I generally suck at interviews.
I'm the kind of person who doesn't answer well, I lose my train of thought, I ramble. Over the years, I've worked on how to get past this stuff. And just when I finally got a reasonable handle on that issue, I've run into another one....
......the written portion.
I'm a policy analyst, so it's a given that my ability to land and keep a job is highly dependent on strong written communication skills. But recently, a lot of non-government workplaces have started to include written components in the interview process. They want to test whether the candidate is able to write well in a very short time period. So just when I start to get a handle on sounding like a big girl when I talk, now I have to walk it all back to the start and work on the ability to pull a briefing note or a sample letter out thin air in one hour.
Today, I had an interview with a relatively new, but already-high profile think tank in Toronto. I've been fretting for weeks about it because it was going to be with a very high profile, well-respected policy guru (Think: "Kind of a big deal"), and Etienne is quite familiar with his work and the work of this think tank, so, you know...no pressure to succeed or anything....
I was still scared up until I answered the skype call. So scared, I contemplated cancelling! But then it turned out that I had a delightful time, I wasn't overly nervous, and the questions were reasonable, given my field and the files I've worked on.
It's like freaking out when the doctor comes at you with a giant needle, but it's over before you know it, and you get a "Huh...that wasn't so bad after all" feeling. Or, you know, so I've heard. Needles make me faint.
Sweet relief...
...Wish you were here.
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