The time has come

I haven’t been completely open and honest of late. I guess you might argue that I’ve been going behind your backs a bit. I apologise.

It’s not that I don’t love you. I do. But while I’m ever the optimist and am happy to live on tinned vegetables and tap water (really, honestly I am) unfortunately, I also have to pay rent. And the boyfriend won’t let me pay our new landlord in kind…

So, after eight long months as Intern at Bazaar, the time has come for me to venture into more profitable pastures. You see, the Intern will soon become, The P.A.

Shudder.

Ironically, while I had thought this a step down on my staircase to Editor-in-Chief (because I will get there one day, I promise you!) according to the recruitment companies I’ve been meeting with in the past couple of weeks, my five year BA Communications / LLB Law degree, three years office management back in Australia and almost 18 months of editorial internships both in the USA and UK isn’t actually enough to qualify me to answer phones and manage an Outlook diary.

Yep. My CV as it was just didn’t instil faith in employers seeking personal assistants that I might be able to handle organising their busy lives. Ummm, what the?

So my CV now reads like the to-do list of a highly neurotic OCD-sufferer. My ‘responsibilities’ at Bazaar now include (to list a few):

Answer phones
Sort and distribute mail
Organise Outlook diary for senior staff
Arrange travel and accommodation for senior staff both within the UK and overseas
Create PowerPoint presentations and Excel documents

Apparently they don’t care that I contribute copy and commission writers. They don’t want to know that I’ve represented the magazine on press trips and at launches; they may want to know that I can research things… but that might make them savvy to the fact that my childhood dream was not in fact becoming their P.A. Seriously, I have to present myself as longing for the chance to answer phones and organise meetings – that my life’s ambition is to be at their beck and call.

Now signed with three agencies, I’m waiting for my agents do work their magic. With any luck I’ll be interviewing next week and I may just be able to pay rent next month, but at the moment… Computer says no.