My sister's friend came around the other day and she complained that she sent out a few emails and she was rejected so she's tired.
I told her about myself.
There was a time I was sending out at least 20 emails a day and receiving 18 rejection mails everyday. I was doing my masters so all the positions I applied for were remote. Most of them were international.
I would scale the first phase of the interview.
Scale the creative part which mostly involved doing free work (which was also timed) on the company's website. This is heavy-duty work that takes up to 2 hours. And you're timed too.
Scale the video conference part of the interview which mostly happened around 1 am because of time difference. I'd put on gen, wear a suit and light makeup by 1 am for my video interview.
After scaling this, their recruiter would fix a day for the final call where we'd talk renumeration.
After the long Skype call, I'll be jumping around thinking I'd soon start earning in dollars. Then the next morning I'd see a rejection mail. They said the time difference is a deal breaker. I'd be working from 5 pm to 9 am Nigerian time and they felt it wasn't feasible for me.
Waste of time, sleep, suit, fuel.
I'll still have to dust my bumbum, go to school, come back and start all over again. Come to Facebook and make cruise posts or feminist posts and keep it moving.
At some point I had accumulated over 800 rejection mails. Some said no because I didn't have a PayPal account (Nigerians couldn't receive money through PayPal then. Don't know about now). Plenty said no cos of the time difference. Few came out to tell me that even though I'm qualified, they'd rather not hire a Nigerian. Plain and simple.
You didn't realise you no wan hire Nigerian till I did all that work for you?
If you vex finish, whatchu gon' do?
I still did more interviews. My masters was self-sponsored so I no get choice. Still lived on all international and national job sites. Still turned on Google notifications for all jobs fitting my description.
When it looked like the remote job would take time, I started looking for physical jobs. I went to rice mill to find a job as a tax collector. My friend refused to give me the job. I went to Holy Ghost Secondary School to interview to be a teacher. Salary 25k. I went to so many places dropping my CVs and attending interviews. Point is, I did something.
There were days I didn't feel like getting out of bed or checking my mails. That one dey. But after that, ahead ahead.
Finally, something fell through. And that job played a huge role in helping me be where I am today. Not financially o. But it did.
I don't like talking about hard days but that doesn't mean I don't get them. Even when I was going through this, I was on Facebook giving kwoliti kontent. I wasn't making sad or cryptic posts whether on Facebook or whatsapp. I knew what I had to do and I did it.
What I'm trying to say is, it's whoever gives up that mess up. Or something like that. Keep pushing. Don't stop. And other clichés.
