My life rated

Most of us know that multinationals like to use competency-based models to interview candidates. CVs do not really help you at that point, although diverse experiences help you find more accurate examples of past behavior. The funny thing is that your life ends up rated on a 5-point scale. When choosing your university you showed clear strategic decision making (or not), the sports you like show a level of commitment (or not) and the extracurrical activities you did provided you with a valuable experience (or not....).

It is quite a challange to talk about your personal experiences in life and have someone else rate them. Apparently I have shown result-orientation, commitment, ambition, resourcefullness and enterpreneurship. This has helped me survive my first interviews. My competencies were evaluated and found to be ok...... for now.

The dreaded assessment days are up next. I get to do group activities, role plays, individual assignment and psychological tests. After they will write a profile and judge whether I am good enough or not. Perfect strangers will observe me and write down the things I am good at, need to improve and my ambitions.

I will get a final rating.

Reconnecting with fellow ERs

Last year we had a cool group of ERs working for AIESEC in Europe. With a lot of them I still stay in touch but in the last weeks I had some interesting meetings.

I met Vija in Amsterdam where we had a lovely diner in Bazar. She is now working for ING and defining her next steps. We figured we were all into the same things: defining and shaping our future. We were both looking for permanent jobs, a difficult process, thinking of where to live (and in which country??) and discussing what we wanted to get out of life. We also took some time to reflect on our time in AIESEC and how we feel now about the organization.

On MSN I talked to Sophia who is on a job hunt and wants to go abroad a.s.a.p. We talked about dissapointments after rejection, endless waiting for results and the ambitions we share.

As you can read we have a lot in common: we are all ambitious, internationally oriented and a bit confused/doubtful. In AIESEC we used to talk about all the great things you can do in your future. We are in my opinion firm believers of this. Only thing is that the we need to make the world cooperate with us.

Competition in Western Europe is fierce. Especially with the borders in the EU open, the market is becoming more international and the standards higher. We will find our place, I am sure of it, but the process might be harder than expected.

Thoghts from journalist Robert Fisk

Yeah I know, that is the third blog post in one day, I should focus more on my thesis....I just needed to share this.

Robert Fisk, famous for the book conquest of the Middle-East and recognized journalist gave a speech in Vancouver in 2006. I have heard this speech several times and every time I am equally impressed. One of his quotes:

And by the time I got back to the front of the air craft, I realized that Osama Bin Laden - for I was sure he had a hand in this. He had managed to turn nice, friendly, liberal Bob into a racist in about ten seconds.And I came to the conclusion that part of the reason for doing this was not to divide Muslims from Christians. I don't believe in the clash of civilizations.It was to divide the innocent from the innocent.It was to make us hate each other. That was the purpose.

He also shows a strong historical resemblence with events in the Middle-East one hundred years back and the current reality. Very fascinating stuff, if you get the chance, check this speech out.

Top Ten Favorite George W. Bush Moments

Ok ok he is an easy target but he is funny!

World Economic Forum

In Davos significant people in the world are talking about economic development. Our news bulletin covered an interesting fact.

In the american S&P 500 profits have been rising significantly for years now. Wages however have stayed at the exact same level or even slightly descreased. Top management team wages have a life of their own and rose significantly over the years.

Mr Jack Welch (GE) received 122 million dollars in 2000. Europe's best paid top manager works at novartis and earn 10.3 million a year. In The Netherlands they "only" earn an average of 1 million a year.

Minimun wage in the US is set on $5.15/hour, in The Netherlands this is € 1284,60 per month working full-time.

Stormy weather

Last week the Dutch metereological instutute issued a weather alarm for The Netherlands.

I came out of the WTC in Amsterdam and was blown aside by the wind. I had to walk trough the basement to get to the station because open air was not possible. Besides this minor incident not much happened.

Yesterday a new weather alarm was issued. Ofcourse people did not take it that seriously and just went out to do their daily routines, oops......

The storm was a bit stronger this time and the whole country was disrupted. Because of trees and tiles flying trough the air, lots of roads were closed off for all traffic, leading to massive traffic jams. Public transport was at some point cancelled in the whole country, so no trains or buses were running anywhere. Millions of people were stranded at stations or in traffic jams. The chaos was complete.

But there is another danger that we are a bit worried about. If you take a look at the picture above, you can guess what it is. For a country that has built dikes to protect itself from the water and has parts of land laying below sea level, big storms are dangerous.

The big question is now: WILL THE DIKES HOLD with current weather conditions changing?
We sure hope so :-)

More Success

I am happy to say that I have been accepted for the application procedures of Heineken and Unilever. In the next two weeks I have interviews with them.

I am now looking into their histories, management board, structure, brands and defining my motivation further. Also important are of course preparing the STARs (situation-task-action-result). Did I forget anything???

I am excited though that finally things are happening, so am happy!!!

First succes!

Finally, some results of the job-hunt. ABN-Amro has contacted me and I am now officially in the application procedure. This means an interview, IQ-test-WAITING (if positive)-assesmentcentre of one day- WAITING- interviews with managers-WAITING- job offer.
Yeap it is long but in the end you get your first job.

I am still waiting for the others, we will see.

Dutch history- We sailed, we saw, we stole and got rich

Yesterday Lonneke and me went to the maritime museum in Rotterdam. Two exhibitions were for me most interesting. One concerned the Holland-America line. There used to be a big steamer transporting people from Rotterdam to New York. Old pics and even menus were displayed and it was really fun to see.


The other exhibition concerned the making of maps by our old fleet called the V.O.C. The Dutch have always been good sailers (due to all the water surrounding us-small intermezzo: we even got rid of our spanish invadors by drowning them and us surviving on boats). So we sailed to Asia and stole spices/tea/etc. from countries like India, Bangladesh, Indonesia and China.

The V.O.C. also had cartographs working for them. They made maps from the countries we sailed to and made sure the ships did not perish in low water. One of these maps is shown in the picture. It was really fascinating seeing these old maps being quite accurate and in some the Americas were missing since it was not discovered yet.


There were lots of pirates back then and many wars between fleets. In one of these incidents the English stole our maps and took them to Oxford. Only recently they were discovered in one of Oxford's libraries and given back to The Netherlands. Those were the maps we saw yesterday.

Job hunting-part II

Resumes, motivation letters, interviews, applications, introductionary telephone calls etc. etc. etc.... This is my life nowadays. I know many of you are facing the same situation or going to be soon. Here are some insights.

For me it was hard to find a job role that combines my competences (sales-related) with my ambitions (corporate comm/PR). I found two very different paths in FMCG and Banking. Both would provide me with a considerable learning curve and ample room for personal development. However selling food/beer/detergents is very different from financial products.

Then there are also jobs which would bring me directly to my goal, like AIESEC traineeships. I found a lot of AIESEC traineeships to lack quality and job descriptions are not very diverse. However, some offer very good prospects.

Conclusions?? None yet.
I have a telephone interview tomorrow for a traineeship, two meetings with recruitment agencies later in the week, 2 introductionary calls with Dutch banks, one possible JD at another Ducth multinational and that is about it for now.

We will see what happens next, I will keep u updated at least.