Aditya Dakshinamourtay
Appearances
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: The Future Looks Bright
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. I'm not sure if any of you know, but getting a job as an international student here in the U.S. is very hard. In fact, most companies have it in their policy not to hire internationals.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: The Future Looks Bright
And I was painfully made aware of that in my first year here in the U.S. 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?
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: The Future Looks Bright
They probably tried hiring regular Americans here, and they didn't want to work for them. 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 live and work here. So I was ready for this. This is what I've been waiting for.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: The Future Looks Bright
And 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 invite me down to their headquarters.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: The Future Looks Bright
Went there, 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, you know, 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... And then I calm myself down and I say, oh, I'm so glad to hear that. I'm very excited.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: The Future Looks Bright
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. And I took issue with that. Why is it less? She said, OK, 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. Turns out, I don't think he's going to move.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: The Future Looks Bright
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, OK, 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, OK, can I send you the offer letter?
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: The Future Looks Bright
Now, I wasn't really sure why she asked that, but in my mind, because I grew up in India, nothing is official until 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.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: The Future Looks Bright
And the next Monday, I get again a call from them. This time it was the... It was the recruiting, the hiring manager. And he says, hey, is this Adi? 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? I mean, he said, well, we're taking back the job offer. We're going in a different direction.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: The Future Looks Bright
I was like, well, is it because I asked for more money? It's OK. I'll take whatever I 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. And I was actually sleeping when that call came. Not really a good way to be woken up. And then I was like walking around my room yelling, what the fuck happened? How did I screw this up?
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: The Future Looks Bright
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. And the next day, went to one of their offices and he said, well, turns out you went back on your word. I was like, what do you mean? Well, turns out you accepted the offer on the phone and then you renegotiated once you got the offer.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: The Future Looks Bright
And 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 kind of had this like, you know, sad look on his face, but he said, you know, I'm sorry, I think this is it, can't help you here. And I walked back slowly to my car.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: The Future Looks Bright
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. And I just didn't know what to do. But that was only like half of the problems or things in my mind at that time.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: The Future Looks Bright
You see, in just that long weekend, I threw a party for all my friends because I had just gotten a job at Spirit Airlines. I put it on social media, on Facebook, that, hey, everyone, all thousand 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.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: The Future Looks Bright
I told my mom, I told my girlfriend, I told my dad. Everybody knew. And I was thinking, man, this is messed up. 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, which is a much better company. And... This time I did not negotiate past the phone.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: The Future Looks Bright
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. And I waited one whole month till after I got the job to tell anyone that I now got a job. Thank you.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: The Future Looks Bright
There's always this can they hire me question that goes into your head before, you know, am I a good fit for this role? So there's a lot of shot in the dark. And the first thing you tend to ask anyone is, do you sponsor for a visa? And most of the time the answer is no and the conversation ends then and there. You have to probably try way more than you normally would.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: The Future Looks Bright
You cannot be picky at all because you don't know who will sponsor and who won't. So you might have to take a job that's not necessarily what you really want.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: The Future Looks Bright
No. So I actually had to leave Southwest and the U.S. because I couldn't get a visa. Then I left Southwest thinking I will never come back to the U.S. and it's all over. And I took a job in a Middle Eastern country called Qatar, working for an airline there. And six months into my job there, they asked me to move back to the U.S. completely out of coincidence.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: The Future Looks Bright
So I ended up back in New York, like within the next year. That's what happened after.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: The Future Looks Bright
So I'm an only child and I was, I mean, you could call me a spoiled child when I was growing up and that's not a bad characterization at all. So for me to get a sense of the real world, my parents sent me one summer to live with my cousin. He was living in Bangalore at that time. it was close to an aviation manufacturing company in India.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: The Future Looks Bright
And while I was there, I would see fighter jets taking off and landing and commercial aircrafts taking off and landing. And I grew up in like a very small city in South India where you don't see airplanes often. Like they are like mythical creatures. You see one and you just stop dead in your tracks. At least I did every single time. I loved everything about them.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: The Future Looks Bright
They fly, they make a loud noise, and they seemed not accessible, which is why I really wanted them. So at that point, I decided I wanted a career that had to do something with airplanes. And that's what I did.