Aditya Dakshinamourtay - Double Whammy

 

Well, I'm not really proud of admitting this, but one of the biggest breakthroughs I've ever had in my life is to get an interview from the Greyhound of the skies, Spirit Airlines. [audience laughter] I'm not sure if any of you know, but getting a job as an international student here in the US is very hard. In fact, most companies have it in their policy not to hire internationals. I was painfully made aware of that in my first year here in the US as a student. Probably applied for over 100 jobs, zero callbacks. Every recruiter I spoke to would say, “Good resume, but we don't hire internationals.” But in hindsight, it's not really a surprise that Spirit Airlines is the first company to give me an interview, is it? [audience laughter] They probably tried hiring regular Americans here and they didn't want to work for them. [audience laughter] So, they're coming after desperate folk like me. 

 

But that didn't matter to me. I came here not just to get a Master's, but also to get a job and then live and work here. So, I was ready for this. This is what I've been waiting for. They came through my university, which meant I had a head start over the others by default, because I was living up to my Asian student stereotype. I had a 4.0 GPA and I was the darling of my professors. So, they put in a very good word for me. The first round of interviews was on campus. I feel like I did that pretty well. Second round, they invited me down to their headquarters, when they're, again, feel like I did pretty well there.

 

Two nervous weeks go by, and then I get a call from the recruiter and she says, “Hey, thank you for coming down. We feel like you'd be a great addition to the team. We'd like to offer you the job.” And as she's saying that, I'm on this side going [onomatopoeia] [audience laughter] And then, I calm myself down and I say, “Oh, I'm so glad to hear that. I'm very excited.” And then, she tells me what the salary is going to be. And that was less than what they had advertised when they were coming to my university. I took issue with that, “Why is it less?” She said, “Okay. Give me a couple of days. Let me talk to the management.” She calls me back and she says, “Hey, I spoke to the VP. It turns out I don't think he's going to move.” 

 

And I was like, I said the same thing, “But you said you were going to give more.” And it was a couple of seconds of silence, and she goes, “Okay, but are you still interested in the job?” I was like, “Are you kidding me? You're the only one to interview me. Let alone give me a job. Of course, I'm interested.” And then she says, “Okay, can I send you the offer letter?” Now, I wasn't really sure why she asked that, but in my mind, because I grew up India, nothing is official till it's on paper. So, I thought, this is her wanting to get everything that we spoke on paper. So, she sent me the email with the offer letter. I respond back with my counteroffer stating the exact same things. 

 

And a few days go by. I think it was the long weekend or something. And the next Monday, I get again a call from them. This time, it was the recruiting or the hiring manager, and he says, “Hey, is this Aditya?” I was like, “Yeah.” And he says, “I just want to let you know that we're rescinding the job offer.” And I'm like, “Wait, what? What happened?” He said, “Well, we're taking back the job offer. We're going in a different direction.” I was like, “Because I asked for more money, it's okay. I'll take whatever gave earlier. I'm sorry. Don't do this.” And he's like, “No, it's too late. We're going in a different direction.” 

 

I was actually sleeping when that call came, not really a good way to be [chuckles] woken up. And then, I was walking around my room yelling, “What the fuck happened? How did I screw this up?” I just couldn't understand. And then, I texted my professors immediately and said, “Okay, don't panic. We'll try to find out what happened.” The next day, went to one of their offices, and he said, “Well, it turns out you went back on your word.” I was like, “What do you mean?” “Well, it turns out you accepted the offer on the phone and then you renegotiated once you got the offer.” I tried to explain to him, “Well, that's because I'm in the culture and the country that I grew up in. Nothing spoken is official. Official things start only when things are on paper.” 

 

And he had this sad look on his face, but he said, “You know, I'm sorry, I think this is it. Can't help you here.” I walked back slowly to my car. I remember I sat in that parking lot for about 45 minutes. My eyes were welling up and I felt like I have screwed up my best chance to get a job here. I don't know if I'll ever get that chance. And I was terrified. I just didn't know what to do. But that was only half of the problems or things in my mind at that time. 

 

You see, in just that long weekend, I threw a party for all my friends because I had just gotten a job [audience laughter] at Spirit Airlines. I put it on social media, on Facebook, that, “Hey, everyone, all thousands of my friends all over the world, I'm going to be working for Spirit Airlines in Miami.” I didn't have Twitter at the time, otherwise I would have tweeted at Spirit Airlines as well. [audience laughter] I told my mom, I told my girlfriend, I told my dad. Everybody knew. I was thinking, man, this has messed up now. Now I got to walk all of it back and also try to find another job. This is going to be fun. 

 

Things eventually worked out well for me. I went on to work for Southwest Airlines, [audience laughter] which is a much better company. 

 

[cheers and applause]

 

This time, I did not negotiate past the phone. For those of you who thought I would have never negotiated, if you fuck up something the first time, next time you do it right, you don't not do it. [audience cheers and applause] 

 

I waited one whole month till after I got the job to tell anyone [audience laughter] that I now got a job. Thank you.