Realising When to Walk Away

So, I am sitting here writing this when I should be finishing an exam to see if I qualify for a job.

My son is starting daycare next week. It’s only two days a week, but as we have been through everything together for the last 15 months, this is a huge thing for me! I had these great plans to take him out and do some fun things this week- a wildlife park and some activities at the library that he really enjoys. Instead, he woke up on Saturday morning with a cold and has been sick all week. It’s now Thursday and he seems to be worse than ever, and I’m sitting here wondering if this is all my fault? Did I make him worse by taking him to swimming lessons on Monday and to the Mother’s Walking Group I’d been wanting to try on Tuesday? He seemed like he was doing much better on Sunday night, but after two big days, he appears to be going downhill again. We’ve been up since 4:45 am this morning, so I’ve had plenty of time to think about where I went wrong.

So, back to the job. Apart from the fact that the job description seemed very vague, the job sounded perfect. I’d be working remotely and I could choose my hours and work whenever I wanted. With my son starting daycare next week, I do need to think about getting back into the workforce again, so this could have been a great option for me! The description stated that no experience was required but, of course, the advertisement didn’t mention the rate of pay.

What was this job you ask? Well, the job title was an Online Data Analyst, and the role would involve checking digital maps for accuracy and improving them where needed. The only catch was, you had to complete an online exam to qualify for the job. I thought this was great! The thing I hate about interviews is the prospective employer only gets to see the awkward nervous version of you and never really gets to see what you can do. The exam was open book and they provide all the learning materials, so I thought this would give me a good chance to show them what I could do……boy, was I wrong.

My first mistake was reading the email (or should I say four emails) from this company at 4 am when I was feeding my son. They sent various emails with different segments of information and logins to websites that I needed to perform the exam. I tried to do a quick skim by the dimmed lighting in our lounge room and already felt quite flustered at the task ahead. I put my son back to bed and tried to go back to sleep, but of course, I was just lying there thinking about everything I needed to do over the next couple of days.

So, what was involved in preparing for and taking this exam?

1. I had to attend a 45-minute webinar where they would talk me through an exam question and how to answer it. As this company is in America and I’m in Australia, I would have had to attend the webinar at 1 am.

2. Review their learning material platform which included six webpages on what to do before you start, how to answer exam questions, some tips and practice questions.

3. Complete an Exam Practice simulator that consisted of 72 questions. You are not allowed to sit the actual exam without completing the simulator first.

4. Watch another 10-minute video on how to answer an exam question.

5. Log on to the exam platform and complete the exam that takes three hours in total. While doing the exam, I would have access to the guidelines where I can find all the answers to the questions- the guidelines were 274 pages long.

After reading through the four different emails they sent, I established that I had a week to complete all of this and it could be done in sections. I could try and work on it while my son was napping, so I thought maybe it was all possible?

I had already decided that there was no way I was waking up at 1 am to attend a webinar for a job that I still didn’t quite understand or have an estimated rate of pay for. I emailed the company and explained that I was in Australia and they were kind enough to send me through a recording of the webinar, which I was pleased to report, was actually only 25 minutes long. While I was waiting for this, I started sifting through all the other information and watched the 10-minute video on how to answer an exam question. I have to admit, I felt overwhelmed by the 274 pages of guidelines and all their jargon….and then my son was awake from his nap, so I had to stop and get back to mumming.

I then also realised it was Wednesday and I needed to put our Woolworths order in so we got groceries delivered on the weekend. For the next couple of hours, I tried to multitask. I had my laptop out on the kitchen bench while trying to do the Woolworths order, listen to the webinar and watch my son. My son kept coming into the kitchen saying, 'Up,' wanting to be picked up. Or, he would bring me a book, and I’d stop everything I was doing to sit on the kitchen floor and read it to him, trying not to feel like a terrible mother. I realised none of my tasks were getting the attention they deserved, most importantly, my sick son. So, I stopped everything and spent the rest of the time with him.

Then he went back in for another nap, it was time to get back to it. I gave the webinar my full attention this time, the instructor went through one exam question and made it sound really simple. You’re given a point on a map and a location for where the user is and you have to decide if the address is accurate and if the pin position is correct. You might have to cross-reference with the website for the business, find a Google image of the location, or check the business is still open, but it seemed straightforward. Then we got to the questions section of the webinar and multiple people asked questions to which the answer from the instructor was always “I don’t know the answer to that, you’ll have to check the guidelines.” Uh oh, he was referring to that 274-page document. Also why does this instructor not know anything about the exam?

After I read as much information as I could handle, I decided to get started on the practice exam and see how I went, I was hoping it would begin to make sense as I went along. I opened the practice exam and looked at the first question which I think was fairly straight forward as it was checking the location of a gym. I answered the question in a way that I thought was correct, only to find I was completely wrong. You have to put a reason for the relevance of the rating (whatever that means) in the comments and the correct answer was something like:

“The viewport is fresh and the user is located inside the viewport. Therefore, according to section 2.3.2, Implicit Location, the location intent is the user location inside the fresh viewport. The result matches the query intent. There is one closer real-world location that is not returned, that would receive a rating of Excellent. According to section 1.3.3, Result Relevance Rating, always rate against the real world.”

Well, I had no idea what that meant, but I kept going. I tried a couple more questions and got them all completely wrong as well. I was sitting there trying to focus on the words in the document and I had no idea what they were talking about. I find concentrating on wordy documents like this especially hard since I had my son. My brain just struggles to comprehend anything slightly complicated and I wonder when, or if, it will ever get back to normal. So, I was getting more and more stressed with every question I got wrong. I was feeling like a giant failure which was then adding to my guilt that I made my son sicker. I was looking at the clock thinking nap time would probably be over in another 20 minutes or so, I had a pounding headache, was exhausted and worried about my son. Then it dawned on me, I could make one change here. I had been worrying myself sick about this job and exam process for about two days, pretty much since I got the email. I didn’t know how I was going to even find the time to complete a practice exam and then a 3-hour exam in the time I was given while trying to juggle everything else…so I just decided not to do it.

Everyone learns differently, and I’m sure that if someone from this company took the time to explain everything, it would make perfect sense. However, it doesn’t seem like that’s how this company operates. It appears that they don’t train their staff, and instead, you essentially train yourself. I don’t think that approach will work for me or my mum brain. I’m really disappointed, because I’d love to do something remote where I could choose my own hours and this opportunity sounded great, but it’s just not worth me sacrificing my mental health over it. My number one priority is my son and if I’m not feeling well, then I can’t give him my full attention. It also seems like a GIANT ask of this company to make people jump through so many hoops just to apply for a job with them. I’m not getting paid yet, what would it be like actually working for them?

As I’m sitting here finishing this now, I can feel that niggling scratch in my throat that tells me I’m about to come down with the same sickness my son has…too bad mums don’t have time to get sick.