A few hours ago, I dropped in on one of the agencies, just to see if they could perhaps be persuaded to help me in my job hunt. According to the statistics I've been bombarded with in the last 8 weeks while I've been in the outplacement programme, only 20% of jobs is ever found through agencies or job ads, and 80% through networking -- and my recent experience, of sending out tens of e-mails and only getting back one invitation to an interview, plus two interviews I got through having published my cv online, seemed to bear this out.

I now have an interview for tomorrow morning. Only, it isn't for a job in customer relations. It's for a job as office manager at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And it's (literally) just around the corner from where I live.

The thing is, I don't know how to prepare for this interview. I do have some secretarial experience, but that was way back in my student days, and I imagine things have changed a lot since then. The person who will be conducting the interview has already expressed his doubt that the job may not be challenging enough for me; he thinks me over-qualified. Which may be true; however, it would be a completely new experience for me, and one that I would not be unwilling to explore.

Oh well, I guess I'll find out tomorrow whether I'm civil servant material or not.