Friday 8 July 2011

Interviews

Japanese-style garden in Herefordshire
So I've had two interviews, done some hoovering, and hacked down a load of stuff in the garden.

First interview went well, maybe too well. They didn't ask me anything difficult and probably had already decided not to offer me the job, given that they had advertised for someone with experience. It was a useful experience though, because it meant I was less nervous at the second interview.

The second interview was much harder, with genuinely testing questions. And they had a good look at my C placement portfolio, and asked me a question which genuinely floored me: "Would you accept the job if we offered it to you?" Lola II said I should have just given them an enthusiastic "YES!" but I'm not used to acting impulsively, and I really didn't know at that point if I would. After all, an interview is for both sides to decide whether they will get along, not just an opportunity for the interviewee to do all she can to suppress any off-putting idiosyncrasies and provide the answers that the panel is expecting. It may be more than two weeks before I hear the outcome of this interview.

I have been more ruthless than ever in the garden, reducing most trees to the size of shrubs, and then Mr A followed me out and took out a lot of rose bush and ceanothus. The ceanothus had suffered badly in the cold winter, but was showing signs of recovery with green shoots on lower branches and the trunk. In the hope that these would sustain it, and because it keeps threatening the integrity of the garage roof, it is now a very much smaller tree than it was. I would be out there now, decimating more vegetation, if it weren't pouring with rain. So I am indoors at my desk, pretending to be making further job applications, but actually blogging and listening to an audio book: almost anything is more fun than applying for jobs, except perhaps pruning and weeding in the rain.

3 comments:

Lola II said...

What I wonder is if they interview you and someone else, and there's very little in it, who will they offer the job to? The one who expresses doubt, or the one who says YES PLEASE!

Lola said...

I'd like to think that selection would not be biased against the candidate who told the truth rather than said whatever they thought would be most likely to get them a job offer. I'd rather work with the former than the latter.

CERNoise said...

Many years ago, I was told: you have to tell us that you will definitely accept the place before we will tell you if we will make you an offer or not.

I found that a bit offensive, and since to be honest I really preferred to go somewhere else, that's what I did. They must have been very worried about their ratings on some statistical assessment thingy, not to want to risk of making an offer to a person who might eventually turn them down. Otherwise presumably they would have been able to work out if they actually wanted me at all or not. Or were they just lining me up to be able to say: we don't care that you want to come here, we don't want you anyway!!!!