My heart is threatening to burst with joy because boy, have I missed sitting down for a few straight minutes, pouring my heart out on these html pages! And before I even got to the second sentence of this post, Shane glanced over at my screen and commented, "Long overdue? Shouldn't it be Short overdue 'cos you're so short?". It goes without saying that not much has changed in the Shankita household during my brief absence.
The last time I showed up here was over a good two months ago and around that time, I started writing a new post, a May braindump that was last edited on the 30th of May, and never completed. When I opened up my blog editor for the first time in two months today, that unfinished post caught my attention and reminded me of some of the reasons why I never completed it. Here's an excerpt:
I've been on a hiatus from here and will be taking a longer hiatus in the weeks to come because I'm bursting with things to say about something that I'm contractually obliged to not mention a word of.
A lot of you probably already know what I'm going to share in a bit but for those of you who have not been following my social media, I want to take time to tell this story. Let's see who has the patience for another 1000 words of this ;)
Towards the end of April, my new job as a Digital Marketer (that I had only just started in March) was beginning to get uncomfortable for reasons I can't discuss right now. On April 23rd, a desperate Ankita sat in front of her computer, scanning LinkedIn for new opportunities. One such opportunity advertised as 'Digital and Skills Coach' caught my attention although I thought that the first sentence of that advert was a bit vague.
We have an opening for a Digital and Skills Coach in Scotland for our client, a global technology company.
I briefly dwelled on the fact that I work in "digital" every day and that my first ever job as a trainer and coach was the best job I've ever had. So without putting too much thought into it, I applied for the role on 24 April.
'A global technology company' was all I knew about this new position even when I was going into my first telephone interview on the 25th. But at the end of that hour-long call, I rang up Shane at his work and screamed, HOLY SHIT IT'S GOOGLE.
I now suspect that a lot of people already knew this because when I went back on LinkedIn to have a look at the advert again, I saw that over 500 people had expressed interest in this job. Suffice it to say that that figure hardly helped with my nerves and self-confidence in making it through the next stage of the interview.
I don't want to bore you with the details but as you can imagine, the recruitment process was neither short nor simple. There were online tests and video interviews and group interviews and face-to-face in-person interviews but at the end of it all, your girl managed to wriggle her way into the twenty member team of individuals from all walks of life who were selected to lead the Google Digital Garage in Scotland. And don't take me lightly when I say all walks of life because we have PhD holders, textile artists, business owners, software developers, freelance digital marketers, bloggers, and podcasters (lol, just me) among others who form this team. And much like our different fields of expertise, our backgrounds, ethnicities, and ages are also quite varied.
So who are we and what do we do?
This twenty-member team works at the Google Digital Garage, a physical space on the high street (42 Shandwick Place in Edinburgh), where we provide free face-to-face training in all things digital. Our campaign is all about identifying everyone's 'yet' - something you have always wanted to do but haven't...yet - and we want to empower you to do those things with digital skills.
We cater to a wide range of people starting from those who are learning to go online for the first time to those who want to learn new skills like coding. We either sit down with individuals for thirty minutes to help them with a specific digital skill or we take sessions for groups of people that could be anywhere between one and two hours long. And we're open seven days a week!
Some of us also work out of various locations in Glasgow, and you can find out what training we're offering where by going to this link.
Our team comprises of some freelancers, some part-timers and some, like myself, who work full time. Owing to the fact that I was available to work 5 days a week, I was also under consideration for the role of Team Leader, a role that I landed in the end but was more surprised than anyone else when that happened.
Today marks two weeks since the launch of the Google Digital Garage in Scotland but as you can see, the process started a couple of months ago. Not only did we all go through the lengthy recruitment process together, but we also attended intensive training for the job for close to three weeks in June. After we all received confirmations about landing our jobs in May and before our training officially commenced in June, we all got to visit the Google HQ in London on May 29. So as I sat typing that May braindump on the 30th, I truly was bursting with things to say, things I couldn't say yet.
But I'm happy to be back here now, happy to finally be sharing this amazing part of my life with you all and excited to get back into blogging regularly. Thank you so very much for your patience during this time. Especially to those of you who've been sending me messages asking when I'd write my next blog post, I couldn't be more grateful to have you in my life. Never thought anyone would really notice if I went away for two months but the last message I received from one of you was just this morning. Every single message of that kind filled my heart with love, gratitude and an unmistakable yearning to open up this blog editor and start typing away. I couldn't even begin to put into words how great it feels to be back doing just that.
See ya (ʘ‿ʘ)╯
P.S Go back and read this April Braindump now. You will have so much more context :D