The interviewer looked me dead in the eyes and told me:
“Why don’t you walk out the door, not only because you’re not going to get this job, but also because you actually don’t want this job. You’re not a writer and you’ll never be. Prove me wrong.”
I sat there fuming and ready to both punch this man in the face and hug him. I really had nothing to show for him. He’d seen right through me. The jig was up.
I felt tears of embarrassment well up but I did my best to hold them back. I managed to squeak out the formalities; thanking him for the interview, asking him for his business card for a follow-up e-mail, profusely apologizing for wasting his time. He didn’t give me a business card and waved me away, turning his attention to the stack of papers on his desk — perhaps the next victims of his harsh words.
I quickly walked out of the room and walked past the secretary in a hurry without saying goodbye.
Let me give you some context. I was interviewing for a start up for their entry level marketing position. The company only had a few employees, and it was growing fairly quickly. The CEO was a man who had written best-selling novels and was regarded highly by his peers and colleagues.
I’ve been out of school for the last four months and haven’t had the opportunity to find a position where I could start my career.
I get a call one day. They’re interested in my resume and want to talk with me over the phone. Even after countless phone screenings, I still get extremely nervous.
Reading about the company, going through my resume, and researching buzz words to impress the employers ease my anxiety enough to compose myself for the interview.
They call on Monday, 11:00 A.M. It starts off awkwardly as we talk over each other and wait in silence for the other to start speaking first. He sounds young and enthusiastic, and introduces himself as Will the Employer. We talk about how we have the same name, how the weather is and how each others’ mornings had been.
All according to the script.
Will the Employer clears his throat and starts it off by asking me the generic questions I had prepared to answer all week. He asks me about my previous experiences and why I had applied to this company and so on, and I follow up with well researched, practiced and well-structured generic answers that were crafted by best practices from various “interview gurus” on the internet.
Both Employer Will and I are thoroughly impressed, one influenced by the BS answers and the other at the fact that the BS answers were so well received, and Employer Will expresses his enthusiasm over my answers.
I sounded confident and intelligent over the phone, and would be able to snake my way into the second round interview. He ensures that he would have great things to pass onto the hiring manager. I thank him for his time and tell him to have a great rest of the day. Click.
I lean back in my chair and watch Youtube and Netflix for the rest of the day to reward myself.
The next day, I get a follow-up e-mail. I had been chosen to interview with a hiring manager, and am provided with his name, the office location, and the job description. I write up some notes on potential questions, learn about the company’s products in depth, and stalk the manager’s social media profiles. He seems like a friendly guy and I have a good feeling about the interview.
The day of the interview comes. I arrive 15 minutes before the arranged time, take a couple of mints to freshen up, use the bathroom to shake off some nerves and relieve myself, and finally it’s time.
I walk in to the room and shake the manager’s hand. It’s firm and strong. I feel like you can always tell how someone’s demeanor will be by their handshake.
He gets to business right away. Hits me with the jabs, the “tell me about yourself” and “why this company”. I receive them well, and return with my own jabs, repeating the same answers that I had given Employer Will.
Only this time, the manager doesn’t seem to buy it. He looks at my resumé, frowns a bit, and puts it away in a folder. He folds his hands on the table and looks at me in the eye.
“What do you want to be in 10 years? Give me the truth. It can be your wildest dreams or whatever.”
I’m caught by surprise since I hadn’t prepared for a question like this, but I find myself trying to be as honest as I could.
“Well, I want to be a writer. I want to be able to be my own boss and make money from my writing and have a book that impacts the people around me and future generations.”
“Oh really? You like writing? You say reading and writing are some of your interests. I’m actually a writer myself. What do you like about writing? What do you actually want to get out of it?”
“To be honest, I think the influence and the popularity that they get after they write a best-selling book. I want to have a lifestyle where I don’t have to worry about money and I could just write for a living. I like writing because it helps me construct my thoughts clearly and I find myself to be able to express my ideas better on paper than trying to talk about them.”
“Cool, I like that.” He leans forward a bit and I can see that he has a glow in his eyes. “Tell me, how do you think one becomes a writer? What do you think you’d have to do to become a writer… a good writer?”
I have to think here. I try to remember everything from a listicle titled, “The Top 10 Skills Every Writer Should Have” that I read from Medium the other day.
“Umm, I think you have to have great ideas and have a great storytelling ability. A lot of these great writers were geniuses and they were able to express their thoughts clearly and beautifully, and each wrote with different styles. I also think you have to find your own “voice”, whatever that means. I think you have to have free time to be able to try out your ideas and write and you have to find your niche and your target market and a good agent and — .”
“Let me stop you right there. That’s important and all, but what’s the most important thing a writer should be concentrating on? Let’s forget all these technicalities and details. A writer has to write. He has to dedicate all his time to the craft. He has to be disciplined and strong willed. He has to write on days when he feels like he doesn’t want to write. He has to be able to write 50 pages of a story and be able to stomach the thought of burning them all and starting from scratch again. Forget genius and all that. A writer must write. An artist must create and draw and sculpt and paint. So if you want to be a writer, you have to write no matter what. Understand?”
“Yes sir, I completely agree with you.” I’m surprised at his sudden explosion of words, since he hasn’t said much up until this point.
He’s almost out of his chair now. I’m starting to get anxious, wondering what I had said that made him so excited. He leans back and stares at me, while an uncomfortable silence fills the room, and I try to smile as I wait for his next question, palms getting damper every second, toes clenching and unclenching.
He finally breaks the silence.
“Let’s get serious here. I like to make my decisions based on the evidence provided to me. I make a hypothesis about you and it’s up to you to make a case for yourself. Now, describe yourself in three adjectives.”
“I see. Um…” I respond, and pretend to think. I already have three words in mind but I have to act like it’s genuine, that I have never thought of it before and had to brainstorm for a while for the best adjectives. “I’d say I am disciplined, hard-working and ambitious. The reason I say that is because — .”
“Prove it. How can you show me that you’re disciplined, hard-working and ambitious?” He interrupts, never losing eye contact and barely blinking.
I manage to stammer, “Well, I’ve worked on a couple projects and my GPA certainly speaks for itself and —.”
“Oh yeah, I’ve seen your GPA.” He interrupts again, still burning through me with his intense gaze. “It’s not that impressive compared to all the other candidates I’ve interviewed, and you don’t have to give me an excuse of why it’s not a 4.0 with a sob story about family issues or how you were young and messed up in your freshman year.”
“I understand that it’s not the greatest GPA you’ve ever seen, and I won’t give you any excuses.” I begin to sweat profusely from my palms and forehead. This was not going the way I imagined.
“Okay, well if I had to talk about a project I started for myself, I wrote on a blog everyday for three months and grew it to over 500 followers organically and — .”
“Why’d you stop?” He’s still staring.
“I’ve actually seen your blog. I’ve read some of the material too. It’s not bad but it’s certainly nothing special. You stopped over a year ago. Would you call that ambitious? Stopping something after three months? Would you call that hard-working or disciplined? I know I certainly wouldn’t.”
This is the first time someone has not bought my story and has been impressed by my “self-starter” persona. I start feeling dizzy and I start to lose my composure.
I start to explain, “Well it’s because I lost motivation and I started getting busy with school and my internship and — .”
“No, it’s because you’re lazy and you didn’t actually want it. You don’t have anything to prove to me. You say all you want about yourself but when push comes to shove you have nothing to show for yourself. You can’t even stick with an easy habit of writing once a day for a couple of months. You thought I’d be impressed by your little pet project here? The one you did a year ago? Give me a break. You want to know what I’ve done? I wrote 3 best selling novels in six months. I wrote everyday without fail. I also had a full time job, so I came home, ate dinner and worked on my books until they were done. It seems like you’ve gotten quite the ego because you read some self-help books and wrote a couple of articles. You want to be a writer, eh? I don’t think you really want it. I can already tell that after hearing my words today, you’re going to go home and give up that dream altogether because I just ripped your mask off. You say you want to be a writer without putting in the work and paying your dues. You say you want to be a writer because people will look at you and be impressed by your ‘ambition’. They’ll look at your blog and see that you have 500 followers and a couple of likes on some articles and be impressed by your ‘success’, given how you’ve only been around for a short time.”
“You know what? Fine, let’s say your blog is a good achievement for your age. I’ll give you some credit for that. What else have you done for the past year that shows you’re ambitious, disciplined and hard-working? What have you been doing on Saturdays and Sundays? Have you been working on a different craft that you haven’t told me about? Have you been cultivating your skills as a writer so that you can come out with a bang the next time you choose to write? Tell me.”
“I… I made a website for an online portfolio and… I’m… I’m thinking about starting a new project reviewing the books I’ve been reading and — .”
“I’ve seen your website too. It’s the same bullshit you’ve put on your blog. You’re so lazy you just put a couple of articles that you had on your blog and reposted it. My God and you have the audacity to call yourself hard-working. Your new project, have you started it? What makes it so different from the thousands of book review websites that are already online? Why should I spend my time on that site when, judging from your previous works, you’re lazy and only repost a couple of articles and undisciplined?”
Every word burned into my brain. He was completely right. He saw right through my mask, the mask that fooled everyone up to this point. The mask that I was comfortable wearing, the mask that I did not want to take off. I felt like crying.
“Well, um, it’s different because I read books that people my age aren’t really reading and I’m trying to show them how important they are to read at this day and age and how reading is important because — .”
“Wait, so are you starting this book review club so that you can help young people get back into reading, or are you trying to show people how much you read and how intelligent and cultured you are by reading while everyone else is spending their time on social media and mindless content?”
I turn crimson red and try to stammer a defense.
“No, it’s not like that! I just want to share what I’ve learned and want to help people deal with problems that I dealt with in the past and how I fixed them and — .”
“Alright let’s stop here.” He sighed. I feel a lump in my throat. I felt defeated, ashamed, and embarrassed.
“Listen, I’m not trying to be an asshole and I’m doing this all to test you. I want to see if you’ve got what it takes. If you actually want what you say you want. I want to see if you’re going give up when it gets hard and frustrating. I want to see if you’re going to give up just because one person said some mean things to you. I want you to prove me wrong and show me that I was wrong. Because I’ve met so many people who were just like you, who told me all these things about how they wanted to become a famous writer and artist and yada yada, and when I pushed and poked them a bit, they broke down and they gave up. I want to see if you can take the blows, and stand back up. Trust me when I say that I was holding back.”
I nod. I don’t know what to say. I have never felt like this before. This was not how I imagined the interview to go at all.
“I want you to go out there and prove me wrong. I want you to know that there are billions of people just like me all across the world, who will tell you exactly what I told you and more. They’ll doubt you just like me. They’ll make you prove it to them. Do you have what it takes? Are you all talk, like 99.9% of people on this planet, or are you part of the .01%, the extraordinary who are deserving of our admiration? Maybe you can be a writer. Who knows? I know I don’t believe in it right now, given I know about your past. Instead of betting on the universe to give you what you want, why don’t you bet on yourself? Double down and get to work. Against all odds, even if the universe doesn’t want you to become a writer, become a fucking writer. Have some confidence in yourself. You’re the only one who can make this happen. I want you to know that I’m telling you this because someone in the past told me everything I just told you. He’s the one that tested me, and I considered the day I met him to be the turning point in my life. He also bet against me, just like how I’m betting against you. He sided with the universe, and guess what? He lost. I met him the other day and he apologized to me. It was the sweetest feeling in the world, to know that I had worked my ass off to prove him wrong. But I respected him all my life because he was the only one to tell me the brutal, honest truth. Everyone else is walking on egg shells, afraid to hurt each others feelings. He doesn’t tell everyone the truth, only to those who deserve it. The day we met, he told me to never cast pearls before swine. He knew I could take it, so he told me the truth. I know you could take it, so I’m telling you the truth right now. Prove me wrong, Will. In five or ten years, when you’re holding a book signing with thousands of people standing in line to talk to you for five seconds, revered by millions, make me regret doubting you. Make me apologize. Let this moment be burned into your brain, and remember these words every time you think about giving up on your writing.”