BY THE WATER COOLER
WHAT I’M REALLY
THINKING... The T
telephone interviewer
his is it – the 30-50 minute telephone interview that could be a pivotal moment in defining your future
career. So here’s hoping you’ve taken the time to research the role, found yourself a quiet space where you won’t be disturbed for the duration, and that you’ve ensured that your phone has a good reception. Is that a student cafeteria I can hear behind you, did I just hear you correctly when you said you were in a restaurant in a ski resort, is that a toilet I can hear flushing in the background, or a smoke alarm/message notification/dog barking/people knocking on the door trying to get into the meeting room you’ve dived into to try and hear me clearly?
I understand that you’ll be nervous – my role is to put you at ease so that you’ll be able to present yourself well. But telling me part way through the interview that you need the toilet might actually temporarily stump my usual rapport. At least I’ve only had candidates hang up on me a couple of times when they’ve been unable to answer simple questions around what they’ve applied for. Also, punctuating answers with ‘Kind of’, ‘That sort of thing’ and ‘You know’ doesn’t really give me the level of detail I need to make a decision. I don’t know about your experience – that’s why I’m asking you the question.
Some candidates are so well prepared – to the point that they have the answers written down on paper in front of them. I’m pleased that you’re organised, but I’m not sure I want to ‘hang on a minute’ whilst you leaf through papers trying to find the pre-written response to the question you found on Wikijobs, going on to read out your prepared statement without pause whilst I valiantly try and steer the response in the direction of what I’m actually asking. By the way, if an interviewer mentions that they’re ‘conscious of time’ part way through an interview, it’s worth taking that as a hint to be
a little more concise and focused with responses. Going over time isn’t an option – there will be another candidate expecting to be called at the start of the hour.
Throughout, however, it’s my job to make sure that you have a fair and positive experience, regardless of the outcome. At times this can be a little challenging if you tell me ‘I work at Waterstones – my life just isn’t that exciting’ when asked about a difficult situation you’ve found yourself in, or when you tell me that you’ve ‘Just not been in that situation’ when I’ve tried to rephrase the question in several different ways to elicit a response. Take a bit of time to have a think rather than closing the question down; I’m not trying to catch you out, rather just find out if you have the skills needed for your chosen career choice. Other things I’ve learnt during telephone interviews have informed some of my own decisions – now you’ve told me about practices in that chain restaurant you work in I might decide to give it a miss next time we’re looking to eat out.
Ok, that’s one telephone interview and notes completed. By my calculation I have seven minutes until my next call – time for a quick biscuit before the headset goes back on.
WHEN I’M
NOT WORKING, I’M A…
Keyboard player in a covers band called Coaster
I 46
did a music degree at Keele University and formed a band that wrote lots of songs, played gigs and half-heartedly dreamed of making it big. Once we left university, reality kicked in, we all got proper jobs, and decided to stop pursuing a record deal and start playing for fun. That was about 15 years ago, and since then we’ve had a great time playing weddings and corporate gigs around the country.
TheStudentEmployer
ise.org.uk
All the people in the band have demanding day jobs, including a journalist, consultants, a banker, a diplomat and my role running Gradcore. Playing in a band is a really nice way of getting away from it all for a weekend and playing music with your friends.
The unofficial extra member of the band is our sound engineer Martin, who does all our gigs. He usually arrives first and is grumpy about us arriving late – which is standard for every sound engineer. We used to hire a local engineer depending on the venue, but had to stop doing that when two guys from the West Midlands sat at the back of the gig smoking illegal substances.
We play a wide range of covers, with a tendency towards rock – although I think the only band we all agree that we like is the Killers. We often get requests to play special songs for a first dance at a wedding, and mostly we’re happy to do that, although we had to advise one couple against having ‘Creep’ by Radiohead as their romantic moment.
We’ve played some memorable gigs in stately homes, museums, and even a lighthouse. As ever with weddings you get over-exuberant guests wanting to sing, or asking us to play ‘Grease Megamix’. Incidents for Coaster include one groom’s rugby friends smashing the venue light fittings with a large inflatable, one bride constantly asking for us to be turned down, and one wedding that over ran so much we only got to play a 10 minute set.
We’ve also had some great times pretending to be a proper band, hiring out London venues for gigs for our friends, and had 700+ people bouncing along. The last one was at Shepherds Bush Empire and was a huge privilege to play on a stage where we’d seen so many of our own favourite bands. Martin Edmondson, CEO of Gradcore
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