Office water cooler talk

Now that I am nearing the end of my summer internship, I have found myself to be the busiest I have been all summer, both at work and in life in general. I finished my big project, "La plantilla ideal" a couple of weeks ago, right before my two managers both went out of town on holiday for the rest of the summer. With them gone and my project complete, I thought everything would slow down at the office and I had some fears that I would become bored with nothing to do. Instead, the opposite happened. My boss put me to work organizing and screening the hundreds of CVs that come in each day for candidates applying to work at Desigual stores in the UK. For the past few days, I have been giving phone interviews for store manager, visual merchandiser, and sales assistant positions at a store that is designated to open in September. I have to be honest; it feels weird to interview Desigual employee candidates when I am not even a full-time employee here. At the same time, it is a nice change to be on this side of the interview process, as I am usually the one being interviewed, rather than the other way around.

Desigual store

One of the most interesting things I have discovered while working in Barcelona is the difference between CVs (curriculum vitae) and the typical American resume. While we are taught in school to keep our resumes to no longer than a page, highlighting the most important qualifications and maintaining a pretty strict format, in Europe this is not the case. European CVs usually have a picture of the candidate at the top of the first page, and can be anywhere from two to fourteen pages long. They include many personal details such as interests, activities, hobbies, life goals, and aspirations. One girl even wrote on hers, in the "skills" section, "Giving great advice." Good to know, she is clearly someone you would want to meet for a chat at the office water cooler. 

Despite the fact taht many of the CVs sound more like dating profiles than job applications, I have screened and spoken with some truly interesting people. Probably my favorite part about this job and working in HR is getting the chance to analyze the different personalities and figure out which people would work well as a team and in sales. While I am not positive that this is something I would want to do for the rest of my life, it has been a learning experience that I have appreciated for the summer. Above all, one of the most important lessons that I have learned is that sometimes you need to ask for assignments, and speak up when the situation you are placed in is not ideal. I have always been more passive than aggressive, so it was really hard for me to talk to my boss about wanting more hands-on projects that I could take on in addition to the "plantilla ideal" project I had been assigned. While the project was really interesting to me and I did enjoy working on it, I needed more variety, and wanted the chance to understand some of the other aspects of the retail industry. When I brought this up to my boss, she was more than understanding. She thanked me for bringing it to her attention, and since then my work situation has greatly improved. I am so relieved that I actually said something, and have learned that as long as I communicate my concerns in a clear, constructive, and reasonable manner, more often than not the end result will turn out positively.