Among the more egregious responsibilities I’ve held as an intern has been interviewing future work experience applicants for my position.

I don’t know anyone else who’s been asked to do this, but it’s happened more than once. The first time, at a hopefully-still-failing men’s magazine, it was because their Fashion Assistant had taken the day off, and no one else could “spare the time” (read: “be arsed”), forcing me out of seclusion in the fashion cupboard to peruse the CVs of a group of hopefuls that I was only slightly qualified to judge.

Thankfully, in that particular enclave of the London magazine world, it didn’t really matter what I asked, only that the wannabe interns sounded the part (posh) when answering my ever-so-well-thought-out-questions (“Are your shoes from Topshop?”) and looked like they could “represent the title”, which is to say, dress the part.

All members of staff, including the unpaid and trust fund-free, were expected to maintain a suitably glossy and stylish appearance at all times, in order to uphold the magazine’s image. Which is probably why I – a Midlander who was going through a very successful phase of trying to look “French” (unbrushed hair, minimal makeup, trop de parfum) – was asked to look for “the new me”.

In case you’re wondering – as I still am – how I even got the gig, I can only direct you to the scene from The Clash of the Titans where the gods start moving mortals around the chessboard of fate to f**k with them for entertainment. As far as I can tell, the universe just wanted a four-week-long laugh.

The second time I was asked to interview future interns was last week, when it was left up to me to replace T – the boy who, you may recall, allegedly left to follow his dreams of a career in dance. This time around, I was more intimidated by the level of responsibility inferred by being on this side of the hiring process. If any of my approved candidates turns out to be a thief, psychologically unhinged, really annoying or – worse than all these things – bad at research, on my head be it. And unlike last time (when for months after my placement finished, I could still be found convulsing in laughter at the thought of how exasperated my former colleagues were likely to be by the cowboy boot-donning micro-narcissist I’d hired to replace me), I’m likely to have to spend the duration of my internship working alongside whoever I take on.

In the event, there were five candidates for two internships .The “best on paper” can thank his roommate, “a really good friend who hilariously” set his alarm forward by two hours, making him 90 minutes late to meet me, for scuppering his chances. The utterly adorable non-English speaker will receive an email encouraging her to apply again once she’s grasped the language, while the dude who called me “dude” before launching into an impassioned defence of cuts to arts funding, will not, allowing me to welcome Interns B and C to the team. 

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Image: good secretary by anniebee, available under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 license.