BlogU

  • Dontcha Hate It When...

    By Dean Dad March 13, 2008 8:43 pm

    You get back from an interview for a job you really, really want, only to realize that you completely misinterpreted a question? And that the answer you gave to the question they meant, rather than the one you heard, almost certainly came off as colossally nuts? And that nobody around the table
    bothered to stop you, or to clarify the question, or to provide context, or even to make a facial expression that might alert you that you were doing the equivalent of saying "why yes, I do like to club baby seals in my spare time, thanks for asking"?

    Me, too.

    It's tough, because certain words have different meanings in different settings, but so few people move between those settings that the 'natives' are often unaware of the language difference. So they think the meaning of the term, or the question in which it's embedded, is utterly transparent. And an answer that depends on a different meaning is prima facie evidence of mental illness, or, at best, a tragically failed attempt at performance art. And you wonder why they're oddly distant as you leave, only to have it hit you in the middle of the subsequent night that you basically told them that you're a douchebag of epochal proportions and proud of it.

    Sigh.

    Sadly, there are no do-overs. So somewhere in this wide land, there's a perfectly wonderful college with some perfectly wonderful people who spent the better part of an afternoon staring at each other and muttering variations on "what's his problem?" or "did you hear that?" or "aye caramba" or whatever the hell it is they say when someone lays a gigantic egg and doesn't know it. And they're almost certainly congratulating themselves on having dodged a nasty bullet by discovering that beneath this mild-mannered exterior lurks a gleefully cackling cartoonish villain who spends his time thinning the gruel of orphans.

    Worse, it's entirely possible that the sustained silence I expect will follow would have happened anyway, but without the bitter taste of self-blame. But there's just no way to know.

    Grumble.

    Someday I'll chalk it up to experience. But for now, it's just really, really frustrating.

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Comments on Dontcha Hate It When...

  • Interviewing
  • Posted by Susan Forman , Director on March 13, 2008 at 9:50pm EDT

  • I completely understand what you're saying. I have candidates that tell me this all of the time. Usually it's the over confident candidates that I worry about. Honesty and modesty still works....

  • Posted by Adjunked on March 14, 2008 at 8:20am EDT

  • And worse yet, you are the adjunct who's put in five years of sincere effort taking all the developmental classes these people around the table didn't want to teach. They'll respect that, right? You know the institution and the community and could slide right into productivity. Ha! They only posted the opening internally because that's the policy. They had no intention of hiring you. It could have been worse. Your colleague was called back to give a sample lesson with no clue as to what they were looking for and Dr. Gotcha was there with questions totally unlike what any student would ever ask. Their external search begins next week and for you, it's back to adjunctville and awkward "hello" when you pass these people in the halls, as well as the local high school teacher who they ended up hiring after their nationwide search fizzled.

  • worse in phone interviews
  • Posted by Elizabeth , Ed.D. student on March 14, 2008 at 11:25am EDT

  • Sadly, with so many budgetary restrictions at so many schools these days, many schools are now using the telephone interview for all but a select few candidates. Telephone interviews, I believe, are particularly harrowing, because you get no clues at all. I'm searching for career opportunities right now, and would like to move out of my area. That means, as far as I can tell, that I can either pay my own interview travel costs or accept phone interviews and just hope things go well. I'm not happy with either choice. And then, as you say, we expect the silence afterwards. Maybe, if we're lucky, we'll get a form letter from HR that someone else has been chosen for the position.

    Thank heavens for one of my mentors! I interviewed for a position at his campus, and he kindly sat down with me later to discuss the reasons why I was not chosen. It was a great experience, but very, very rare. Let's all remember these days when we're interviewing people for positions at our campuses, shall we?

    Just trying to change the way things are, one small thing at a time. . .

  • Posted by Perry on March 15, 2008 at 11:25am EDT

  • When people are stressed (nervous) there is a tendency to become more literal (concrete). This makes it hard to do abstract thinking. That makes this kind of mistake more likely. My experience on hiring committees is that faculty understand and excuse this sort of gaffe. They may not want to embarrass the person they are interviewing by pointing out a mistake, but if the rest of the discussion is reasonable, it wouldn't be fatal.

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