“I hate interviews – but you have to do them.” ~ Jackie Chan
Sorry it’s been a bit quiet around here this week. I’ve been a bit busy. Mostly being interviewed. And when I haven’t been being interviewed, I’ve been applying to be interviewed. I’ve barely had time to get any sleep in.
I kicked off the week with a second interview down in London. I’d had the first part of the testing/interview process last week.
Now this interview should have been easy. I have years of experience doing the exact same things that I’d be doing in that role if they were to give it to me. The skills needed for the job are all the things that I’m really good at. It really should have been a piece of cake, so I arrived feeling pretty confident about the whole thing.
And then I got in the room with the interview panel.
And then I don’t know what happened.
I got stage fright or something.
It was as though I’d forgotten to speak English properly. Or any language. I just couldn’t seem to string a whole sentence together.
I couldn’t remember any of the work that I’d ever done in my career, or, explain how I’d go about working in a hypothetical scenario.
I don’t think I actually managed to give a complete and coherent answer to a single thing they asked me.
And it wasn’t as though they asked me any difficult questions. I’d rehearsed perfect answers to all of them in my head on the train on the way in.
I could see by the end of it that the interviewers just thought that I’d completely wasted my time and there’s.
I slunk off to the nearest pub and drowned my sorrows in a pint of hoola hoops. An actual pint of hoola hoops, this pub served hoola hoops in pint glasses. And as soon as I sat down I remembered exactly how perfect I would have been for that job, and all of the great examples of why I was going to tell them that they should give it to me.
I could have kicked myself.
Really, really hard.
The next day I looked up the email address for the chair of the interview panel online. I sent her a message thanking her, and the rest of the panel, for their time and the opportunity of the interview. I apologised for having been so nervous that I hadn’t been able to answer their questions as well as they might have hoped. And I explained that I didn’t understand where all the nervousness had come from, because I know that I’m awesome, and that I’d be awesome for that role and in that organisation.
I added a few of the examples that I’d remembered on the way home to justify my claims to awesomeness; and said that while I was by no means asking for special treatment, I would be happy to provide any information that we weren’t able to get to in the interview that might help them in making their decision.
And then thanked the panel once again for the opportunity.
And sent the email.
Then I sat back anticipating a response from the interview lady telling me that it would be unfair to the other candidates to allow me to provide additional information into the process, and anyway, my interview had truly been so awful that they were quite sure that they didn’t want me.
But instead the HR team responded to me with an email scheduling another interview appointment.
I rang them to ask if it was a mistake, but they said no, they want to interview me again.
Apparently the panel decided that I wasn’t ‘appointable’ on the basis of Monday’s interview, but that the director had been impressed by my initiative and self motivation in getting in touch with her straight away. They also seem to think that it shows an impressive amount of self-awareness to have noticed that the world’s worst interview was, well, the world’s worst interview. And they were impressed with the extra information that I had provided.
So I’m getting a second (third?) interview.
And the HR lady says that they never do this.
So, folks, if you ever find yourself in the position of having completely fluffed a job interview:
- Remember that you’re awesome as soon as possible
- Apologise to the panel for the horrible experience you’ve just put you all through, and
- Make it clear that you’re back to your sparkling best form already.
And you might, just, turn the situation around.
Can’t hurt to try now, can it?
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Photo source: BBC
