A. R. went through a job interview and said:

I have been working in the telecom industry for over 5 years, having first heard of telus when I was working at Microcell Solutions, otherwise known as Fido. The first thing you hear about them is the pay and benefits. Word around the 10am smoker’s huddle at Place Bonaventure usually goes around the same lines as a “land of milk and honey” where the starting salary is rediculously high, the benifits are close to executive grade and the women are all beautiful, and mostly single.

My experience in the interview process has left me with no sense of dissenchantement, if only to say that the process is byzantine, with a 4-stage filtering that includes phone interview, software and skill tests, one-on-one with 2 different people and a final check of your past employers, done through an outside firm that has no trouble finding out everything. After so much I was half expecting to cross a maze and fight a Minotaur as the grand finale, but I guess nothing this good is easily acqyuired.

Although I did not get a job there, I did end up working for a company that manages their employee performance and loyalty recognition programs (yes, god’s laughing). Named Team Machine, the system, lets you get points for meeting their quotas and nice gifts for 5 - 10 - 15 - 20+ years of service. It could range from anything to famous players gift certificates to high-to-medium-end digital cameras. From what I understand, the points alloted are not based on guidelines that “carved into stone”, it’s rather left to the discretion of supervisors who get “accelarator awards” 1000 points to them, 1500 to give out to the rest of the team, and “turbo awards” which get you 3000 points to give out to employees. To help you put things into perspective, a movie pass would be around 75 points, so it’s a pretty good deal.