What th’ heck just happened there?

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching

HNG04Man, District Four, I just don’t know what to do with you.

I had an in-person interview today; the second round.  The first round was a phone interview that, I thought, did not go very well.  I was, frankly, surprised to hear from the principal yesterday; scroll down and keep reading to see some of the comedy that produced.

Anyway, the interview was today.  I had thought, from my discussion with the principal, that the interview was just going to be with him or, failing that, maybe their assistant principal or something like that.  Ha!  When the AP came and got me out of the office, he let me know that there would be seven other people sitting around the table– himself, the principal, and five of their teachers.  (I’m good with that, mind you– teachers should be involved in the interview process.)

I’ll give you two guesses about what the actual questions were like, and the first one doesn’t count.

Did you say “standardized”?  Good job!  In fact, a number of the questions were exactly the same questions that were asked in the initial screening interview.  I think some of them were different, and there were certainly some that were omitted from the screener, but a lot of them were word-for-word exactly the same.

That said?  I think I did well– certainly better than I did during the initial interview.  The presence of an audience makes all the damn difference; I am so much better when I have actual humans to interact/perform for, even if they’re not supposed to be talking to me.  Again, though, I walked out of the building without feeling like I knew anything about the school or, really, the job itself; there’s a “do you have questions?” phase at the very end, but actually asking anything is kinda weird, y’know?  They’re done with me; I’m not going to spend fifteen minutes interviewing them about a job I haven’t actually been offered yet.

I’ve got two more interviews with other districts next week.  One of them I think may be a non-starter due to salary issues; if I understand their master contract correctly there’s no way I walk in the door with less than a $6000 salary hit, which isn’t going to happen.  The other may be similar but I’m not sure.  Either way, I’ll go in for the interviews, it can’t hurt.

(The weirdest thing?  No building tour.  I have never, never been in an interview in a school that didn’t involve at least a little bit of walking around the school.  I saw the main hallway and the teacher’s lounge and that was it.)

We’ll see how it goes, I guess.

10 thoughts on “What th’ heck just happened there?”

  1. anjiaoshi

    If you did ask questions, they’d probably mark you as Very Nonstandard and disqualify you on the spot.

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  2. pjsandchocolate

    D-4’s patch looks kinda…

    Facist? Dystopic?

    I dunno. Something about it makes me think I’d be keeping a very close look on all my available exits if I was in one of their buildings. I’m certain they’re nice people…

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      1. pjsandchocolate

        Ah.

        Never saw it.

        Budget trumps entertainment desires.

        On the other hand, that speaks volumes about the skill of the designer.

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  4. You should have grilled them! One, entertaining – are their responses as canned as their questions? Two, the questions interviewees ask me are a huge part of the evaluation – I don’t trust people who claim not to have any.

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    1. I thought about coming up with something specifically to avoid that precise feeling, but the culture of the interview was just so weird– I was there to talk to them, not for them to talk to me, and it felt like asking a bunch of questions was inappropriate. Plus, there were seven of them– what, am I just going to start firing questions at the principal and ignoring everyone else in the room? I do generally have lots of questions when the interview is a conversation, but this still didn’t raise itself to that level.

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  5. There’s no one way to do an interview. I had a good feeling about a recent interview I had and chose 3 or so questions directed at the 4 people present. I didn’t even get a “no thank you” email. I called back 5 days later, but the director had left for vacation fur a week. Ugh. Good luck. Whatever will be, will be.

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  7. I would think at the second-interview level, they have clear interest in you, and I’d have had let loose with a huge list of questions, even if it was for a crowd.

    In my interview for my current job, they didn’t even give me the opportunity to ask questions at the end, which I found VERY odd. I had no idea how to interpret that, but it all worked out in the end. 🙂

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