Just not where I thought I’d be

A year ago I was a content Londoner, preparing for my final weeks at Harper’s Bazaar and excited about the prospect of a new job. Sure, it wasn’t at another magazine, but it was certainly a financially lucrative move and I was confident I’d be inundated with freelancing gigs. It didn’t quite work out like that.

Since then I’ve freelanced on-and-off (mostly unpaid), been made redundant and finally forced back into nannying. While I love kids, I love writing more. But I just can’t seem to land an on-staff editorial role. It doesn’t help that the economy is so crap that people world over – including truck loads of journalists – are being laid off.

Back in London Bazaar has lost a third of its editorial staff and here in Sydney things aren’t much better. With so many cutbacks publishing houses are putting new projects on hold and those in jobs are cementing their discount-designer-derrières to their swivel seats.

And when a mag vacancy is advertised, every man, woman and university graduate is applying. Applications are generally online forms where in 25-words or less you get the opportunity to tell them why you’re perfect for the role. This morning I received a similarly generic, ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ for a magazine role I thought screamed me. Each dot-point in the job brief linked directly to a line in my CV, and I could even name drop that a top editor in the same publishing house had referred me to the role. But all that didn’t even get me an interview.

To add insult to injury, Boyfriend is taking a tour-leading job in South East Asia. Signing an 18-month contract but promising to break it and be home by New Years, he’ll be away for 7 months. In his mind he’s doing the right thing. With no travel operation jobs on offer here, he sees tour leading as not only a great experience but as a natural step in his professional journey.

So while he’s hanging in Halong Bay, trekking through Laos and shopping in Bangkok I’ll be here, living with my parents and applying for jobs that don’t seem to exist.

And more than two years since I first interned in New York I’ll be an intern once more, in Sydney. At twenty-five, I expected more.

...For some uplifting fashion news check out pics from day one of Rosemount Australian Fashion Week .

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.