Interview from Hell
Imagine, if you will, interviewing with your competition. They give you a question that you need to present as if to a class, and then watch you work together to see how you handle it. Oddly enough, the hard part was not the working with the others in the sense of their being competition. It was in the sense of any team-teaching gig where the people involved have not yet worked out roles and where some people have very different pedagogical ideas than the others. It's so funny. I really don't think of myself as being a structuralist in the classroom, but I just. wanted. to scream a couple of times. Not really. I was very polite. But I really wanted a plan. Where are we going with this? I wanted direction -- ok, so I let myself be swayed into letting the "students" work on a group activity, but then watched the groups allowed to just discuss concepts. Damn it -- shouldn't we have a clear idea of where we want to go? Of course, the possibility is that we all had different ideas of that. But I was very disappointed that what we discussed in our 'prep' was not clearly articulated to the 'students' and thus we did not actually have a clear outcome. Please let my personal interview go better. And please let me get a job offer out of one of these torture sessions!
Now to wait for a couple of hours ...
6 comments:
This is crazy. Are you actually saying that you were at a job interview alongside your competition and they made you work together? What a weird situation. Makes me wonder what other dysfuncational things is going on in that department.
Run. Run away...
Yes, that is the situation. I'm updating now, but having just got the call that they didn't want me back tomorrow for a final interview, am still bummed.
Matt -- I wish I'd done that when they asked us to do the group thing.
Yeah, I can sympathize. Going through the "process" the first time this year, I didn't get anything. I realized I wasn't ready along the way, but it still sucks like hell to be rejected. Sigh. Good luck though.
The only thing you can hope for in this situation is that the interviewers have a clue what they're looking for and that they really will pick the person who's the best fit.
On the other hand, scholars are rarely good HR people, in the sense of having structured and preplanned ideas about interviewing (let's face it, our questions are generally very predictable and not terribly revealing of anything except interview prep), so it's entirely possible they didn't have a clue.
On the other hand, next time someone asks you to do a group interview exercise...
... I will know it's not a place for me and leave then and there? The funy thing is, MW LA college is actaully really well known for all of the things that this place paid lip service to, and they were seriously focused. And professional. And I want to work for them as a result!
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