Interview stress

[j4]

I'm worried about this interview with UCLES. Apparently it's going to be two interviews, each with two people; it's not clear what the difference between the two interviews is.

The job I'm going for is English Project Assistant; essentially it's administrative support for the Project Officers, whose job is described here [word doc]. There isn't a specific description for the job I'm applying for.

What sort of things are they likely to ask me? How can I convince them that I'm keen to work in the education sector, without sounding desperate and just repeating "I'm really interested in..." all over the place?

The thing I really hate is when they ask me to "describe a situation when you..." or "describe an occasion when you..." and I'm stuck with examples from ProQuest, which are all sufficiently fiddly and bitty that they don't make any sense without some understanding of the nature of our data, but generally people's eyes just glaze over as soon as I mention SGML.

Comments

[taimatsu]

Hmm. First, I suggest ringing someone in Personnel or in the relevant office to check what the difference between the interviews is - if you explain that you just want to be better prepared for the interviews they should have no problem with that. They've probably not realised it's not very clear.

As for what they might ask you, that's trickier. I've had lost of interviews over the last few months, and they varied wildly. Only one interviewer threw anything at me I couldn't answer - she asked me 'Tell me about a time you did something without being told to.' and I went blank, because I do lots of things without being told, but not in a very interesting way. Oh, and 'Tell me something about yourself which would shock me.' and then she gave the example that she was into bungee-jumping. Well, I couldn't very well out myself on the spot, or burble about kinky fetish whatever, and most of the other interesting things I do were on my CV - sign language, trip to Romania, that sort of thing.

Other interviews were all very straightforward. In fact, the interview for this current job (which is the most like the one you are after) was very boring indeed! They really just asked me questions to check I had the skills they wanted (this computer skill, that computer skill, happy to work with people, not moody, good with phones...) and a few questions about myself and my attitudes to work and things. The interview there was so un-challenging in comparison to previous ones it almost put me off accepting the job!

It's a shame there is no job description. When I prepared for interviews I took the key words from the job ad/description and prepared ideas for the 'describe a time when you..' questions - things like initiative, teamwork, organisational skills, coping in a crisis, working to deadlines, working beyond the call of duty, etc. These needn't be from work situations if you can demonstrate the required skills in another form - extra-curricular activities, maybe. You could perhaps take the time to explain that, while your work at ProQuest did allow you to develop many useful skills, it is hard to compress the complexity of the work you were doing into a useful soundbite.

I was lucky in that I have a couple of academic-sector jobs on my CV, albeit small, generally crappy ones. It helped me to have something to refer back to. I said that I had always enjoyed working in an academic environment; that I liked the feeling of doing something useful on a wider scale in my employment; and that I felt the atmosphere of academic workplaces was often friendly and intellectually stimulating in a way that many other workplaces are not.

Good luck. Do contact them for info - if our office is anything to go by (and especially if you speak to someone on your interview panel or someone who works with one of the panel) contacting them will be a positive 'this person is keen' thing, not a negative 'this person can't read the info we sent' thing.

[j4.livejournal.com]

'Tell me something about yourself which would shock me.'

That's a ridiculous question! I mean, I can think of lots of things that might shock interviewers, but they're hardly appropriate subject matter for a job interview. I can't think of anything "shocking" that would be appropriate, to be honest.

Do contact them for info

It was a bit late by the time people started suggesting this (on Friday) -- the interview's on Tuesday morning, and if I ask for clarification "so that I can prepare more easily" now (or rather tomorrow morning) it'll look like I'm leaving the preparation till the last minute, won't it?

I'm not sure how it'll help anyway, knowing which is which -- presumably they'll tell me at the time if it matters, or else just ask things and I'll answer them as best I can, as I would if there was only one interview.

Thank you for the advice though, it's always helpful to hear other people's experiences etc. *hugs*