5. The Third Interview
The stress interview. There were about 10 middle-aged men employees at Company K. It was bad. There might’ve been 20 of them. It was really bad.
Now kenken wasn’t even complaining anymore. His initial enthusiasm had disappeared in a puff of smoke and he was already at death’s door. If anything, I wanted to commend his mental strength for going out of his way to put up all this information.
But just the mention of a stress interview made you feel the considerable pressure associated with it. Even in this brief entry, the fear and despair of how bad it the interviews went were quite apparent.
We could only imagine it, but interviewing with the employees of a company sounds super hard. If you had a bunch of distinguished old men with many years under their belt wearing black suits with prominent titles like board member, company executive, management director, and executive director sitting side by side, isn’t that just SEELE15? This wasn’t just any Impact, it’s the Third Impact.
“It sounds kinda hard…” Yuigahama whispered, her voice mixed with sympathy and grief. I, too, was feeling similarly miserable.
“It looks like there’s still more…” said Yukinoshita, slightly in pain. It almost even sounded as if she was suggesting us to not look any further.
But we had come this far, so we should—no, we had to see it through to the end. I operated the mouse with my shaking hand and clicked to the final entry.
6. The Final Interview
Those mass-res bastards lied about how the last interview was just to confirm your intent to apply and not something you’d fail in. Don’t screw with me. They normally just failed me.
The journal of experiences stopped there.
Exactly what happened to kenken in the end? Just thinking about his fate caused my chest to tighten.
I was seemingly not the only one as everyone else had also let out a profound sigh.
It’s like feeling guilty from peeking into the small blue print of a single person’s life or feeling helpless after being witness to the frontlines in the war of job hunting.
But beyond that, I felt this strong desire of not wanting to work with the person who had made this journal. He was so full of enthusiasm at the beginning, but in the middle, he was mostly just cursing and complaining…
“Um… so, like, did this person even pass?” Isshiki asked in modest.
Yuigahama then realized and looked at the display again. “You’re right! He even called it a ‘successful experiences’ journal, too!”
“Ahh, it’s probably that. They basically just write ‘successful’ in advance. It’s like a rule of attraction and it’s something like image training that overly-aware people tend to like.”
“It sounds more like something for self-enlightenment than it is for image training…” said Yukinoshita as she pressed against her temple.
Well, there certainly was a component about job hunting that pertained to self-enlightenment… I mean, when we were surfing the web earlier, there were these gaudy phrases like self-reflection, self-PR, the desire to grow, and other stuff. Sure, it might be unavoidable since companies were looking for human resources with a tenacious and strong mentality, but the way everyone was trying to exhibit a similarly, colorful personality was extremely unnatural that it’s scary.
Now that I know this much, it doesn’t sound like an industry I’d be able to work in… As my meter of work desire went rock bottom, Zaimokuza who was standing in front of me spoke to me with a small voice. “Hachiman, what is mass-res? Is that something like the Chiba-dog16?”
“They’re nothing alike. Which Chiba dog are you talking about here?”
Chiba-dog was a character mascot of the Chiba Prefecture Environment Foundation and was a dog based on the geographical shape of Chiba Prefecture. Putting it that way, you might think it might be similar to CHI-BA+KUN, but they’re surprisingly different creatures. Chiba-dog had dog in its name, yet it didn’t resemble one at all. As a matter of fact, the mysteriously named creature that looked like a dog CHI-BA+KUN was much more dog-like. Just what’s going on with Chiba’s tastes? This prefecture’s way too rocky.
Listening, Yukinoshita tilted her head in thought. “Well, it’s most likely short for mass media research society.”
“Research… It sounds like they’d totally do a lot of experiments.” Yuigahama murmured as she stared up at the ceiling. She was probably imagining all sorts of related things to research. But Gahama-san’s imagination of wearing a coat while holding flasks and beakers was probably mistaken, I think!
However, it’s true that the word “research” didn’t refer to anything in particular, so it’s rather hard to imagine it. It’s easy if it’s about scientific techniques or history, but for mass media research, not much came to mind.
“…I guess we should try looking up mass-res then.”
“Indeed. Do as you must!”
Since Zaimokuza gave me a reassuring agreement while flapping his coat like Professor Clark, I promptly asked Google-sensei for the answer.
I entered a random university name, added a space, and appended “mass-res”.
After submitting the phrase, there we had it, there we had it. On display were all these overly-aware phrases. They had a photo of people in suits introducing themselves decorated with their favorite motto along for self-promotion. After that, there were tons of comments of support from their friends.
In addition, there were photos of them taking a trip to India, mountain climbing at Mount Fuji, a BBQ training camp for job hunting, so I had no idea what it was that they were researching.
I closed my eyes halfway as I read because looking at the page directly was just too much for me. Eventually, I had a general understanding of what the club was about.
Basically, it was a club that gathered people who sought for employment at television broadcast stations, newspaper companies, or publishers. There, they’d exchange information and teach other foolproof methods to succeed in securing employment.
“H-Hey, Hachiman, must I enter one of these mass-res clubs in order to enter a publisher? Must I really? Absolutely?” Zaimokuza trembled in fear as he looked upon the photos of bliss.
“Well, I wouldn’t say it’s absolute. I actually think you’d be better off not joining something like this based on the homepage alone…”
I’m sure amongst the many clubs that promoted themselves as mass media or advertising research societies, there were some who actually did what they were supposed to do.
But just hearing overly-aware stuff like that made me think of Sir Tamanawa, the student council president of Kaihin Sogo High, so I just couldn’t hold a positive image at all.
As I looked at the website, a particular sentence grabbed my attention.
“…Actually, Zaimokuza, I don’t think you’ll be able to get in.”
“Hm, why?”
I pointed at the corner of the screen. Displayed there was, “Entrance Exam.” They had a written test that asked general knowledge questions and the names of several club members beside the club president that you needed to interview with.
“Apparently you’ll need to take a written test and go through interviews to join this mass-res club or whatever.”
I tapped on the relevant part of the screen with my finger and Isshiki looked down. With an apathetic voice, she said, “Ahh, I guess it’s impossible then…”