At about 9 p.m. on Sunday, someone called me and asked if I would be available for an interview on Friday. I was a little surprised. For one, organisations are not known for working on Sundays, especially at night. When I started asking the guy questions about where he was calling from the call went bad and I couldn’t hear what he was saying. The only thing I could make out was that I should check my mail. I tried calling him back but I couldn’t get through to his number. Ok, that meant that I had an assignment to check my mailbox on Monday for a message about coming for an interview.
Monday morning, I get to a cyber café and I find that I have a mail from ActionAid Nigeria, asking me to come for an interview for an internship position. When I check the To field of the mail I count about 23 email addresses that the same mail went to. Well, sometime in January, an advert came out in the dailies asking for people who were interested in development work to apply for a flagship internship programme with ActionAid. It would last a year, and it is supposed to launch young people on a career in development. The number of people that would eventually be accepted was 4. Alright, I was one of the 23 invited for an interview to fill four positions. Very not bad. I would have to go to Abuja, the capital city of Nigeria, for the interview. Transport fares will be refunded, and accommodation has been provided in a hotel. Now, I told you that the last time I went for an interview I felt so grossly inadequate; this time around, the positions are different and I will be interviewed for an internship position. I still do not know much about what is expected of applicants to the positions. I have the requisite academic qualification, I am young and interested in development work; one would think that these would be enough. But I guess the truth is that there is no job in Nigeria, and for any advertised position advertisers get a lot of applications; cutting the number down is a feat. The interview process would therefore try to cut as many people as possible down. The invitation letter even says that successful applicants may stay for longer than a day. I know that there would probably be a computer test so I am trying to work on my MS Office applications skills. Every other thing would have to wait till I get to the interview venue.
Now, the main problem is that I am having money problems. I don’t even have the air fare, or even the bus fare, to the interview city. I would have to look for someone to lend me the money, and since the organisation said they would refund the fare I wouldn’t have problem paying back. Hard life, isn’t it?
I have to get back to trying to know how to design a budget in excel, although I can’t figure out how they would expect a fresh graduate from the university to know how to do that. By the way, that was the deal breaker in the Catholic Relief Services interview.