Quote:
Originally Posted by vixnix
What topleybird said about preparing for three days beforehand really resonates because I think if I had more time to prepare I’d probably do better - but I can’t take the time off…and I already spend so little time with my kids it’s hard to eat into weekend or early evening time
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Yeah, I completely lucked out by having that much time — I was freelancing and managed to arrange a later delivery for a few things — and it is, again, utter bullshit that someone in a more normal situation has to really scramble to master a skill that they will
only use in the hiring process and
never at the actual job.
I don't know what I'd have done if I hadn't had that time to dredge up a halfway decent story for all the questions I thought they'd ask. Is anyone out there winning an award at work every week or being the highest-selling rookie salesperson or some shit? Don't we all just kind of show up roughly on time, do the work by the book, and clock out? Is there anything wrong with that? Almost all my stories came from the one job I've had in 20 years where they'd actually valued and encouraged me, and I actually wanted to teach my coworkers a new skill, or bother to suggest a better way of doing things or whatever.
I feel like, to stand out, your responses have to be on the level of, like, "Tell me about a time when you disagreed with your manager's decision, and how you handled it."
"The year was 2003. Early March. At the beginning of February, the space shuttle Columbia had disintegrated upon reentry, killing all ten astronauts aboard, and Fred Rogers had died at the end, leaving America with the feeling that our childhoods had been irretrievably lost... [Twenty minutes later] ...And that's when I found my manager's body in the last stall of the men's fifth floor bathroom. He'd committed seppuku, and the suicide note clutched in his hand demanded that I take over his role at the company, marry his widow, and adopt his kids. He said he'd been wrong, and he was sorry."
Anyway, good luck to everyone out there, interviewing. It fucking sucks, but at least it's a different suck than filling out online applications all day and never getting so much as an automated "Thank you, but we've chosen to go with..." back from 99% of them.