Can I see your boobies bounce?

I like this song by Gater called Boobie Bounce. The lyrics go like this: “I had to get a job … went on an interview... They asked me what I do so I let my boobies bounced. Bounce boobies bounce! Bounce boobies bounce! Can I see your boobies bounce? I like to wear the shirt that let my boobies bounce…lalalala”.
If I'm ever stressed at an interview, I'll just sing this in my head.;-)

Thx for reading Dreeny's bloggy!

I really enjoy writing this blog as well as the other one but what make me even happier is that it is actually read by many of you and on a regular basis. I receive often comments by email about what I write and I find that very rewarding. I know that you guys care about me and are interested of knowing how my job search and life is doing and that is really nice.

So since that is of interest to you, I will make sure I give you the latest updates. Right now, I’m not only waiting with impatience and preparing my interview with Unilever which I hope will put an end to my job search but I’m also backing myself with searching actively for other jobs. The recruitment process taking so long in large companies, I know that if I send my resume now to a company and that they are interested, I may not heard from them for another month. And the longest you wait, the best and most interesting is often the company and the job because they have a lot of applicants to deal with. So it is sometimes worth to wait like in the case of Unilever.

In the meantime, I register for a free search agents at Monster that sent me an email with the job that maybe of interested to me on a daily basis. I check them and applied to every single one that sounds nice to me. Next to that, I also try to find companies that I would like to work for and surf their websites in search of jobs in Marketing and they applied to them or I just send my resume and a cover letter even if they don’t offer any jobs.

It is quite a hard process to look for a job because positive answers are not frequent but in my case they do happen once in a while and when they do happen they are great so I’m still motivated and I try not to stress myself out. Patience and confidence are key here I guess. Also I’m not looking for just any jobs, I have specific criteria, expectations and my own limits so it takes longer than for a regular job. The MBA was such a long and hard investment in my life that I want to get the best of it and have the job that I should deserve with the credentials I have now. My goal now is to start working in January. Let’s hope this happens!

Got an Interview at Unilever!

Wow! The wheel of chance has now turned in my favour and my patience and efforts are now rewarded. I received a call this morning from Unilever and they invited me for an interview on the 7th of December at 4pm for the position of 'Junior Brand Manager' here in Brussels. This is exactly the position and the company I would like to have so wish me good luck because I really want that job. I am usually good at interviews so I am very confident about it and beside that I really think they SHOULD hire someone like me!!!;-) I will keep you updated of how it goes.

Dreeny the happy jobhunter!:-)

Successfull interview outcome

Amar’s tips was good. After I updated my cv on Monster, an employer called me a few days later. He spotted my resume online and invited me for an interview.
I went to the interview today and even though I wasn’t too excited about the idea of working in IT consulting again, I really had a good impression about the company and the job.
They are interested in hiring me as a consultant or project manager to serve on mission with their biggest accounts. They are working for the biggest companies and institutions in Belgium (including ING my previous employer). They are interested by my experience as project leader and my knowledge of financial institutions and multinationals. The project I could be involved in are various in the areas of ERP, CRM, etc. My salary would be similar as my previous one in London plus some bonus regarding the fact that I did a MBA in the meantime so this would be excellent regarding the fact that cost of living in Belgium are way lower and my salary in London was rather generous. Also, they would provide me with a car, phone, etc as part of my salary package. So this all sounds like music to my hears and I’m keen in working for them. They will now look into placing me on one of their projects and I soon as they find this, they will formulate a job offer and propose me a contract. In the meantime, I’m still actively looking for a job as this process may take a while but the opportunity to work for them sounds like a great news to me if it materialise into a job soon.

Renew CV on Monster

My ressourceful and smart friend 'Amar les bons pistons' gave me a good advice about Monster - The World's Leading Career Network. It is good practice to update or even better renew your resume there. The process is to copy it and make a new one, even if it is identical. This will push your resume on top of the list of recruiters as they will always see the new resumes first. It tried and it works. The next day, I had 2 job offers in my mailbox. Not interesting ones but at least it shows that the system works and recruiters are reading my resume. Thanks Amar!:-)

P&G in Paris: Summary

So I went to Paris since P&G invited me to take tests and have interviews. The process of selection is as follow: you take a 65 mins problem solving test and if you pass according their criteria (which are secret) then you are entitled interview for a 1st interview. If you pass that one, then a second, etc. If at any stage, you fail then you are out and you cannot reapply at PG for another 12 months. That is quite a radical process but that's the only way to get in.
So I showed up at their office in Neuilly (very chic district in Paris) at 9.15. There were 5 others applicants. After 30 mins of waiting, they let us in their test room that look like a shop with PG products all over the place. We were allowed to have a calculator and a pencil. They give you a questionnaire that you can't write on, an answer sheet and draft paper to make your calculations.
She say ok start and left us in the room by ourselves. Maybe there were cameras but I'm not sure. We didn't cheat so it's ok.
Time flies and there is way too many questions to answer in such a short time. The questions aren't difficult at all but they involved a lot of calculation of tables and graphs.
I focussed on the calculation questions because when I practiced on their dummy test, there were the quickest for me to answer and I had also better results on these. I left the reading comprehension questions for the end as they are more time consuming. I rushed but I'm pretty sure my answers were accurate. When she came back, I realised I had still 10 reading comp questions to go through so I just checked the box randomly to finish the test.
We then had a break of minutes while they were correcting our tests. I asked the other participants if they managed to finish and none did but many went further than me but left loads of difficult questions behind.
She then came back with the results but only one guy managed to pass the test. The four others, which I was part of, had to leave. It was quite abrupt and a bit unfair not to have a chance to have an interview but I guess that's the way they work. In that case, maybe that's best not to work for a company that's so radical.
Personally, the reasons I failed is that I maybe spend too much time answering some lenghty questions involving loads of calculations. I should probably have passed them and focus on the quick short ones and come back to them later on. I definitively should have done more reading comp because after I did some of them I realised they weren't difficult and could be answered quickly as well. So there it goes. 65 mins is short but I think I did my best and it wasn't good enough so goodbye PG. I'm sure I'll be more lucky with other companies since they have different process of selection. Unilever is one I'd really like to focus on now.

The great thing about my meeting at PG Paris is that they pay for the travelling expenses so I had a free weekend in Paris as I was staying at a friend's place and made the best of my time there by meeting friends and visiting Paris. Not bad, hey?;-)

Applications and plans for this week

This week I finished and sent off applications for:
- Unilever in Brussels as 'Junior Brand Manager'
- Ogilvy in Brussels as 'Account Executive'
- Saatchi & Saatchi in Brussels as 'Account Executive'

Through some lucky networking, I met a new friend who works for Publicis and was invited to the "Elle Style Awards" last night in Brussels where I met many people working in Advertising. They advised me to try to be hired anywhere, work a year or two and then start moving among the different agencies. I had a really good feeling about it so therefore I decided to apply to many leading ad agency here in Brussels. Needless to say, I felt in love with Brussels these last few days and I'd like to find a job here.

Saturday, I'm off to Paris for the weekend and Monday morning, I will take my test at Procter & Gamble in Neuilly - Paris followed by interviews with them for the position of "Sales/Customer Business Development Account Manager". Pray for me!

Unemployment benefits in Europe

I thought the Belgian government was generous by giving 1000 Euros max. for unemployed people. Guess what? My MBA mates in France can claim up to 6000 Euros per month from the
Assédic.
Another interesting fact is that there is a reciprocal system between Europeans countries and if I worked at least 1 day in France, me too could claim benefits in France. The only problem is that again I gave up my job and I wasn't made redoundant so I'm not eligible in France for that reason. Too bad!
Anyway, my mission now is to focus on finding a job instead of financing my "non working" time...;-)

Free Internet!

To find a job, I need to use the internet most of the day. Internet in Belgium is so damn expensive. During the day, the so called "free" internet simple dial up connection of Belgacom cost you nearly 3 Euro an hour. Forget it!
I found a trully “free” alternative, Tele2Internet that is. In addition to very cheap rates for international calls at all times, they also offer “free” internet connection until the end of this year. That should be enough time for me to find a job. The only drawback is that is it a dial up connection so it is extremely slow and that is very much a pain for someone who is used to continuous high speed broadband wireless internet for a year. Ah well, I’ll drink some more tea while the pages are downloading…;-)

Admin week nearly over

This week has been quite productive but not in the way I planned to. Yesterday, I opened my bank account at ING. Today, I registered at the CSC syndicate since I’ve been told I had to have a syndicate. That was odd because from a rather liberal background, I’m a bit against union labour. Anyway, I joined it and am now unionized Dreeny jobhunter.
The idea was to claim my unemployment benefits. In fact, I realized yesterday that since I worked 3 years abroad and that my last job was in London with a relatively high monthly wage compare to Belgium, I’m entitled to get the maximum monthly unemployment compensation in Belgium which is about 1000 Euro per month of free money. This is quite good money to live in Brussels doing nothing and paying no rent. The only problem is that I may get a sanction because I haven’t been made redundant but I quit my job. I did quit to go study my MBA. The sanction can vary from 3 weeks to 6 months before I can benefit from the compensation. In any case, I should better find myself a good job quickly than wait for this but it is always nice to know and I’m applying for it anyway. Tomorrow, I have more of this kind of admin stuff to do so I guess my first week in Brussels was more quick cash than career minded. That would be for next week because I will then be done with all these stuff. I also had to register for health insurance today. I guess I’m now a completed Belgian citizen with all the benefits attach to it. The good thing is that money wise; it is a good status to have since the Belgian government would never let you hang out there without money.

1st day settling down in Brussels

After spending the weekend in Antwerp with my sister, I started today settling down in Brussels. First, I went to the city hall to register. Then I got myself stuff to be able to connect the internet from home. Then my brother bought a new phone for him and gave me his old one. It doesn't actually look like a phone, it looks more like some kind of insect and also make insects type of noise when it rings. It's called Xelibri from Siemens. Very weird thing!
I also took an appointment with the bank for tomorrow to open an account with ING.
I'm now kind of ready to get started. When I got to my brother's place, I realised that companies already sent stuff here about jobs. The good news is that Unilever is interested that my application and they sent me more stuff to fill so that is excellent start.
I also was thinking of visiting Unique Interim/Temp agency tomorrow to see if I could get a Marketing job for a short period of time so I can get some cash while I'm looking for the 'ideal' job.
I'll keep you posted.