Scribblings from the Mitchy Side

Found out late this afternoon that they want to interview me tomorrow morning for the job. Well. They're certainly not hanging about, I'll give 'em that. So once more into the breech I go, once more! Wish me luck :)

(Note to self: over the holidays, update your icons so you have a good flaily one :D)

I didn't get the job *sighs*

Well phooey to them. Stupid people, even their feedback didn't make much sense.

I shall try again elsewhere.

*coils around tea, a hot water bottle and a cat and plots world domination*

Phew! If that's the interview process for a relatively low level job, I'd hate to go through what they do for something really senior. Probably take you on a Commando Training Course or something. Sheesh.

So I scampered to the Agency office first thing to meet the lovely Agency lady who was going to drive me to the hotel. She wasn't there, she'd called in sick. Luckily, she'd already arranged for the branch manager to take her place and shortly after he arrived, we headed off. Simon the Manager was great, chatted all the way there and gave me some very helpful information and generally set me up nicely for the interview.

I got to the hotel and found my way through the maze of corridors to the right suite of rooms. Turned out I'd gone the long way round - I thought I'd gone in a circle! But I got there on time and there was tea, so that was good. There were six of us and we nattered while we were waiting for the rooms to be set up. Craftily, I casually inquired where everyone had come from to get there today, under the guise of making sympathetic noises about the diabolical traffic in that area at that time of day. This lead the happy revelation that one of the candidates had come from Stevenage, and on hearing that I'd had to bag a lift from the agency, very kindly offered to give me a lift home as it was on her way. Yay! So that was a big load off my mind and meant I was very cheerful as we went into meet the interviewers.

Now, I'm sure Computacenter is an excellent company to work for but I have to say they have totally the wrong idea about how to go about group interviews. Sheesh. The total number of CC people outnumbered the interviewees! They sat around the outside of the conference table and took notes, so you could hear the scritchscritchscritch of pens every time you said something. Gnnng. Annoying! The first thing we did was a group exercise - 8 famous people stuck in a mine, can only rescue 4, choose 4, list them with reasons why. Happily we were all pretty like minded about who we wanted and we got through the discussion briskly, with everyone chipping in. I was quite proud that I did take the lead once or twice - normally I'm not good at that kind of thing. We finished well within the allotted 30 minutes and were then dispatched down to wait in the hotel bar area for the next two interviews.

Yes, I did say TWO more interviews. One was going to be a scenario based interview and one was going to be a competency interview. We figured that with so many people, they'd break up into pairs and rattle through the interviews in short order. HAH! We waited in the bar for an HOUR before the first person was called upstairs again. An hour? WTF were they discussing for an hour? What the hell could they learn in a 30 minute group exercise? Bah. I was the third person called up for my scenario interview and I have to say, I hated it. I think I did OK, but it wasn't great. Basically they gave actual scenarios from the job we were all being interviewed for but the problem with that is it's very specific to them and none of us came from that kind of background. I was tempted to just answer "follow procedures" and I'm now wondering if I should have but they seemed to want you to think things through. *shrugs* Ah well. But if I was them, I'd find scenarios that people can more readily understand and which they might have come across before, because it was bloody confusing and hard to come up with precise answers for a system I knew nothing about.

That over with I went back downstairs to rejoin the others. Apparently I was in the interview ages but I don't know if that's good or bad. Good if I gave detailed answers, bad if I waffled too much or gave more than I needed to give. Ah well. It was another 40 minutes before I was called again for my competency interview. This went MUCH better, I felt I did really well and I was able to give good, clear answers to the questions, with real examples from previous jobs that were very relevant to the questions - it isn't always easy to do that, so I was very pleased.

After that, I only had a 10 minute wait for Wendy, the other interviewee to finish her interviews and then she drove me home. I thought she'd drop me off in WGC centre but she actually took me right to my door. Lovely lady, back in the UK after years of travelling and not really wanting to be here but needs to stick around as her parents are not in the best of situations.

All in all, the interview lasted nearly 4 hours, most of which was spent waiting around. I'm glad my agency warned me about that and I had a book with me. One major gripe - although there was tea and coffee and biscuits available first thing and before the second interview, we had NO refreshments available to us at all at the other times. We were hungry and thirsty and the bar prices were so outrageous that we had no intention of ordering there (3.60 for a cup of coffee and an extra large cookie! Daylight robbery!). Very poor, I felt, to have interviews that run that long and not at least offer sarnies to munch.

I heard from Wendy that the agencies will be told who got what on Monday. Hope so, don't want to have to wait too long . I think I did OK overall, though I wonder if the scenario based interview was too weak. I'm hoping the competency based one makes up for it. So keep all crossables crossed for me :) Thanks to all who commented on my previous post wishing me luck! It was good to read that this morning :) *snugs you all tightly*

I'm all set :D Suit's all sorted and hanging up, I've done my homework on the company. All I've got to do is get there and be myself - only the sort of self they might hire :P

In other news, the cat's in the doghouse. Majorly so. He's been using the front of the arm of the World's Comfiest Sofa as a scratching post. Made a lovely mess of the cover. Grrrr!!! I'll have to think of a way of protecting it that won't look really ugly. In the meantime, if anyone receives a black and white furry pyjama case for Christmas they'll know the source.