job interview

Yesterday I had my first real job interview. It was a PR position at a place called the Cyprus International Institute for the Environment and Public Health. It would've pretty much been the perfect job for me. They do some really awesome social-psych related research and my job would've been to basically disseminate the results of the research through events and PR. Totally would combine my two degrees. Did I mention it would've been the perfect job for me? Anyway, the interview went great for the first 45 minutes. He asked me some pretty tough, specific, questions that I answered without a problem. It was all stuff I had pretty much done at the National Center for Victims of Crime in DC, so it was easy for me. He seemed pretty impressed. But then the issue of me being an American citizen in Cyprus came up. And it was downhill from there.

I just keep hearing the same thing over and over from everyone I talk to. Since Cyprus joined the EU, the government is really strict about hiring EU citizens first. They've even set up a listserve type thing to make it easy (and mandatory) for companies to advertise the position in other EU countries. Basically to obtain a work permit for me, the company has to prove to the Cypriot government that they couldn't find an EU citizen who was equally qualified. Not only this, but apparently it is a very time consuming process that requires a lot of paperwork that no company would want to do, especially if they could just hire someone else. And for this particular position, they needed someone who could start immediately, and because this process could take months, I am pretty much out of the running.

So basically, if I was a multi lingual dual heart and neurosurgeon who specialized in African tribal languages and had my own secret formula for an all-in-one Cancer, HIV and AIDS vaccine, then maybe I'd have a chance. But it looks like my measly little PR and Psych degrees aren't going to get me very far.