The Detours

I was 22 when I went to my first real job interview.

It was 2014. The interview was in Jakarta, a capital city in Indonesia, and I came all the way there just for it.

I took a budget airline—not because I was trying to romanticize the whole young girl chasing her dreams in the big city thing, but because, well, as a fresh-graduate who is trying to prove herself, budget mattered. And my father wasn’t exactly the biggest supporter of the idea of me leaving my hometown to build a life somewhere else.

My father was born an entrepreneur. Not the kind who built towering corporations, fancy business or chased prestige, but the kind who quietly created opportunities, earning enough not only to sustain his family but also to pay the people who placed their trust in him.

And when you’re raised by an entrepreneur, sometimes success comes with a very specific definition.

Build something.
Own something.
Be your own boss.
Get your own freedom.

So no matter how impressive the company was, how fancy the job title sounded, or how promising the career path might be, there was always this unspoken idea in my family:

Why would you spend your life working for someone else?

To him, being an employee was almost a failure in itself.

Which, naturally, gave 22-year-old me an extra layer of pressure of this step.

Because I wasn’t only going to Jakarta to find a job. I was going there to prove that the life I wanted to choose for myself was worth choosing.

I landed in Jakarta and went straight to the office of a really big local media company in West Jakarta.

And I remember walking in with the kind of confidence you can probably only have when you’re 22, freshly graduated, and life hasn’t humbled you enough yet.

I had my bachelor’s degree.

I had the educational background.

I had the skills.

I knew how to speak. I knew how to present myself. I had always been ambitious, competitive, and very used to believing that if I prepared enough and wanted something badly enough, I could make it happen.

I wasn’t walking into that building thinking,

I hope they like me.

I was walking in thinking,

Just don’t mess up, and they’ll like me.

I had already imagined myself getting the role. I had probably mentally accepted the offer before anyone had actually offered me anything.

Looking back, it was such a beautifully naïve kind of confidence.

The kind you have before life teaches you that being smart doesn’t guarantee you’ll win.

Being prepared doesn’t mean you’ll be chosen.

And wanting something with your whole heart doesn’t mean it will become yours.

But I didn’t know any of that yet.

At 22, sitting there waiting for my name to be called, there was only one thought in my head: I will get this one.

I came 30 minutes earlier, and when I reached the recruitment hall, my jaw dropped.

The confidence I had carried all the way to Jakarta suddenly felt a little less convincing when I saw the crowd.

There were people everywhere.

I already knew they were only hiring two people for the role.

Two.

And standing in front of me were more than 80 candidates who apparently had the exact same thought I had that morning:

I will get this one.

For the first time that day, my confidence started shrinking.

Slowly at first.

Then very quickly.

Suddenly, the answers I had rehearsed didn’t sound as brilliant in my head anymore. The introduction I had prepared started getting blurry. I found myself looking around, wondering what degrees these people had, where they came from, how much experience they had, and—more importantly—whether they were better than me.

And then I looked at my number.

Great.

Not only did I have to compete with more than 80 people for two seats, I was candidate number seventy-two.

By the time I got into that room, I thought, the interviewer wouldn’t even remember what enthusiasm felt like.

It took only a few minutes for my inner voice to change from:

I will get this one.

to:

Okay… I may or may not get this one.

Funny how quickly confidence negotiates with reality.

And then came the waiting.

The clock seemed to move much slower than usual.

Every candidate spent around ten to twenty minutes inside the interview room. One person would walk in, the door would close, and the rest of us would wait.

Then another.

And another.

And another.

I watched the interviewer step out for breaks several times. I watched the numbers slowly move closer to mine.
50.
51.
52.
53.

The closer I got to my turn, the more I tried to collect all the confidence I had somehow lost while sitting in that waiting room.

Remember what you prepared. Speak clearly. Don’t look nervous. You’ve come all the way here for this.

And then finally—

My turn.

I walked into the room.

And there he was.

The interviewer who would decide whether this trip to Jakarta was the beginning of my new life—or simply an wasted round trip.

Except by then, he didn’t look anything like the person I had imagined meeting when I prepared for this interview.

He looked exhausted.

His face wasn’t fresh anymore. His energy had clearly changed after speaking to more than seventy ambitious fresh graduates, probably repeating similar answers to similar questions for hours.

And there I was, trying to give him my brightest first impression…

when I was probably his seventy-second.

We started with the usual introduction.

He asked me questions about things I had already written on my résumé—which made me pretty sure he hadn’t actually read it beforehand. But surprisingly, that worked in my favor. It gave me more room to talk about myself. And more importantly, it gave me a chance to break the ice.

I knew how tired he was. I could see it.

So instead of treating every question like an examination, I tried to turn the interview into a conversation. I’ve always been quite good at joking around and reading the mood of a room. A few minutes in, I saw him smile.

Then laugh.

Then smile again.

Okay, I thought.

We’re back.

Maybe candidate number 72 wasn’t such a bad number after all.

The conversation eventually moved toward the actual position: Public Relations Staff.

On paper, my background wasn’t exactly the perfect match for PR.

But throughout my life, people around me had often told me that my personality and upbringing seemed more suited to something like public relations than what I had actually studied.

I loved communicating. I loved expressing ideas. I wasn’t afraid to talk. I could connect with people quite naturally, and when I believed in something, I could talk about it with an enthusiasm that was difficult to hide.

So when he asked what I would do if I got the job, I came alive.

I told him about my ideas. My vision. What I thought I could bring to the role. How I would learm and approach things.

And from his reactions, I thought he liked what he was hearing.

The interview was starting to feel much more positive than I had expected.

My confidence was coming back.

Maybe I could get this one after all.

Until I asked him a question.

“Do you think my vision and plans match your expectations and align with your strategy?”

I was probably expecting some kind of reassurance.

A nod.

A smile.

A Yes, that’s actually what we’re looking for.

Instead, his face stayed completely flat.

He didn’t nod.

He didn’t shake his head.

He simply said,

“May and may not be.”

Oh.

There went my confidence again. 80% gone.

For a few seconds, neither of us said anything.

Silence.

The awkward kind.

And somehow those few seconds felt much longer than all the hours I had spent waiting outside.

Eventually, he moved on.

Then came the question every fresh graduate secretly rehearses before their first job interview.

“What’s your expected salary?”

I had prepared for this.

My original plan was simple: I would ask slightly above Jakarta’s minimum wage. It was going to be my first official full-time job, bachelor degree, with good internship & education background, so I thought that was reasonable.

I knew my number.

I was ready to say it.

And then my brain betrayed me.

Or, more accurately, my desperation started negotiating on my behalf.

I suddenly remembered the 80-something people outside.

Two positions.

Seventy-plus candidates before me.

And a completely ridiculous idea entered my head.

What if everyone else is asking for the standard fresh-graduate salary?

What if some of them are asking for even more? What if I ask for less?

Maybe that would make me more attractive.

Same potential, lower cost.

In my 22-year-old brain, this suddenly sounded like a brilliant competitive strategy.

Why would they pay someone more when they could hire me for less?

So, voilà.

I gave him a number around 30% lower than what I had originally planned to ask.

I waited for his reaction.

Maybe he’d look impressed.

Maybe he’d think I was flexible.

Maybe somewhere inside his head he’d go, Wow, what a deal.

He didn’t.

Instead, he looked at me and asked:

“That much only? How are you going to live in Jakarta with that amount of money?”

And just like that—

I knew.

I had made a mistake.

Because he was right.

I had travelled all the way to Jakarta trying to convince this company that I was worth choosing.

I had spent the interview talking about my skills, my ideas, my vision, and everything I believed I could contribute.

And then, the moment I became afraid that I might not be chosen…

I am the first person in the room to lower my own value.

I walked out of that room already knowing.

Or at least, feeling like I knew.

That last conversation had completely messed with my head. Whatever confidence I had managed to rebuild during the interview disappeared again. I couldn’t think clearly enough to explain myself, let alone maneuver my way into a better answer.

And suddenly, the whole trip felt different.

That morning, I had landed in Jakarta carrying this ridiculous amount of confidence.

I came here for one interview.

One opportunity.

One chance to prove that maybe I knew what I was doing with my life, that is completely different from what my father chose for me.

And I blew it.

What bothered me wasn’t only the possibility of not getting the job.

It was something much more personal.

This was the first interview my father had finally let me go for.

The father who wasn’t convinced that leaving my hometown was necessary.

The father who didn’t particularly believe that becoming someone’s employee was something worth chasing.

The father whose definition of success was already very different from mine.

And now I had to go home with…

nothing.

No job offer.

No exciting news.

Not even a particularly impressive interview story.

Just a budget airline ticket, one awkward salary negotiation, and a considerably smaller ego than the one I had arrived with.

For the next few days, a tiny part of me still hoped my phone would ring.

Maybe I was overthinking it.

Maybe the interview hadn’t been as bad as I thought.

Maybe he actually liked me.

Maybe— BUT,

NO.

The call never came.

And eventually, I stopped waiting for it.

At 22, I called that experience a failure.

A failed interview.

A failed trip.

A failed attempt at convincing my father—and probably myself—that I was ready to build a life outside everything familiar to me.

And then, life did something funny.

Not long after that failed interview, someone texted me about a temporary job.

They needed someone who could speak English fluently.

That was pretty much it.

No intimidating line of 80 candidates.

No number 72.

No exhausting formal interview.

No carefully rehearsed answers.

And, thankfully, no embarrassing salary negotiation.

I got hired almost instantly.

For a temporary job.

It wasn’t the glamorous beginning I had pictured for myself. It wasn’t even a permanent position. There was no promise that it would turn into anything bigger.

But there was one very important detail:

The job was in Jakarta.

And suddenly, I had a reason to pack my things.

I remember thinking:

Maybe this is the opening door.

Not the door.

Just an opening.

And at that point, that was enough for me.

Because when I think about it now, getting a particular job had never really been my biggest dream.

Not because I hated where I came from. Not because I was running away from something.

I was simply curious about what life looked like beyond the world I already knew.

I wanted to see the world—and I didn’t mean seeing it through holidays, photographs, or a few days of visiting somewhere before going home.

I wanted to experience it.

To live in different places long enough to understand their rhythm. To meet people who grew up differently from me. To experience different cultures, different ways of thinking, and different definitions of what a good life could look like.

I loved where I came from.

I just never imagined spending my whole life seeing the world from only one point of view.

There was so much out there I hadn’t experienced yet.

And if I could say one thing to the nervous 22-year-old who boarded that budget flight to Jakarta hoping to prove herself to her parents, it would be this:

You don’t need to win every opportunity.

You only need the right one.

And sometimes, the door that never opens is the reason you find the one that was meant for you all along.