The search continues…

First off apologies for the delayed posting, I’ve had a few family things to take care of.     

 

But to follow on from last week’s posting I had the pleasure to experience a very different type of interview. After fruitless applications, a rather prestigious network contacted me regarding a position I’d applied for several weeks earlier.

To begin with, I wasn’t even sure that networks still respond to online applications but it just goes to show that you never know which applications will be the ones to get you the job.

So I was invited for an interview on Monday and it couldn’t have been more different an experience to the ones I described last week. Even preparing for the interview felt more serious as I realized there was the chance I’d actually be judged on my ability to do the job rather than my ability to schmooze the interviewer.

And I was, I was interviewed by HR and then separately by the two VPs, one male, one female thereby screwing my theory that men go with their gut and women ask questions – although the woman did have the prepared questions.

Fortunately realizing this would be a serious set up I was able to prepare answers to the questions I knew they’d asked. A friend who worked at the BBC many years ago and who coached me for a particularly tricky BBC interview explained to me that everything you need to know about what you’ll be asked in the interview is to be found in the job description. Everything they’re looking for, they put in there and it’s your job in the interview to demonstrate how your experience fits into that. Now that’s pretty tricky to do off the cuff so I always recommend prepping your answers in advance and practicing so they sound more natural (I know that sounds goofy but it works).

The only question that I was unprepared for was actually the simplest question: Tell us about you as a person. Coming from a different country I don’t have the same framework to assess what sort of answer they might have been expecting, in the UK it is certainly common to make some self deprecating comments that would make everyone laugh and show the interviewer how humorous and easy going you are. In the US however, I just don’t know what self deprecating humor may come across as and with health, dental and vision at stake, I didn’t want to take any chances so I make some noises towards TV shows I liked and we moved swiftly on.

Now I’m sure you’re wondering whether I did indeed get the job or not; sadly that’s not something I can answer yet but I did get invited back for a second interview so I must have done something right!

 Ahaaa, and before I forget I promised to mention and post a link to media-match.com who are a pretty good job posting website. Where they’re a bit better than the likes of mandy is that once your resume is posted it’s possible for employers to look you up.the reason I know about them is their sister site in theUK productionbase is the place everyone in the UK gets their jobs through.