Great news and a giveaway!

So I am in a fantastic mood this weekend as I was successful and I got my new job!!!!! This means I get a small promotion and much more varied experience which is what I was after. I must first tell you about the horror of the interview however as I came out of it on Wednesday nearly in tears. The interview part went ok (even though it was with a panel of 3 managers who I already work with) and I was feeling good about my efforts but then I had to do a 3 part assessment centre. One part was doing minutes and although I have never done this before, my manager had given me some guidance and I felt prepared. Problem was, these minutes weren't like any we had practiced and I was instantly panicked by this. Coupled with the fact that the tape machine looked like it was from 1958 and I had a number of disasters. Firstly I wasted ten minutes trying to catch the man's name at the start of the tape as I thought that would be a crucial element and they just mumbled through it. Then, I accidentally kicked what I thought was a footrest but was in fact a foot operating pedal for the tape machine. It went beserk, rewound past the beginning to a -1.4 (whatever that meant!) and then spat out and refused to go back in again. I battled with this for a further 10 minutes - effectively wasting 20 minutes of the 55 I had been given. When the HR woman came in to tell me my time was up I hadn't even reached the end of the cassette. I was gutted. So imagine my surprise when they called me later that afternoon to inform me that I had been successful! I am over the moon and haven't stopped smiling since. I feel really lucky as I pretty much decided that I wanted to make probation my career at the age of 21 and a lot of people, for whatever reasons don't have that. I don't have a start date yet as it is all up in the air with regards to replacements and things because with all the public sector spending cuts we can't afford to get new staff and are constantly forced to shuffle the ones we have. The post I have been successful in getting is part time PA to the Director of Operations (and covering as PA to Head of Leeds Probation when required). This does however mean I have to be given a part time job to run alongside it so that is being sorted at the moment. It is all very exciting stuff. I will write a bit more about what I actually when I find out more.


And because I am in such a happy place right now I have decided to bring forward my 50 follower giveaway. I was going to announce then when I reached 50 followers (well, if I reached them) but I am close to it now and have already bought 3 items to include as you can see below.

Silver swallow necklace from Asda, Stila shine lip colour in Tina and Rimmel eyeshadow in Royal Blue 

Anyway - all you need to do to enter the giveaway is comment below here and provide an email address where I can contact you if you win. I will close the competition when I hit the 50 followers mark (which at my current rate should be about a week or so) irrespective of how many entries I have had. New followers are also very welcome, as are international readers.
I know to a lot of people 50 followers is nothing but I feel really proud that 50 (nearly) whole people want to read what I write and although I do it for no-one but myself in essence, I like getting comments and starting to chat to new people. I also want to celebrate every milestone like this in my blog because I was rubbish in 2011 and I vowed I would be more consistent in 2012. So far so good I think. . . .