I Turned Down a Great Job Offer at An International Organization for One Simple Reason
By: Chau Trieu
Tags: Job Search, Job Interview, Creative Writing, Life Purpose, Writing

The interview went on for over an hour. The CEO asked me a lot of questions about my background, degree, technical skills, administrative skills, work experience, and hobbies. He went on to tell me that this job would require me to film and edit lots of videos as well as writing several long-form articles. Now, those are exactly what I am good at. I have received training and attended intensive courses on content creating, photography, videography, and creative writing. I was super confident to tell him that I would do a great job.

Then, he continued to ask me about my interests, as in which topic I would be most inspired to write about. I had a whole list, but technology and finance weren’t among them.

At that moment, I was worried that he would question why I would want to apply to a tech company if I was not interested in it.

And he did.

As a fresh graduate who needed a full-time job to make ends meet, I had to turn the table around. Or as that saying goes, fake it till you make it.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

I assured him that though I did not have much knowledge about finance and technology, I was willing and eager to learn more about them. I even told him, and I was not lying, that I knew I had to understand more about finance for my own sake at some point, so essentially I was motivated to dig deep and master these fields.

The CEO then asked me, “But wouldn’t writing about a topic that you are not interested in kills your inspiration and creativity?”

I honestly do not remember how I answered that question. I only remember my mind going blank for five seconds and coming back to eight months ago when I started my first internship.

I got accepted to be a Marketing & Communication intern at Oxfam, but I was not directly working for Oxfam. I was part of the Finance department and I was working for an organization commissioned by Oxfam whose field is sustainable finance.

When I got the offer, I was on cloud nine. Oxfam has always been my dream organization since I was 12 when I thought Oxfam was a company that owned lots of farms and cows (I did not know how Oxfam was spelled so I thought its name was Oxfarm, and well, Ox-farm), only to realize they had always been working hard to help the poor in Vietnam. Even though at that time I had no idea what sustainable finance meant, I thought I would be just fine working at my dream organization for my first job ever. And I did enjoy working there. My teammates were terrific and always willing to help. There was no hierarchy whatsoever (literally, I ate lunch with the CEO once at the cafeteria!)

But there was the unenjoyable part. For the first two months, I struggled with coming up with content regarding sustainable finance. I spent three weeks reading every material available to understand the history of the organization, their vision & mission, their methodology (which was nearly 400 pages!!!), their previous projects, and their stakeholders. I also taught myself about sustainable finance, responsible investing, green economy, etc.

It felt like teaching myself an introduction to finance class without any well-researched module. It felt like high school again when I had six math classes per week, and that was such a painful time that I decided to major in Communication because I never wanted to solve math problems ever again.

Most importantly, I remember not feeling inspired, not even a little bit.

I have not talked to many writers, but I believe writing and inspiration come hand in hand. It is challenging to write something authentically when we are not wholeheartedly passionate about it. No matter how hard I try to convince myself that I need to learn about finance and technology for my own good, the fact is I do not enjoy learning them, let alone writing about them and making them a central part of my work.

I was so unmotivated enough to study these fields in my daily life that I had to incorporate them into my professional life and eventually turned a job I was supposed to love into something I dread to even think about.

I was going to continue doing that until the recruiter snapped me out of it.

The interview ended well with him telling me that he was happy to offer me that job. The HR department sent me an email the next day asking me to confirm whether I would accept it. It took me 10 days, but in the end, I rejected it.

I could not fake it until I make it. I knew if I had taken the job, I would have had to fake it until I break it and break myself.