Dodgy Dodgy Gumdrops

The Great Job Hunt started again the moment I was finished with my gig at the promotions agency. Since then, I've interviewed with several head hunters and have interviewed with two companies. The first one, arranged for me by a headhunter last week, loved me, but unfortunately they were unable to hire someone on a contract basis. The other, an award winning design agency that I found on Gumtree, turned out to be a strangely dodgy experience.

Gumtree is an excellent public classified service for London and the UK, similar to Craiglist or Kijiji. The difference between Gumtree and these other classified services is that while it's free to browse, it costs someone £25 to post an ad. This ensures the quality of postings and that the person posting is actually serious about it. Looking for a job on Gumtree seemed like a perfectly good solution to my employment troubles, especially since I have a friend who's now very happily employed in a medium sized company that he found on the site. He found the job 3 days within his job search.

Sadly, my experience hasn't been nearly as good. Since March, I've secured 5 interviews via job postings on Gumtree and 3 via headhunters. The Gumtree interviews have all been with small companies, one of which hired me but didn't quite work out. My interview yesterday was the strangest yet, as the Director that interviewed me showed some very troubling signs:

• When I walked into the interview room, she didn't look like she was very happy to see me at all.
• She refused to tell me her name when we shook hands in the beginning, even refused to acknowledge when I said "oh, you must be Jacky". When the other person in the room interviewing me asked her if she introduced herself yet, she said that she'll do it later.
• She took my CV and totally destroyed it. By that I mean she folded it, crumpled it, wrote all over it. Thanks to her, I have to spend more money to reprint my CV and portfolio again.
• She kept showing signs of stress, which I really don't understand as *I* should be the one stressing out.
• She kept criticizing me in front of me, said she couldn't figure me out, and at one point even made a personal attacked on my employment choices. This was the first ever interview where I actually got mad at the employer. I didn't feel like I needed to defend my life against someone that I didn't know.
• When I asked about the job itself, the answer that I got was so generic and wishy-washy that I really don't think they knew what the job was themselves. This made me even more pissed as they demanded detailed answers from me but couldn't reciprocate when I asked for one from them.
• Half way through the interview, I had visions of me flipping the table over screaming "This interview... is OVER!". I just wanted to end it and go home. I have a feeling that she's worse then Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada.

On the other hand, the interviews arranged by headhunters were always very pleasant and all the jobs seemed to suit me well. I'm wondering if I should abandon doing my job search on Gumtree altogether and just wait for these headhunters to call me. Sounds lazy, but I don't want to spend £50 reprinting my CV everytime an interviewer finds a need to use it as a stressball.