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

Re: You can do it: hints from an interviewer

[j4.livejournal.com]

Do you know enough about tutoring or marking, at any level, paid or unpaid, to understand and use the language and concepts of assessment?

I have absolutely no experience of tutoring or marking, so I'm not really sure what type of language and concepts you're thinking of here...

Are you up to speed on what assessment is supposed to be doing?

Again, I don't know what sort of answer you're driving at. I have no experience whatsoever of assessing other people and/or reporting on the results of that assessment. I could probably guess at the sorts of things that assessment is supposed to be doing, in so far as it's common sense really, but I don't know the jargon. (Or if I do, I don't know that I know it, IYSWIM.)

Can you make sense of a basic statistical report?

No idea. Probably enough to extract some information from it.

E.g., do you know the difference between the mean and the median and what that implies,

I know the difference, I'm not sure what you mean by "what that implies". (What the difference between them implies, or what each implies, or what?)

are you conversant with some of the more quantifiable language-analysis techniques?

Not really.

How would you go about comparing the results of two trial papers?

No idea. (I suspect, though, it would depend on what sort of results they were, what format they were in, what the point of doing the comparison was, etc.)

OK, you understand what the PO is supposed to be doing, and you certainly have the intellectual and academic background to do that work.

Um, well, the Project Officer is supposed to be a qualified teacher with 3+ years of teaching experience, and I'm certainly not that -- but they don't require that for the Assistant job (which is the one I'm going for)...

Don't hassle yourself about the questions you hate

I'm not hassling myself, but if they do ask me the kind of questions I hate then I want to be prepared for them!

I don't know what you do with ProQuest, but I bet you one pound that you could describe your data in one sentence; describe what you are supposed to so with it in one sentence; and then say how you use "a mark-up language", don't bother saying which one, to do what needs to be done.

Most people I talk to outside the geek community don't have the faintest idea what "a mark-up language" is. If I'm really lucky, they've heard of HTML, because it's "what you use on the internet", but they don't necessarily know what it is or even vaguely how it works; a lot of people haven't even heard of it. The relationship between language and markup, and the implications of adding standardised logical markup to complex and often inconsistent data, probably isn't something that I can explain in a single sentence to somebody who's never encountered the concept before.

Jargon about "teaching and learning process" is useful, though -- thank you. Other bits useful too but I'm now worried about a different set of things, because I really don't think I do have the skills that you seem to be suggesting I should. :-/

(And sorry for snapping at you in comments on another thread. Late at night after 10 hours of train travel was probably not the best time to start looking at LJ & trying to engage in discussion.)

Re: You can do it

[vinaigrettegirl.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I wasn't clear, again. But working backwards:

Snap? If that was re friends and responsibilities, I replied, and snapping is Allowed anyway. I'd rather you snapped than moped any day. I hope you read my reply! :-) I have my catcher's mitt ready for any further hairballs thrown my way.

Re mark-up languages and who knows what they are: you write: Most people I talk to outside the geek community ... a lot of people haven't even heard of it... to which I ask, does "most people" mean all the interviewers you have encountered in the last two years? Go in assuming that people know what you are talking about: it flatters them, and if they really think you have just slipped into Alt dot gibberish then they will probably indicate it, even if only by a look. A mark-up language is an editing scheme, and anyone with even a remote connection to the publishing process will know what an editing scheme is. Every newspaper in the world went to the printers full of mark-up, usually in blue pencil, using a previously-agreed scheme. SGML and HTML is really not different in concept although it is in execution. They will also understand that some stuff arrives so garbled that it requires a lot of editing. Using the language of geekery obscures the basic concepts, that's all.

You probably have a perfectly OK standard answer to the questions you hate. Trot it out.

me: How would you go about comparing the results of two trial papers? (I should have said "if you were the project officer, here)

You:No idea. (I suspect, though, it would depend on what sort of results they were, what format they were in, what the point of doing the comparison was, etc.) They give you an example of two set questions and why they differed. Read their example and their reasoning analytically and Bob's your uncle. I am thinking of how, if it came up, you could show some readiness to be delegated to (you can tell that English was not my special subject).

me: are you conversant with some of the more quantifiable language-analysis techniques?

You:Not really. Word frequency-counts? (Like sermons which use the word "I" in every sentence...)

me: E.g., do you know the difference between the mean and the median and what that implies,

You: I know the difference, I'm not sure what you mean by "what that implies". (What the difference between them implies, or what each implies, or what?) Correct me if I am wrong, but I think that the grammatical subject of the sentence is 'the difference'; but in any event, your excellent question asking me to clarify my question shows that you are sensitive to lnaguage in a way which will be useful to them. "Implies" is one of those nasty words people use when they want you to say, succinctly, all you know about, frex, the mean and the median.

You:Again, I don't know what sort of answer you're driving at. I have no experience whatsoever of assessing other people and/or reporting on the results of that assessment. I could probably guess at the sorts of things that assessment is supposed to be doing, in so far as it's common sense really, but I don't know the jargon. (Or if I do, I don't know that I know it, IYSWIM.)

I'm not driving at an answer: but they use the necessary jargon in their blurb. Go back to it and read it as if it was literature.

You do have experience of tutoring and marking: as a recipient. And I expect you have taught a lot of people things on the job, one way or another, and informally assessed whether they stood a chance of understanding you or not. One of your previous intervewrs asked you if you had ever thought of being a teacher, which implies, to me, that you explain things lucidly and clearly, even though you think you don't.