Wait and see

I spent another 5 hours Tuesday evening working on the presentation for my interview Wednesday morning. I decided to remove bullets from many of the slides and replace them and the screenshot thumbnails with larger versions. It flowed a lot more smoothly and made more sense for the viewers to see the larger version instead of a squished thumbnail that links to a large version.

The interview itself was the typical stiff style that is the custom at the college - at probably all state institutions. The methodology shocked me when I was interviewed in January 2002, but I've been on about 5 hiring committees at the college since then so I knew what to expect.

A list of questions is taped to the table in front of the applicant. The questions are read aloud one-by-one by the interviewers. The questions are identical for all applicants. No additional questions may be asked unless it is to get more information in response to something the applicant says.

In making their decision to invite applicants for interview(s) and to decide who to recommend to receive the offer, the hiring committee must consider only the information presented the applicant's resume and application and in his/her interview(s). No outside knowledge is allowed - which means they must pretend they know nothing about you if you're an internal candidate. And, no "Googling" of applicants is allowed.

I was (apparently) 13 minutes into my presentation when a 2-minutes-to-go reminder came. Yikes! I thought only about 8 minutes had passed! So I moved quickly through the remaining slides and finished within 15 minutes.

I'm nervous in group situations. There were 9 people other than me in the small interview room: 8 interviewers plus an interpreter for one of them. My heart was racing, my face red, and it felt like a heavy weight was sitting on my chest so I would run out of breath. I feel I rushed many of my answers.

Once the presentation had been going for about 1-2 minutes, I felt smooth and in-the-flow. Teaching a subject I'm familiar with is easier than answering free-form questions! In a real teaching situation, there would be a flow of information and feedback and questions and answers between the "students" (which in the case of this position, are faculty or staff members). In the interview environment, there was no give and take.

The 10 (9 actually not including the presentation) questions were geared toward the applicant's experience with [fill in the blank] in supporting or teaching e-Learning / online courses. Since I have not had this direct experience - but I have extensive knowledge about online technologies used - I answered the questions from my experience as a web designer. For example, I have not assisted a faculty member with their online course; however, I have assisted faculty and staff with their faculty or department websites. I have also not used software/hardware in an e-Learning environment, but I am familiar with PCs and Macs and the software used on them to create online courses. I realized after the interview that I had missed the point of the "hardware" question - the answer should have included tools used in "smart classrooms" (such as smartboards, touch panels, audio/visual equipment, etc.). However, since I don't work with those technologies in my position as web designer, they totally slipped my mind during the interview.

I've tried not to replay the interview repeatedly in my head. After all, there are no "do overs". I see now where I could have given clearer, more informative answers.

Now I wait and see whether I'm invited for a second interview.