Bill the Annoying

Not as good as the first time

July 1st, 2009 at 10:10 pm (New, work)

Well I had the second interview at UW Parkside. Eh, it could have gone better.

There were some questions that I answered well, and some that I don’t think I answered very well.

Just by looking at their facial expressions I could tell that they were looking for more, or something different.

There was one question that had multiple parts, and while answering the second or third part I caught myself rambling, my first clue was that I wasn’t sure if I was in the second or third part. So I decided to wrap up the question quickly, then I realized I had lost focus as to what the main topic of overall question was. So I am sure that didn’t go so well.

There was the question “Tell me about a time you lost you temper at another coworker, at work, and how you handled it?” Well I took some time to try and recall a time where I had lost my temper at another coworker, but couldn’t think of anything, I have lost my my cool with hardware, or software, and in those cases I really tell the the offending pice of junk just how I feel right before I put it to death by unplugging the unit. Since I thought that the real question was how I would handle a bad communication moment, I old him that I don’t usually have those but I have had a time where I told a joke, that was interpreted badly and how I worked through that. Again not the best way I could have answered that question, but that is what I did.

Probably the biggest mistake was that I was so focused on trying to get the the questions nailed down, and I didn’t go over the actual job description, and there were at two questions that referred back to it, so I had to “wing it” on those.

This was an interview of the final five candidates, out of probably 200 people who applied for the position. There where three interviewers again, but all different from the first time and each had 12 questions this time.

At least this time I set my alarm to go off 2 hours before the interview, good thing two because I lost my tie right before I was going to get in the car, and spent 15 minutes looking for my “luck tie” before just grabbing the most red tie that I had.

I might still get the offer, but it is a bad sign the the facilities manager, was trying hard not to fall asleep while I was answering other peoples questions. i am just saying…

I’ll keep looking for more jobs, and applying to the ones that make sense, even if it is a stretch.

One thing I learned for me, is to write down my achievement answers so that I have something to rehearse from, and to help limit my answer to only a few minutes, and keep the answer focused.