Coolest place to work? Check.

Tonight at 7pm eastern time I embarked on what hopefully will be the coolest employment experience ever. I went to Apple for a hiring seminar. Attending this was an honor in and of itself since they had to accept your resume to come. I arrived around 6:40 and saw around 30 people and thought to myself "alright this is cool". When 7 o'clock rolled around there was a total of 120 people there who were in attendance. I was in my khaki shorts, navy blue tee and rainbows. I was a little intimidated to see people in suits, dresses, etc. but then people came up in normal clothes and I felt a little better.

As we entered the gateway/hallway of Apple employee's cheering us on the night started with a video about employment. Then the hiring manager got up and talked about what it mean to work for Apple. Employees got up and shared testimonies, experiences and why they originally wanted to work for Apple. It was awesome to see such a diverse group of people there in terms of ethnicity, personal styles to even things such as hair color/height.

After a while of introductions and keynote presentations, we broke into smaller groups divided by last name. I was in group "G" which stood for "Garage Band". It was cool because in each group there was two employees. We were given questionnaires to fill out and once that was completed we made a document with our picture, name and 3 fun facts. These were mine:

1. I'm a former gymnast/gymnastics coach
2. I'm in Art School for Graphic Design/Advertising
3. I'm deathly afraid to actually drive through the bank drive throughs for fear of knocking off a mirror.

Once we completed that we printed our pages off and exchanged them with someone in our group. I exchanged with a girl name Amber. Who went to school in Farmville, NC. Where I passed through a few weeks before this which was awesome. It was so cool to be able to talk to someone and know a few things about them just from that piece of paper. She was a Communications major at Longwood University who just graduated. We got to talk to them for about 10 minutes then we got back in our groups and introduced each other. This was awesome. So much fun. It was cool to see the company be really focused on you getting to know the people you could possibly work with. Also just to be around a lot of diverse people knowing we all had one thing in mind. The job. There were people who'd worked on macs their whole life to someone who'd never been in the Apple store before that night.

After all this and a few "hollering" contests, the groups were dismissed. I said my farewells to my group leaders and the manager and ended up talking to a concierge named Lauren for about 10-15 minutes. We talked about the company, small talk, and the like. It was awesome to just be able to talk to someone who worked there for a few minutes to get a feel for what it's like to be employed. I'm looking forward to what happens. Going back to my actual attire for the event, Lauren complimented me on being myself. Standing out and taking it seriously by actually showing who I was. Not just showing up in a suit and TRYING to make a good first impression. She shared her hiring experience and when she went to her interview she showed up in a suit with a briefcase. Later her boss told her that he had a good laugh when she left because he knew that wasn't who she was. She said it was comforting to know that she could've shown up in t-shirt in jeans, she was just too nervous she said hahahaha. It's nice to know that they just want you to be yourself, not someone you're not.

So here's where I go from now. This week I'll get a phone call letting me know one of two things. I either have an interview or not. From there, if I'm successful, I'll have a second and maybe even a third interview. They take their employment seriously and for that I admire them. They said that they've even had someone interview 9 times (I sure hope that's not me!)!
From then, if I get hired, I attend a 3 day training conference and then get store experience. Then I'll hopefully be an employee.

All in all this was a VERY encouraging visit. It was more like a "get to know your new fellow employees" rather than just a seminar. The people are awesome and so is the company. Tonight only made the desire to work for them even greater than before.