went in for an interview for an internship with the Center for Public Policy Priorities, a “nonpartisan, nonprofit policy institute committed to improving public policies to better the economic and social conditions of low- and moderate-income Texans.” I couldn’t have been more excited about the internship—it was basically the work that I had already been doing at the Parks and Wildlife Department, which I liked and was pretty good at, except it would be at an organization whose mission I am actually excited about.
Going into the interview, I was finding it difficult to keep up optimism about the whole job search thing. The only positions I’d been able to land for the spring were unpaid ones, interning at The Texas Observer and The Austin Chronicle, but my applications to paid positions were consistently failing to bring forth fruit, even at positions I thought I had in the bag.
Case in point: my tour guide job. I had already worked for two and half years as a state Capitol tour guide, from early 2007 through May of this year. I had really enjoyed it, and was pretty good at it—I was recommended for a promotion by my supervisor this past March, and about the same time, I was voted tour guide of the year by my coworkers. I’d been reluctant to leave the office this summer to do an internship in Washington, D.C., particularly because I had to give up my position, and, as I’d suspected, the state agency responsible for the tour guide office, under a new executive director (who was fresh out of Gov. Perry’s office) and facing sunset review, implemented a hiring freeze that kept me from coming back in August. The position that opened up this month was the first opening they’d posted in almost half a year, and I applied for it as a backup plan in case the CPPP didn’t want me.
The tour guide office called me in for an interview within days, and the interview couldn’t have gone better. If I was sure of myself before the interview, I was only more so afterward. A few days later, though, I got a depressing little form letter of an e-mail telling me that I hadn’t gotten the job.
Coupled with my rejection from Teach For America a few weeks ago, I was feeling glum. Even though the interview with CPPP went pretty well, I braced myself for another delicately worded rejection e-mail or phone call. I had already lined up enough resume-building unpaid internships to be comfortable that I wouldn’t be just treading water until the fall, and had decided that after CPPP turned me down, I would go out and find whatever minimum-wage part-time job I could to just stay afloat.
I also applied to the Texas Teaching Fellows, which is part of a state-by-state coalition called The New Teacher Project—basically a Teach For America knock-off. I interviewed with them, also, but still wasn’t feeling all too positive about things.
After about a week and half had passed since my CPPP interview, I, assuming the worst, gave them a call and left a message. A few messages later, I got a call back from one of the CPPP folks, explaining that the person responsible for hiring communications interns had been out of town for the week, but would be back Monday—I should expect a call then, she said. The call from the communications director came Monday morning—and he told me to hold on a few more days, and he’d get back to me with a decision.
It’s safe to say that at this point, I was assuming the worst. So, when the call came this morning, I didn’t feel much of anything—no apprehension, no excitement, nothing. They asked me if I could come in, but wouldn’t say anything definitive about whether or not I was hired. On my way there, though, I began allowing myself to get my hopes up, just a bit.
I showed up, and they led me upstairs to meet with the executive director, former state district judge F. Scott McCown. As I stepped into his office, someone patted me gently on the shoulder. “Good luck,” they said. I didn’t realize that I was walking into another job interview.
Scott (as he prefers to be called) asked me a few questions about my resume, my experience and what I was doing now. There were a few questions that caught me off guard, about whether or not I had health insurance, for instance. Then, he told me that the CPPP communications director—who would have been my supervisor—had just been hired away from them, and that because I had already graduated, their employment policy prohibited them from hiring me as an intern, anyway. For a moment, I felt the same wave of disappointment that I had felt reading rejection letters from Teach For America and the tour guide office. But Scott wasn’t done yet. Since they couldn’t hire me as an intern, and since I had come with recommendations from an old professor who turned out to be a friend of Scott’s, would I be interested in taking over for Derrick?
There wasn’t any hesitation on my part. Absolutely, I said. We agreed that I would work part-time, $20/hour, with a term extending to early June, which would give them enough time to recruit and hire a proper communications director.
In short, I applied and interviewed for an internship, and then got hired as a full-fledged staff member, for double the pay.
