On Wednesday, I participated in the most bizarre interview I have ever experienced.
I keep telling myself that I must have missed the point somewhere and that this was a filtering process for a college course rather than a job interview. I keep telling myself that I am applying the wrong criteria to situation.
Nevertheless, I am perplexed and despondent.
So, what happened?
Well, I fetched up at the Liverpool Hope campus for 8:45am as requested. Along with 60 or 70 other people, about 40 of whom were up for the programme I was after. Shortly after 9am, we were taken off in groups for (surprisingly) a group interview. There were eight people in my group. I was the oldest by far and I wasn't surprised by that. There was one other person over 30 in the group. All of the other seven people were female.
Our interviewer was also female. She was probably around my age. She informed us that she had been involved in this interviewing process for more than fifteen years. She then told us that she didn't really like group interviews.
So, I thought, OK.
And then we were into the business of showing our photo identity and certificates. We had been asked to bring photocopies for their files. I have a photocopy of my degree certificate but not the original. I mentioned this but was told that it was OK. Others did not have certificates. Others had certificates but no photocopies. We had been told in our letters of invitation that this information was essential. Suddenly, it didn't appear so.
At the end of this phase, I asked when the College would like to see a replacement for my original. I was told that no-one had ever asked that question before and that, at a guess, it could wait until September at the start of term.
The next section was the reading from a piece of children's literature. Again we had been asked in our letters of invitation to prepare something. We had been told that we could bring along props if we wanted. Some of the others had brought quite elaborate supporting materials. I had decided to use myself as the prop and to act out part of Roald Dahl's BFG with me as the giant. I had tried this out on two classes in school.
So, we were all a little put out when our interviewer told us that this wasn't very important and that she didn't see the point why we were doing it and so, as a consequence, we would only have a couple of minutes each.
And so it was. I was practically cut off mid sentence. I didn't get the chance to do the really good bit. Others were just as rattled. I have no idea what this section proved. That I can read off the printed page. That my voice can carry. That I use expression in my voice when reading. Beyond that, it would be impossible to say. Certainly, there seemed to be no formal criteria. Nothing was recorded against any checklist. How what we did can be measured and evaluated against anything that anyone else did is beyond me.
So, we were all a little uneasy by this time. At which point we were split up into two groups. I was in the first group and other four were sent off and told to come back by 10:30am.
Then our interviewer ask all four of us the same two questions. What experience do you have of working in a school? Why do you want to be a teacher? I was the last of the group to answer. It's difficult to find new things to say to that second question after three people have already said the major reasons. Once again, I was left perplexed.
And then we were asked to write something about the safeguarding agenda. We were given something like five minutes. We all wrote something but again what could possibly be gained. All you could say is that we knew something rather than nothing.
Later on, one of the women who had been in my group mentioned something that led me to believe that she knew that we would be asked about safeguarding. I didn't get the chance to follow that up. I've thoroughly checked through my letter of invitation and I can't find anything there so I'm not sure whether or not she had an advantage and how she came about it. Certainly, I don't appear to have missed anything in terms of required preparation.
And then we were told to go off and fill time until noon when the next part of the process would take place. We found that it was 10am and so we had two hours to kill. Our interviewer had a good thirty minutes on her own before the next group returned. We all felt that we could have used those thirty minutes to our own advantage. But no.
The four of us had a coffee together. We all tried to make sense of what had just happened and none of us could. We parted company. I went off for a stroll. And then everyone met up again.
That is everyone. The full 60 or 70 of us from first thing that morning. Plus the 60 or 70 who were arriving for the next lot of interviews.
Eventually, we were let into the lecture theatre. We waited a while for some latecomers to arrive but they didn't and so we started without them.
This part of the process included a spelling test and an exercise in summarising and critiquing. We were given 30 minutes for the task. Once we got going, the remainder arrived in dribs and drabs over the next 15 minutes. Goodness only knows what quality of work they were able to complete.
I immediately had a problem with the spelling test. The rubric said that there were 10 marks to be had for spotting words which were mis-spelt and a further 10 marks for writing out the correct form of the word. However, there were two words which ended in "ised". Depending on whether you use the Oxford English dictionary or the Cambridge English dictionary, the spelling can be either "ised" or "ized". So, which did they want?
I simply made a note of the ambiguity on my answer sheet.
In comparison, the summarising and critiquing was easy - just boring.
And, when that was finished, the Head of Department gave us an induction presentation and told us what the course was like. I kid you not. We got the first thing last and that about summed up the whole experience.
And we also got told that, because of the current lack of decision making in Whitehall, no university in the country can make anyone a definite offer because none of them know how many students they can take in next year. So, the process that day had been about interviewing so as to make definite rejections but only conditional offers. Oh, boy.
I staggered out of the lecture theatre having handed in my work and been dismissed. And I felt dreadful. I could not see how any sane comparative judgement could be made between any of the people present and so the whole process felt completely random and chaotic.
And, since then, I've veered backwards and forwards between different polarities. From thinking that, with my experience, how can they possibly turn me down to thinking that I didn't have the opportunity to do myself justice and so therefore they are bound to reject me. And then thinking that the whole thing was haphazard anyway. So the result will be a complete lottery - and where is your equal opportunities monitoring and and where are your quality control processes there then?
And I might have just thought that this was all in my head but then I've talked to people.
Linda used to work in Personnel and she was astounded by my description. Roland deals with employment and equal opportunities matters within his Union and he was gob-smacked. But most of all it was the reaction from the teachers I work alongside that made me think that I was not over-reacting. They all thought that the experience was as bizarre as I do.
And it will be on this set of assessments that a judgement will be made.
And that journey will determine which of a number of paths I shall follow later this year.
And I'm not brimming with confidence in the overall integrity of any of it whatever the outcome.