Congratulations, You’re Perfectly Adequate. When Can You Start?

This entry is the third in our series by Sara, a recent college graduate who has been facing the daunting task of finding her first “real” job. The other two posts are “The Plight of the Recent College Grad” and “Interviewing: Practice Really Does Make Perfect.”

In this post, she talks about receiving her first official offer and discovering that sometimes even when you do get an offer, it isn’t exactly what you were hoping for.

Here’s Sara:

Well, it finally happened; after a strange interview and an extended round of phone tag I came home to a voicemail that offered me a position with a local web-marketing company. It was a full-time job in my field where I would spend most of my time writing and corresponding with other web marketers—what a great opportunity to network and earn money simultaneously!

Too bad I turned it down.

Sure, it was nice to see that someone, somewhere thought I would be an asset for his organization, but too many factors sent up red flags and made me too uncomfortable to accept the position.

First flag, a company that built up clients’ web presence, yet it did not have a website. I spent a half hour before the interview trying to do research on the company, and the only thing I found was a logo. At the interview, I asked why the company didn’t have a site and was told that the company did not need to advertise. It has all the clients it needs and has actually gone so far as to try to avoid picking up a new client. Clearly, the company was not growing—if it was, no one knew about it—which brings me to red-flag number two.

One of the first things out of my interviewer’s mouth was that he “wasn’t looking for a shining star. I don’t want someone to go above and beyond the call of duty, I just want someone to do the work.” Well, if that’s the case, I guess all of my past accomplishments that I’ve spent my life working to achieve mean nothing, so we can just get down to whether I can handle mediocrity.

Another major issue I had with the position was the fact that I had no room to grow. I would be stuck in a tiny office, performing the same task for eight hours a day, with no hope of advancement. What was this job going to do for me other than add another bullet to my resume?

The more I thought about the position, the more I realized that it was a step backward. If I were still in school, then it would have been the perfect position for me to earn money and some basic marketing experience, but it definitely was not the way to start a career. So, instead of settling, I chose to count my blessings, trust that I was better than “perfectly adequate,” and hope that the right position will come along soon.