Having grown tired of waiting on a response to emails, I decided to call the recruiter at Apple to at least make her feel guilty about not getting back to me. However, before I could achieve that, she threw me a curveball by getting right into the interview. She asked me my level of experience with Apple products - and how I used Apple products today. Easy. I hit that question out of the park, telling tales of Apple II’s, Mac classics, desktop publishing, web and graphic design, school work, Cinema tools, digital music and photography. I even considered telling her that Steve Jobs is a personal hero, but then I thought that might foil my plans to show up to any face interviews wearing blue jeans and a black mock turtleneck.
She asked me what my retail experience was. Damn, the bitch has me. I haven’t had much retail experience…except for a brief tour of a duty at a local hardware store during high school. I fought back the best I could. I told her about that experience. How I thrived in the storefront handling cash, dealing with customers and selling products that a lot of our clientele maybe didn’t know a whole lot about.
(The truth of that job experience is a horror story involving a con-artist, my absent mind and a problem at the end of the day when I counted a couple hundred dollars short. But I really felt that wouldn’t add anything positive to our discussion. Let the record stand that I was officially laid off from that job because the store was closing and I did leave with a recommendation from the store manager. That is the truth.)
Cool, I think she bought all of that.
Then came the evil philsophical, hypothetical question: how would you handle a conflict with a customer in the store. Think before you answer, think quickly, but think what she wants to hear. I this gem was so bright, it couldn’t have been pulled from my bum. I told her I see myself as a very diplomatic person. And I know how to handle and resolve conflicts, certainly in a public situation and definitely within a storefront. I told her the first important thing to do is to calm the customer down and make sure an uncomfortable scene does not progress in the store - angry and fuming customers are infinitely, if not impossible to deal with. Then, I told her that whatever their problems were in this hypothetical scenario - at the end of the day, if I did not do everything within my abilities and position at the store to reach the customer’s satisfaction, then I wasn’t doing my job. “But,” I said “if I have done everything to resolve the conflict and make the customer happy - and that customer has to leave the store anything less than satisfied, then that is a reality of doing business through a storefront. All I can do is make sure I remain professional and as accomidating as possible.
That’s right baby…you tell me when the face interviews are…you tell me that I will either have an interview on May 15th or 16th. That’s right…tell me the store is going to open on June 28th and you’re also going to tell me…ahh yes, training starts two weeks before.
I love playing these little recruiter games…brings me back to the old glory days…
I was just listening to Smashing Pumpkins - Thirty-Three
