(Day 19) The Interview

Tuesday 20^th March (Day 19)

Today was the day of my job interview and the chance for me to try my hand at street fundraising.  I don’t particularly dislike job interviews but I find that I am generally not very successful with them.  If I have counted correctly I have been to 8 job interviews and have been offered a job 3 times which works out as a success rate of 37.5%.  It isn’t that I am nervous and I just end up sitting at an interview being all shy.  Quite the opposite really, I love talking about myself, it’s one of the reason I stay up until the early hours writing this blog.

What gets me in job interviews is those trick questions like “why should we give the job to you” or “what would you say is your greatest weakness”.  These stupid questions always trip me up and answering those questions with “because I need the money” and “kryptonite” doesn’t quite cut it.

I arrived in the office in good time and I was sat in a line of chairs with some other people who were waiting to be interviewed.  The office was nice with a perfectly polished wooden floor and rows of modern computers stretching across tidy desks.  For a company that makes money through charity I was expecting a much more modest office.  Perhaps somewhat ironically there is money to be made through charity.

I was sat with the other people in complete silence.  A couple of minutes went by and I was thinking that if I was going for a job that involved talking to strangers why not start now.  So I turned to the person sat next to me and asked some question about whether he was on a working holiday visa.  Soon everyone in the line of chairs were chatting away, so much so that we didn’t hear the woman doing the interview come up to us to say she was ready to start interviewing.

One by one they went off with this woman to sit at a desk behind a screen at the other end of the office and receive a modest grilling.  Over an hour of went seeing people come and go until there was no-one left but me.  By this time I was feeling a bit nervous but also a bit fed up at the same time which was a weird combination.  She took me to the desk behind the screen and started talking to me about fundraising and asking me why I was a suitable candidate.  I cobbled some stuff together from my work history which to be honest was pretty good to work with.  I had previously worked in a charity shop for several months and had done voluntary work.  I have also worked for a council which involved talking to members of the public.  At one point she even had to stop me because I was getting into too much detail about the ins and outs of the council I used to work for.

The last thing she asked me was if I was feeling ok.  I thought this was a bit of a random question but she said that I had been grabbing my neck and rubbing my throat a lot during the interview.  This is something I tend to do when I am a bit nervous but have to talk.  I said I was fine and it was just habit.

The last thing she said was that there were 15 people going for this job but only 2 positions available which wasn’t encouraging.  If you work it out that is a likeliness of 13.3%.  Now times 13.3% by 37.5% which is my previous success rate and you get 4.9%.  So I have a 5% chance I will get the job based on maths.  But really the numbers are rubbish, I just haven’t done any maths in a while and I wanted to do some.

Anyway, I find out if I get the job tomorrow, so stay tuned!