Job Interview Hack
September 15, 2022 – Morgantown, West Virginia, USA
Of all the booths Sage Hatfield visited during the University of West Virginia career fair, she liked TPG Media’s best. Their displays were sleek and powerful. Their recruiters were young and beautiful.
TPG was hiring interns for their main Washington, D.C. office. The job was close to home for Sage and she would work on ad campaigns for growing tech companies. It was the perfect opportunity to apply what she was learning as a Communications major.
When she received an email notification inviting her to an in-person TPG interview, Sage allowed herself five seconds of surprised celebration. Then she panicked. Sage first worried about sounding intelligent. Then she worried about what to wear. She lived at home to save money, but she still had a much smaller clothing budget than most other students she knew.
On the morning of the interview, Sage’s mother helped calm her down. Together, they picked out Sage’s most professional looking skirt. Then her mom helped pull Sage’s hair into what she called a “business bun.”
“Remember, they’d be lucky to have you,” Sage’s mom repeated reassuringly. “You’re as sharp as a whip and a bushel of sunshine.”
Sage smiled without giving her mom’s words much credit. She forgot all about them by the time she stepped into the little conference room the university had reserved for interviews. Three TPG representatives sat inside. Two of them were recent hires. They wore enormous glasses and dressed in dark, tight-fitting outfits. The third rep was an older guy named Bill. He was probably in his thirties.
Immediately after introductions, the new hires launched into a description of TPG’s clients. One client included a company named Sequencia, which was doing health monitoring with smartphones.
“How should they capture the 18–29-year-old demographic?” one of the new hires finally asked Sage.
“Uh, well I guess using social media. What’s their Instagram account look like?”
“You think Instagram’s most important? How about for video content?”
“Maybe they should target lots of things,” Sage nervously replied.
“Not concentrate on one?”
“Um, I guess I don’t know enough about them to say.”
“How about a broader campaign than social media?” interjected Bill. “What do you think of radio and print ads?”
“I think they’re good too,” answered Sage, trying to sound agreeable.
“Do you listen to the radio?” asked Bill.
“Not really. But I listen to podcasts. They can be kind of like radio. Is Sequencia advertising on podcasts?”
The interview continued at a breakneck pace. The new hires barely stopped to breathe as they shared opinions. Bill enjoyed contradicting them and challenging anything Sage could slip into the conversation. By the time it was over, Sage was sure she had not sounded very impressive, but she was starving for an invite into the TPG world. The optimist in her held out hope they saw potential despite her raw answers and inexperience.
“How did it go?” called her mom excitedly when Sage returned home for lunch.
Sage let the screen door slam behind her and shrugged her shoulders. “Could have gone better, I guess. But I think they liked me okay.”
“Did they say when they’d call?”
“Not really. They still have more people to interview.”
“The first thing you should do is write a thank you note so you can get it in the mail. That way they get it before making a decision.”
“You mean like a hand-written card? I haven’t written one of those since you made me write to Grandma for sending a check on my 13th birthday.”
“Writing a thank you note shows you’re polite. I promise you it’ll help. It’s standard practice when applying for jobs.”
“Maybe it was standard practice 50 years ago. I don’t want them to think I’m old fashioned. Maybe I could send them an email, but they’ll think a note is crazy. These people are completely digital.”
Sage’s mom waved her hands as if Sage had no idea how the world worked. “Sit down for your soup and sandwich and I’ll get you a card and pen.”
Sage felt obliged to trapse into the kitchen and sit in one of the vinyl-backed chairs at the round table. Her mom placed two folding cards, an envelope, and a pen next to Sage’s sandwich plate.
“Start by addressing the envelope,” said Sage’s mom, standing behind her.
“I don’t know their address.”
“Well, look it up. That’s why you have a phone and computer.”
Sage dutifully pulled up the email message about her interview and found a physical address listed at the bottom. She wrote it on the envelope.
“Now for your thank you message. I brought you two cards in case you want to practice.”
With her mom still looming behind her, Sage printed the following words on one of the cards:
“Dear TPG Media,
Thank you for interviewing me at the WVU career fare. I enjoyed meeting your team. Your questions were hard but they made me think a lot. I would love to work with you. Give me a chance and I’ll totally blow your minds.
Love,
Sage”
By the time she finished with the note, Sage was laughing to herself for using such a casual ending. At that point, her mom seemed satisfied that Sage was dedicated to the note-writing exercise. She left her daughter alone at the table.
Sage noticed that she had misspelled “fair”. She crossed out the word and added a correction. Then she crossed out “interviewing me” and replaced it with “considering me for a position.” She changed the part about hard questions to say they were challenging and thought provoking. And she added a professional sounding close.
The original note was full of scratch outs and little words in the margin. Sage used it to rewrite a second, clean version, but was not convinced sending a note was a good idea in the first place. When it was time for her to return to school for a class, she left the envelope and rough draft card on the table and carried the second card with her. She wanted some time to consider it before putting it in the mail.
Sage wondered about the note all afternoon. She pulled it from her backpack during classes and studied the words printed in her handwriting. She decided the general idea was good, but she was better off sending an email. She left the printed card in a paper recycling bin.
As soon as she returned home, Sage intended to dispose of the first-draft version of the note and the envelope. But they were not on the kitchen table.
“Mom, where’s that note I wrote?” called Sage.
“I mailed it for you,” her mother proudly replied when she walked into the room.
“You what?”
“I put it in the envelope and mailed it on my way to the market.”
Sage covered her horrified face with her hands. “Didn’t you look at it? It had all kinds of mistakes. They’re going to think I’m an idiot who can’t write or spell.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry! I thought you were done with it. I was trying to help.”
Sage sat down and let her head drop to the table. “It’s okay,” she said miserably. “I’ll find something else. I probably wasn’t going to get it anyway.”
Almost as painful as the idea of losing the chance at the internship was imagining people at TPG laughing at her and her note. Over the next few days, Sage took interviews with two other companies from the career fair. When her interviewers acted unimpressed, Sage began looking at job boards for on-campus work. Her mom suggested that a second cousin might need help at his ATV and snowmobile dealership. Sage appeared destined for a job answering boring email questions and designing boring Facebook ads.
After a depressing week questioning her choice in college majors and whether she should be going to college at all, Sage’s phone rang. The call was from an unknown number in the Washington, D.C. area code.
“Hello?”
“Sage? This is Bill.”
“Bill?”
“You remember me from TPG Media?”
“Yes, yes. Bill.”
“I got your card in the mail.”
Sage’s excitement over recognizing Bill’s voice instantly turned to embarrassment. Why was he calling? To make fun of her? “I’m sorry about that,” said Sage weakly.
“What are you sorry about? I loved it. It showed real ingenuity. I like people around me with a sense of humor. I thought we had filled up our pool of interns, but I’m willing to open up another slot if you’re interested.”
“Of course I’m interested!” Sage blurted out. Then she remembered a piece of advice from her mom about not sounding too desperate. “What I mean is, you’re one of my top choices. But I’ll need to compare the offer to some other possibilities.”
Bill laughed on the other end of the line. “Okay. Then I’ll get that right over to you.”
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