Interview With The... Management?
I've come to the conclusion that I hate interviews. I'm a useless speaker at the best of times, further hindered by a self-effacing and understating attitude linked to a degree of self-doubt (hark at Jung over here). As such, I tend to feel I perform very poorly in interviews, whether or not I've got the skills for the job or not.
Todays interview was not particularly nice. Though I felt slightly better about myself- after all, it's the third one this week, and both the interviewers know me- I still felt I fumbled quite a bit. On top of that, a lot of the questions were about department-specific procedures, which someone from outside (ie. me) had little chance of answering accurately. As the job is in the department I worked in up until last August I had a passable knowledge of the department, its people and its procedures, but how the hell am I meant to know what page section three of our start-up paperwork is on, or what the flow of grant applications is? You couldn't answer those sorts of questions unless you're doing the job, and if they had someone doing it they wouldn't be interviewing them!
*Sigh*
Of course, they also said they'd have made a decision on who gets the job by the end of today, which puts me in a quandary. The NSO job at Site B is expected to be decided upon by the end of the week, and would be the smarter option if I'm offered it. However, I may not hear about it until tomorrow. If they select me for the internal one today, I may not be able to delay a decision until I hear about the other job. And if I decline it, there's still a high chance that I won't get the NSO job and will thus have lost both. Aaargh! This is driving me nuts, I swear.
On the upside, we had a great night last night. Dan called Vicki yesterday lunchtime and asked her to rally the troops for a pub trip that evening. Vicki crashed our place first and we ended up heading to the pub ahead of schedule, grabbing food in-situ (I love the food at the Swan- it tastes great and they know how to size a portion). Rockers crawled out of the woodwork as the evening progressed. We were there until ten, when we headed over to the Nuns to harrass Sara on her first night working behind the bar. As such I consumed a fair amount of beer- I reckon I've spent about thirty quid in pubs this week, compared to my usual £10-a-week booze budget. I am beginning to wonder if the job stress is turning me into an alcofrolic... Or maybe I should just blame Vicki. ;-)
Anyways, lunchtime- and here's hoping I hear about the NSO job first...
Song of the Day: Evangeline by The Mission (thanks Vixel!)
Todays interview was not particularly nice. Though I felt slightly better about myself- after all, it's the third one this week, and both the interviewers know me- I still felt I fumbled quite a bit. On top of that, a lot of the questions were about department-specific procedures, which someone from outside (ie. me) had little chance of answering accurately. As the job is in the department I worked in up until last August I had a passable knowledge of the department, its people and its procedures, but how the hell am I meant to know what page section three of our start-up paperwork is on, or what the flow of grant applications is? You couldn't answer those sorts of questions unless you're doing the job, and if they had someone doing it they wouldn't be interviewing them!
*Sigh*
Of course, they also said they'd have made a decision on who gets the job by the end of today, which puts me in a quandary. The NSO job at Site B is expected to be decided upon by the end of the week, and would be the smarter option if I'm offered it. However, I may not hear about it until tomorrow. If they select me for the internal one today, I may not be able to delay a decision until I hear about the other job. And if I decline it, there's still a high chance that I won't get the NSO job and will thus have lost both. Aaargh! This is driving me nuts, I swear.
On the upside, we had a great night last night. Dan called Vicki yesterday lunchtime and asked her to rally the troops for a pub trip that evening. Vicki crashed our place first and we ended up heading to the pub ahead of schedule, grabbing food in-situ (I love the food at the Swan- it tastes great and they know how to size a portion). Rockers crawled out of the woodwork as the evening progressed. We were there until ten, when we headed over to the Nuns to harrass Sara on her first night working behind the bar. As such I consumed a fair amount of beer- I reckon I've spent about thirty quid in pubs this week, compared to my usual £10-a-week booze budget. I am beginning to wonder if the job stress is turning me into an alcofrolic... Or maybe I should just blame Vicki. ;-)
Anyways, lunchtime- and here's hoping I hear about the NSO job first...
Song of the Day: Evangeline by The Mission (thanks Vixel!)
posted by Union Jackal at 1:00 pm
3 Comments:
I can go one of two ways in interviews. I either turn on the charm and can bullshit for England (hard to believe I could charm anything really, lol) or I'm crap, and stumble over everything. The latter is the more common of the two. I'm not a bad speaker, but I find self-promotion very difficult.
Don't go nuts, you'll turn into Graeme!
£10 a week booze budget? Eep! Mine's more like... fuck, I spend far too much on alcymahol!
Whilst I'm perfectly capable of layering the bullshit on with a trowel, I tend to be far too honest for my own good in interviews. And, oddly enough for an English grad, I have a tendency to forget the words I want to use when under pressure, normally halfway through the sentence I want to use them in. I guess I come across as more eloquent on paper...
You surprise me about your getting tongue-tied in interviews- I guess I must have only met the charming Vixel before. :)
As you may have heard, I didn't get the internal job (Thursday interview), though I'd pretty much worked out that would be the case when one of the staff from the department in question walked out of the interview room before I went in. Aside from the department's tendency to favour internal candidates, the questions were stacked in her favour and apparently the fact that I hadn't hung around the department and bugged the staff for information was also counted against me. I've seen it happen before with that department though- they'll have someone in their pay who they want to put into another role, but procedurally they have to advertise the post before they can give it to the preferred candidate. It's a bit of a bitch, but them's the breaks.
Still haven't heard about the NSO job- it's about the only reason I'm still in the office ATM...
It's not just in interviews, I really am crap at talking on the fly in general - I was terrible when I first went on the phones at work, I have a shy streak most people in Lufbra haven't really encountered as I was probably drunk when I first met them. It makes me stumble over my words and completely lose the point of what I'm trying to say.
The difference is I'm not that eloquent when I write either.
Fingers crossed for the job :)
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