Tuesday 24 November 2009

Wear it on your heart.

Just a funny memory from my interview the other day that I forgot to write about... Jeff came out of the interview room into the waiting area and beckoned me and Hannah in. As we approached him, he said "And your name is...?" as you do... well, the fact I was surrounded by Disney and he was wearing a badge and everything lead me to have to resist to an automatic reaction of moving my right hand to above my heart to touch my badge and say "It's Catherine"... except there was no badge there. LOL. I hope there is in 8 months time... only a few more days until I find out.



Sunday 22 November 2009

A long day!

I meant to write this post last night but I was so tired I went practically straight to bed! Let's start from the beginning of my second face to face interview with the Walt Disney company...

5am: Alarm goes off. Ugh, too early. After lying in bed for a further 10 minutes I thought I'd better get up. Don't get me wrong, I was excited and nervous but this had caused bad sleep so I felt really tired! Got up, got dressed, applied 'Disney Look' make-up, told myself off for not ironing my shirt before leaving Bristol the day before and got my bag together, triple checking all my documents.

6am: I had booked a taxi for 6am from Salisbury Hospital's main entrance (I was staying in the nurses's accommodation, i.e. Tom's flat, as it was easier to get a train from here than Bournemouth thanks to engineering works). Thought it was better to be on the early side... well, £10 later I was already at the station for 6.10am. Ended up getting on the train that was already on the platform which was the 6.17am train to London. Because it was a Saturday, my ticket meant that I could get any train I wanted there and back which was fab because it was only a £20 return!

7.50am: I arrive at London Waterloo a full 1 hour and 40 minutes before I needed to be in Hammersmith so I went to Burger King and had a very yummy egg and bacon 'butty' thing with little hash browns and orange juice. After hanging around for a bit, having a quick chat with Tom on the phone and smartening myself up in the toilets it was about 8.20am so I headed to the Underground to top up my Oyster card and get onto the tube.

8.55am: I arrive at Hammersmith tube station. It's one of those annoying ones which has about 3 exits so I just head for the first one I see and it comes out on a main road. It then occurred to me why it is good to be early when you don't know where you're going! I had heard on the forums that there were two entrances to the Disney HQ... finding the first one wasn't too difficult but after a quick scout around I couldn't see another one. What I did see however, was a couple of people looking a bit nervous and standing around near Disney HQ so I went in head first and asked them if they were there for the same reason as me! They were :P

9.15am: By now there was about 20 of us hanging around outside the main entrance, with no clear way of getting in! Eventually someone came down and collected us, took us right round to the back of the building to the back entrance - helpful. The Disney HQ is amazing...lovely big posters everywhere with the movies on them and sculptures/artwork of Mickey and other characters. So Cool. So we all signed in and then were taken upstairs to a waiting area with lots of comfy chairs. It was nothing like the last interview with Disney where I was in a restaurant! Random.

9.45am: We are all taken into this screening room place, essentially a cinema with really cool reclining seats! Then Jill and Jeff (brilliantly American recruiters straight from WDW) did the presentation which I have seen before... rather amusing and quite interesting. Before the presentation we did another trivia quiz where I won a ICP pin :-)

10.45am: We are told our interview times - mine is at 5.40pm!!! So late! I had thought that if I had travelled from further away then it would be reasonably early but obviously not! So, we all went back downstairs to the entrance to the building as we had so long to wait. I had been chatting to 3 other girls called Amy, Hannah and Emily so we decided to go and do something together as our interviews were all later in the afternoon. As I had promised to meet up with Victoria I thought it would be nice for her to come with us too so we all met up at the Pizza Hut on Oxford St.

12.30pm: So, we sit in Pizza Hut and had a good value for money lunch of pizza and garlic bread (for me) which was very nice. Victoria recounted the under 21 drinking story from the ICP08 and the others asked her and me lots of questions about the program which was great. I basically spent the whole day talking about Disney! After we had finished at Pizza Hut, Amy and Emily decided it would be best if they headed back to Hammersmith because not all the tubes were running so it was taking a bit longer to get around. I said goodbye to Victoria and told her I'd see her in January when I'm back in London again!

2pm: Hannah and I attempted to get to the shopping mall that had been mentioned earlier in the day located at White City (i.e. where the BBC is... excitement!) but because the tubes were so rubbish we ended up back in Hammersmith where we wandered around this little shopping centre. We sat and discussed the roles and what we were going to go for... I decided to go for character attendant as 1st option, operations as 2nd and merchandise as 3rd. More on this later...

3.30pm: We decide to go back to Disney HQ as we wanted somewhere comfy to sit down and with the hope that we could get an earlier interview we headed back. Cue about 1 hour and 20 minutes of sitting around, chatting to other people about the program and getting our paperwork checked.

4.45pm: Really funny coincidence. I was supposed to have my interview with a guy who hadn't come back yet so Katie (I think that was her name) from Yummy Jobs just went... "Well how about you two go together then!". So for the 2nd year running, I ended up having my interview with someone I had been hanging around with all day! Whilst I was chatting to the girls from Yummy Jobs, she told me that the roles they had the most positions for were Custodial, QS F+B, Housekeeping and.... Operations. Now in theory this would be fab as it was my 2nd choice on the form but I am worried I will end up at Downtown Disney or Wide World of Sports as a ticket seller which would be crappy... but then I guess it's the risk you take with any of the roles. I could equally end up in a resort doing merchandise which is what I was worried about last time and I ended up in MK.

5pm: Me and Hannah go in for our interview with Jeff. I think it went pretty well... he asked me questions about why I wanted to go back, what roles I had chosen (I tried to emphasize to him I really wanted to be in the parks because I really loved working in MK last time, who knows if that helped or not) and he told me that they had changed the role of character attendant now so that you don't move around all the parks, you are assigned an area of a park for the whole time. Don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing...

5.20pm: So at the time I was supposed to be going in for my interview, I came out of it! I hope it went reasonably well. At the end of the day I guess it's better to be working for Disney in a role that wasn't my top choice than not at all but fingers crossed that I get my first choice and end up back in one of the four main parks! That would be brilliant, I can't explain how excited I would be!! So, interview over, we all said goodbye to each other - exchanged numbers and facebook names!

6.50pm: Back at Waterloo I had my third fast food meal of the day - a McFlurry. So piggy! I decided to get on the train that terminated at Salisbury so that I wouldn't get back too late. I didn't want to have to get 2 taxis in one day particularly! Got back to Salisbury at about 8.20pm and got the bus back to the hospital.

10pm: After having a well needed shower and tidy up, it was time for bed after a very long day. Rumour has it (straight from the YJ mouth!) the earliest we'll know is Friday and if not then the week after... i.e. next week. Kinda scary but it will be good to know asap so I can get on with organising my life! In the meantime I have loads of uni work to be getting on with which is what I should be doing right now so I had better go get on with some more procrastination!

Wish me luck!

x

Friday 20 November 2009

F2F Interview tomorrow!

Ooooooh, I am getting a little bit excited and nervous now! The face to face interview is in London tomorrow and I think it's the last day of interviews in the whole of the UK - all the others seem to have been done! The really scary bit is that from looking at the WDWIP forums, lots of people have been told that they will know by next Friday! :O Considering it took them 4 weeks to tell me last time, I am taking it with a pinch of salt but it could really be true!

Also heard a rumour of there being a waiting list this year which sounds horrible... I would prefer to be told I didn't get the job than be put on a waiting list...ok, maybe I wouldn't. But I wouldn't want to be sitting on a waiting list for ages not being able to book flights etc etc... I guess I will have to try to be as flexible as possible with roles and dates etc. If I did get put on a waiting list I would have to set a final date I am willing to wait... say the end of January. Otherwise everything just gets too expensive and last minute - like last time.

The good thing about being one of the last interviewees is that I have heard of a few questions people have been asked and just generally about the interview day. Obviously I remember it in 2008 but it will have changed slightly in the 18+ months since then.

The uber question really, and I know they will ask it, is WHY I want to go back and why I deserve to. It's a tricky one which has lots of potential answers, especially if you want to apply for a different role. For example, I wouldn't mind working in Merchandise again but I would love to apply for a different role like Character Attendant or Main St Operations. The chances of me being able to work on Main St again are very minimal but one can hope right!

So I'm just trying to plan my minor film shoot (a week tomorrow, ARGH) and revise my Disney facts and think about interview questions. Normally, I don't get too worked up about things and sleeping is rarely difficult but I just couldn't get to sleep last night! I hope tonight will be easier...I doubt it! Wish me luck!

x

Tuesday 10 November 2009

All set and ready to go!

Well, as you can tell, I have Uni work I should be doing... the whole putting Disney out of my mind thing isn't really working too well! I have my train booked, an outfit sorted (unfortunately not a new outfit... I'm not made of money :P) and I got Lizzie to sign off my forms today... she remembered doing them two years ago and that she messed it up! So I filled most of it out and she just had to sign it so that's all good.

So to be honest, I don't have a lot to say except that I should be editing and putting a little update on here seemed like a good way of wasting 5 minutes. I have everything ready for my interview now with the photocopies and the documents, just need a folder to put it in! I am debating about what shoes to wear (typical girl comment) as I know that walking around London in heels is very painful but my trousers are quite long so I don't want them to drag on the ground... so then there is the possibility of taking another pair of flat shoes but then I'd need another pair of trousers to wear because I don't want to ruin the bottoms of the legs! Dilemma! It seems I will just have to waste a little bit more time with a trying on session! Oh dear!

x

Wednesday 4 November 2009

Face to Face Email!

Firstly, if any of you keen beans read my last blog, you will notice I attempted to use a Disney reference in every title of the blog posts... I am not doing it this time, too much hard work! Just simple, to the point titles!

Anyway, I got my email! Woo! Almost 3 weeks after my phone interview (but then I had a very early phone interview) and the face to face (f2f) interview is in London on 21st November which is a Saturday... in fact 2 weeks on Saturday. Quite exciting.

I had a really awful day yesterday and I have had a horrible cold/fluey thing for a week so I wasn't feeling great and then the Disney magic popped into my inbox! I have to be in Hammersmith (at the Disney offices... cool!) for 9.30am so I booked my train to get in at about 8.20am. Difference between 2008 and this time is that I have to actually get off the train and onto a tube to get to the right place so I need to allow a little more time. The train ticket was only £20 and it's an off-peak return meaning I don't have to get a specific train which is fab too.. hopefully going to meet up with Victoria whilst in London, haven't seen her since I was on my placement in July.

I ended up booking the train from Salisbury rather than Bournemouth... I presume that because it's Saturday it's the time for maintenance on the railways because it was telling me I'd have to get a bus to Southampton and the train from there to London - no way! And from Bristol I'd have to change at Bath Spa (and it would cost more!) so in the end I thought I'd just do it from Salisbury... it's a direct train, only take 1 hr 30 and it was only £20. Might even be able to tie in a HCSW shift the next day to pay off the cost of the interview!

Yay! x