Hey there. Welcome to my photography blog – a branch of my various blogs detailing my various creative endeavours. If you’re new here, head over to my main work blog to see what I’m all about.
I had an interview yesterday with “Santa’s Photo Factory” – for the job of photographer of Santa photos in a local department store. The interview went pretty well, my interviewer’s name was Greg and he seemed like a really nice guy. We got along well and he seemed to like the examples of my photography I brought along, he also complimented me on my application letter, said it was very well-written.
The job pays reasonably well, and I would like to get some experience in professional photography – even if it is basically point-and-shoot (not a lot of change in framing between each kid on Santa’s knee, or so I’m guessing). Another upside is that there will be a training day – in Melbourne, which worried me at first until I was told the flight would be paid for. I could either go just for the day or stay a night or however long I like, they’ll just pay for the flight there and back – a good friend of my stepmum’s lives in Melbourne and I could probably stay with him, though I don’t think I’d want to stay any longer than one night – as someone who doesn’t have a great deal of money Melbourne doesn’t hold much interest to me (it seems to be where everyone else goes to go shopping) but I think flying up and back in the one day, including the training, would be rather exhuasting.
The downside of the job, which could turn out to not be a downside at all, is that because it’s during the holiday and for such a thing as Santa Photos (it goes from mid-november to Christmas Eve) it would be a reasonable amount of hours. Now, normally this would be a good thing – yay money – but my problem comes up (as always) with Centrelink – I can’t earn any more than about $230 per fortnight before they start cutting my pay. At the wage of this job (about $13 an hour) that only equals about 14 hours a week (if Greg’s calculations were correct… I wouldn’t have a clue, maths is not my area of expertise…) which is, I gathered, not as much as they would like me to work. Greg seemed pretty understanding though (apparently he had the same problem last year) and he is the one who will work out the roster so hopefully it’ll be okay. What I need to do is go to Centrelink and ask exactly how much they cut my pay back when I earn over my allowed $230… it would make sense if they cut it back the same amount as I was earning (e.g. if I earned $20 over the limit in a fortnight, they’d take $20 off my pay) but knowing Centrelink and their fiascos, they might do something completely random and horrible like cutting it back more than that. I’ll just have to investigate.
Anyway, regardless of these issues, the interview went quite well and Greg seemed to be impressed with me. He told me the job will be given to about 3 people (perhaps 4, if he puts me and another person on as less hours….?) and will be calling me tomorrow to let me know whether I’ve got the job or not.
