Day 2: Interview at VDL

3 January 2018

Welcome back, readers! The date is the day when I will be interviewed at VDL. I will try to recollect the memories of this day. Read and Enjoy!

The interview timing was at 2.30pm and I skipped my Zuhur prayer. When I was about to head out to VDL, I received a Whatsapp message from Rachel.

Rachel: Hi Afiq. Gentle reminder for your second interview later at 2.15pm. Kindly acknowledge. Thanks!
Afiq: Thx Rachel for reminding me.

It was so sweet of Rachel to remind me of these little things. As usual, I took a train from Redhill MRT to Joo Koon MRT. I went to the bus interchange to search for Bus 258 but it was nowhere to be found. I took out a piece of paper from my bag and read the directions again.

Bus 258 – Exit A
Board at Pioneer (7 stops later) drop at, Jalan Ahmad Ibrahim, Phillip Machine (B23031). Walk into VDL

To my annoyance, I alighted at the wrong station. It should be the next stop at PIONEER. I shake my head in regret albeit a little bit peeved that I wasted money on another useless trip.
Once I got out of the train into Pioneer station, I proceed to the bus interchange to wait for Bus 258. I hopped on the bus and while on a journey towards VDL, I look out for the building constantly, afraid that I will do the same mistake as before alighting at the wrong station. It was a short journey and fortunately got down at the correct stop.

Rachel: Rmb to bring all the necessary documents I asked you to yea! Don be late and smile during the interview :). All the best! Let me know when you reach VDL
Afiq: Ok Rachel. Rachel, I had already arrived at VDL.

I arrived 30 mins before the interview.

VDL is not its complete name. It is VDL Enabling Technologies Group. The company was involved in, according to the company profile, “semiconductor capital equipment, thin film deposition equipment for photovoltaic solar systems, analytical instruments, medical systems, aerospace & defense parts and systems and mechanization projects.” It was pretty diverse in that sense. How honoured am I to start working in this great company.

I walked to the entrance of the company and into the security guard room to exchange for a visitor’s pass. I met an Indian man who was coincidentally was attending the same interview as me. There were two Indian security guards in charge and the female one handed me a pen to write my particulars before giving the visitor’s pass to me.

I walked across the company compound and arrived at the main lobby or office. There was no receptionist present at the reception table but there was a phone there and I called Eileen, the person responsible for facilitating the interview. There was no response from the other side of the line. I put down the handset and sat down on the sofa nearby. There was also two person who were waiting to be called for an interview.

I will name the Indian man as Raju since I did not know his name or had forgotten. After a while, he entered the office.

While waiting for Eileen to come, I played the 4096 game on my Samsung Note 4 smartphone where it involved moving tiles to form the multiples of 2 and the one tile becoming a huge number.

After what seemed an eternity, Eileen came and invited me and the other two-person Raju and the Chinese man, Zhang (not his real name obviously) to the room inside another office.

Eileen took our certificates to be photocopied. While she was photocopying our stuff, we took turns to introduce ourselves. I learned that Raju is a permanent resident here in Singapore and Mr. Zhang had been retrenched from the oil and gas company. When I asked them about bitcoin, they were bearish about the cryptocurrency which I absolutely disagree but I kept quiet and spread positivity to the conversation.

Eileen came back with three papers in her hand. The paper had orthographic questions on it. For my dear readers who don’t know what orthographic means, it is a projection as a means to represent three-dimensional object into different angles of the object of two-dimensional. On the paper were the questions that we must match the three-dimensional object into correct two dimensions mainly the top, front and back.

I thought to myself that these questions are pertaining to mechanical and not electrical, electronic engineering. I was certainly baffled. Anyways, I did the questions and it took me quite a while to figure out the answer, cancelling out my initial answers.

Eileen came back to collect the papers and Raju was the first to be interviewed. Mr Zhang and I waited outside the main office. Soon, Raju came out and informed us that the company needed people and we would confirm our employment by tomorrow. I was ecstatic about it.

I was called for interview by my soon-to-be manager and lead into the same room. I will call the manager Mr Wei. Mr Wei was a very fat person with his belly protruded out like a pregnant woman (I am by the lesser extent). He told me to sit down while he stands in front of me without anything to block us in between. It was quite an unusual interview for me because, for an interview, two parties sit while conducting an interview.

“Why do you choose this job?” he asked.

“Well, I am jobless for a couple of months,” I replied.

“Ok. Do you know what time I arrived at the company? Make a guess.”

“7.30 am” I replied. The normal working time starts at 8 am.

“Wrong. It is 5.30am. Every day, I arrived work at 5.30am by motorbike”

I said to myself. You had a motorbike so it was easy for him to arrive work that early. Didn’t I arrive early for this interview? Are you blind, Mr. Wei? But for decorum, I kept quiet.

“How old are you?”Mr. Wei asked

“I am 25 years old,” I replied.

“Wow, you are fresh! I thought you are very experienced with the beard that you have. Before you work in any company, you must take care of your image, you know,” Mr. Wei advised me.

He did the action of shaving the beard.

“If you don’t like my beard, you do not need to hire me right now,” I snapped.

“The beard has nothing to do with this job,”Mr. Wei reassured me and suddenly changed subject knowing that talking about the beard will lead the interview nowhere.

“I had worked in this company for 20+ plus years currently with a contract with Philips before VDL took over,” Mr. Wei about his history before coughing quite heavily. I was very concerned that he might suddenly faint.

“You know, Afiq, I had been interviewing a lot of people for the past few days starting from July last year,” Mr. Wei confided in me.

This interview had been so awkward and I am quite perturbed that he mentioned my beard. I quickly said thanks to him and was about to go off

“You don’t have any questions for me?” He asked.

I faked some questions pretending to be interested and went off. I knew from my heart that I would never secure the job with the manager straight off the bat commenting about my beard.

Rachel: I afiq. Hi*. How was the interview?
Afiq: Hi Rachel. It was great. Tmr they will confirm whether I got the job or not
Rachel: okay! I will u updated!

That was the last conversation I had with Rachel. Up till today, I am still waiting for Rachel to reply: Sorry, you did not get the job you wanted. No hard feelings. Keep trying harder to find a job. Thank you for using our service. It means I didn’t get the job. First job interview: FAILED.

Next episode on Finding a job! Stay tuned! Signing off! Sejuk!