28/8/2012

When I was in Edinburgh earlier on in August, a billboard with a very interesting job on it caught my eye. It was a Client Services Administrator position, for a small company in Dundee. So I decided I’d call into the recruitment agency, there and then, to see what this job involved. I got talking to the Branch manager of the agency, called Staff Finders and she told me a little bit more about the job. But after asking me about my professional background and about myself, she asked me to come back in the following day, to register with them. She would then be able to tell me more about the Client Services Administrator position.

I went back there at 10am the following morning and when I heard that this company was a leisure company it sounded even more positive. Things were definitely looking up! We discussed the job description and the company and it really sounded like it was a job for me, with a variety of different tasks: contact with the customers over the phone, via email and some face to face contact also, administration and being involved in the photography side of the job, arranging and coordinating photo shoots, the printing of photos etc. It was getting better all the time. I have an interest in photography too and the chance of being able to use this in a job would be great.

As part of my registration with the agency, I had to do online tests like the ones I did for Office Angels. I sent my C.V. to the agency, who forwarded that to the company. Within a week, I was given confirmation of the interview and I booked my flight and accommodation. It was going to cost me nearly three hundred euros to go over there for the interview and I was hoping it would be worth it.

The job sounded very interesting but I couldn’t say the same about what I’d heard about Dundee. I’d never been there before and needed to do some research on it. I asked three Scottish friends of mine what they thought of the place. Who better to ask than the Scottish themselves! All three of them said that it wasn’t a place that they would like to live in or work in and that it was supposed to be pretty grim and rough, with not much culture. That didn’t sound good at all. If there was a chance of me getting the job and living there, then I was hoping it would have at least some redeeming features to it. The only way to judge was to go there myself and form my own impressions of the place.