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Recruitment agencies and companies nowadays use to say: job situation is tough.
Oooh, yesss. It is indeed. But the tougher it is the weirder become assessments and tests you have to do to get a job. No, I apologise. Not to get a job. To submit the application!

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I was going to apply for a role available for an important travel company. Their vacancies were all around the UK and I would have tried to apply in Lancashire and Merseyside both.
Personal details, qualifications, achievements. All right. I can handle that. Then, the longest part of the application: the 30 minutes assessment test. They would ask me tons of questions trying to identify my skills and match them with the job I was about to apply for.
Ok, I can do it. Let’s go ahead with the assessment, then.

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I sat down. I was ready to start with the examination. I was applying for a travel consultant vacancy, so I supposed I should answer above all to geographical questions. I was wrong, completely wrong.
Now please just try to guess my face when the first question popped up on the screen and I saw the following:

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I thought I was going to be a travel consultant, not a competitor of Jamie Oliver!

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Straight after the cake baking test they asked me to decipher a mobile text and re-write it in a letter format. Right words, sentences and punctuation: easy!
The step that followed asked me to correct the answer to the letter I had just completed. It was full of errors and with an awful lack of punctuation. Easy again!

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The third step involved the comprehension. I had to read the article they were proposing me and select firstly its three main subjects, then its three most important quotations:

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Of course I didn’t guess any, not even one, neither after reloading the page and starting it all from the beginning. Did I really deserve my Media & Communication degree? Shame on me, cheated by an automatic test!
Feeling miserable, I tried to do my best with the title (my apologises, kids!):

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Straight and precise. If I’m booking a cruise and the travel consultant deals with my kids the way I dealt with that article I am sure I will go for a rubber dinghy trip.

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As if my embarassment wasn’t just enough, here comes a sequence of questions regarding the subject I’ve always fought against in my life: Maths.
“Please calculate the surface of this, please calculate the area of that, how many metres of wall paper do you need to cover a room of 4x3x2.5metres with a covered chimney jut in the middle if the paper costs 6.5£ per strip and a strip is 50 centimetres large and 2 metres long?”
What?!? Who the hell cares how much it’ll cost the bloody wall paper to cover the bloody chimney when I live with 6 other people, I’ve got no chimney and my room is covered in plain paint that once was white and now is Tweety yellow???
Of course I typed the first numbers that came up in my mind. Obviously the result was far from being good: your score is really poor. Do you wish to go on all the same?
Yes, I do.
Attention! If you will click on ‘continue’ button again, you won’t be able to go back anymore! Do you wish to continue?
Yes, holy cow! Go on!
And here’s what the system proposed me straight after. A cook at the beginning, then the kidsister of Albert Einstein, the daughter of Chris Lowe and now… a waitress!

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When the hell will I finally become a travel consultant?!

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Surely not the step after. For the umpteenth time, I found myself making a face. The new question was even vital: can you please help your healthy granny to put the right amount of fats in her wrecked body?
Sure, mate! Let’s start and defeat the bastard fatty salad!

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They gave me just the first numbers. I was supposed to calculate the ones left. Again, I felt puzzled: what the hell does this has to do with travelling???
But, for the first time, the answer perfectly made sense: they were teaching me how to calculate the fats I’d surely put on my belly staying sat all the day beyond a desk if I wasn’t smart enough to eat healthy!

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The very last question was the classical icing on the cake: distances. To be calculated without any TomTom or Garmin or Mio, of course!

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I hurried to Google Maps. From Edinburgh to York, here and there, up and down along the UK. At 20p per mile. Why didn’t she buy the tickets before jumping on the train? What if she catched a wrecked Northern with no ticket inspector in? And what if the price didn’t match with her hormones? What would she do? Would she get off in Newcastle and then go on by foot? Stupid Sandra!

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Did I have to give up and renounce to my promising carreer as a cook/handiman/mathematician/journalist/waiter/dietician/SatNav&train-ticket-machine?
Yes, because in the end I have been unsuccesful!
Usually they consuider I have been unsuccesful after forwarding my CV to employers and filling out the application form. This really is the first time I run into a system who shuts browser’s door on my face. But, you know, job situation is tough and you can be really succesful only if you can demonstrate to be very versatile. That’s why, probably, I couldn’t apply again as a travel consultant. At least, not until I won’t get some experience also in cooking a proper Sunday roast.