Finished First Quarter at work with Flying Colors

Didn't expect what happened at work today. Performers for first quarter were awarded, it was unannounced actually, it wasn't really a formal recognition, the people from management just showed up on the floor and gathered themselves to give out the certificates. To my surprise one of the awardees was me, I thought I misheard my name or something. I got the highest "Customer Experience or CE" with an average of 100% (CE is based from the survey results submitted by Dell Customers that we spoke with) for the month of April. And the surprise didn't end their, I heard my name once again when they announced the highest CE for the whole Quarter 1. I couldn't almost believe, I don't really qualify myself as the best, 'coz I know I still have a lot of things to learn and there are a lot of better folks at work that I sometimes get insecure with. But I guess I'm half lucky too at the same time. I believe in luck, to my definition it's synonymous with right moment, we may all deserve of something, but not all of us deserve to have it all at the same time.

Meanwhile the Team's performance (we are clustered per Team at work with one Supervisor) for Quarter 2 has been promising. Started with me who just took home the highest CE for the first week of Quarter Two (I enjoyed the cash prize by the way) and our Participation Rate for Sales has been consistent for four weeks now (so it means we got a total of Php 20,000.00 for our Team Building Fund). The Team is also ranking first in terms of CE and other metrics but over-all we are currently in Second spot, we came short in our attendance and one other metric. I don't really expect too much for our team, but I wanna keep my hopes up especially for the all the teams to pass most of the metrics this quarter.

It always feels good to be recognized for your effort, it lets you know that you're doing great with what you do because sometimes you are too busy to notice it at all.

It's SITEL...

Finally it's monday tomorrow, I've been waiting for this day since the day before yesterday. All my life I've never been this excited. What made me so excited? Well, it's because tomorrow would be a start of my new job. After a week of job-seeking here in Metro Manila, I finnally got hired as Technical Support Representative in Business Process-Outsourcing world in short Call Center Company. SITEL Philippines opened an opportunity last Friday to me, and I'm so happy that they just gave me the chance.

Honestly, I thought it was really easy to apply in a call center company, I was wrong, it's actually easier (joke!hehe) No! it was really really difficult. First, there are a lot of applicants and most of them are former agents already, the competition is really tough. And second they are very much strict with the accent, inunciation and pronunciation, which I am not good at. I could still remember when one company asked me if I know how to read 'phonetic', "what the hell is phonetic " I said to my self, to cover the embarassment, I simply said "Computer Engineering students don't actually learn them, so I don't have any idea at all " so after that final interview I didn't anymore expect to be considered by that company, so I attractted it and it happened.

The next day, I applied in a company located on a 34th Floor of a building, in an elevator I waited like overnight to reach the floor, it was like a long trip. I handed my resume to the guard, he noticed me trembling and I felt like wanted to vanish that building, I started to feel dizzy and almost fainted. "Relax, wait lang po, nahilo ata ako sa elevator nyo" I told the guard when he was about to ask me to log-in. I sat down on a chair reserved for applicants and after a few minutes I went to the guard again and logged my name in a visitor's sheet, when I was about to pull the knob of the door, the guard called me again "Sandali lang po sir, alcohol po muna". "Sosyal naman ang company na 'to, d pwedeng mag-open ng door nang walang alcohol" I told my self while laughing about it. I noticed that they did it to every person who came from outside of the building. After waiting for almost an hour for the interview, I still couldn't contain my head, I wanted to vomit, I held on to it and my name was called for initial interview, I couldn't almost understand the questions and I answered the interviewer like a fastball "slow down, some of your words are hard to understand" she told me. With that, again I did'nt expect anymore, so I went out of the office. "Eto na naman, elevator ulit!" I almost fell asleep in the elevator, and finally, I reached the ground floor, and headed outside hurriedly.

It was really a funny experience, atleast I tried and I took my chances, I stayed home in taguig after that 34th floor experience, and went on applying again after three days. As intructed by a friend, my feet led me to Ortigas, at the back of SM Megamall and I found the Recruitment Center of SITEL Philippines at around 4pm. After 25 minutes I was interviewed and given a topic to talk about. My topic was Space Exploration, "OMG, what is this? a punishment?". I didn't know about the topic, so I just talked about Niel Armstrong, the Mars as the next potential earth and etc. I passed the initial interview and took several examinations, I finished around 11pm and requested to go to other sites of SITEL also in Ortigas the next day by 8 am for the Final Interview. After a long process, it ended by a hand-shake with the boss, Mr. Apple "Congratulations, you are hired!". Finally, after two months of being jobless, I'm back to work again.

Goodluck to me!