FORWARD- While I certainly hope to entertain and lighten up the industry we work in, I also want to help. Many perspective teachers ask me advice about job interviewing. Please read the true interviewing tale below for a few tips on how to succeed in the interviewing process.
I was interviewing teaching candidates with eight other administrators. One of the candidates showed up about 15 minutes late because she couldn't find her car keys and the next one was about 10 minutes late because she went to the wrong district building. Since I know that there are some pre-service teachers that read this blog- let me start with a little tip- BE ON TIME! I consider tardiness to an interview to be an almost unrecoverable sin. I don't care if your dog puked on the floor as you were leaving, that you caught a train, and/or that MapQuest gave you bad directions. All of those things are legitimate things that happen and the possibility of their occurrence should be accounted for. Tip #2- I would leave considerably early for a job interview and sit in the school parking lot and listen to the radio if you don't run into traffic. Tip #3- if you do sit in the car and listen to music, the students inside the car should not be able to hear your subwoofer.
The second candidate who showed up late was a 'no' before her ass hit the seat. Her English was poor, she was cross-eyed, and she had her socks pulled up to her knees either having just come from the over 65 dinner at Denny's or an adult soccer game. We asked the first question and were then interpreted by the blast of bad calypso music. Tip #4, turn your fucking cell off. Tip #5, if you have to have a ring tone, don't make it calypso music, everyone hates that and thinks your a super douche bag.
The interview pressed on. The fourth time her cell phone went off in the short interview the principal sitting next to me started kicking my foot under the table. The principal on my other side was tallying the number of times the phone had gone off. I'm usually a pretty straight faced guy, but I was starting to lose it. Several other principals were starting to water from the eyes.
I actually thought she was going to turn the phone off after it went off that fourth time, but I then realized she was reading a text message! This is a good time to offer a couple more interviewing tips. Tips # 6,7,&8- don't allow your phone to go off a second, third, or fourth time while in a job interview (hint- these tips work in fields other than the educational world). Tip #9, don't read (or respond, Tip #10) to text messages while in a job interview. You might be thinking, "what if it's my mom wanting to know if I'll be home for supper?" While that's important, I'd still advise against responding during the actual interview.
As tempting as this candidate might have been, none of the principals requested a call back with her. I begged my one buddy to interview her again just to see if she'd do the cell phone routine again, but he declined.
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