So, yesterday, I met Jody for lunch before the interview for her sage, last-minute advice and encouragement then I went and saw Sab and had a little chit chat and coffee and fished for more encouragement. Sab’s main advice was to forgo a coat and tie and wear nice black wool slacks with a blue shirt since he doubted anyone at UT ever wore a suit to work. Since, I still needed time to get ready before the interview I ran home and ironed my clothes and got dressed. While I was getting dressed, another company called me for an interview for tomorrow. When it rains, it pours, indeed.
I arrived at the interview a little early and met one of the other interviewees, Rhonda. I introduced myself and we made a little chit chat. She was nice and competitive in a quiet assured way which made me want to work harder too. A little later an older fellow showed up, Kevin, and he introduced himself. When he introduced himself I got the impression he thought we might be the people doing the interviewing. He seemed to be a little preoccupied like he had a lot on his mind and I picked up a faint northeastern accent which made me wonder what his background was. The woman leading the interview process showed up and gave us the rundown. She was very smiley and when she smiled her eyes almost disappeared but you could tell she was still watching from way back there. A little later the final interviewee showed up, a quiet young woman named Joy. I’m not too sure about her name since she was pretty quiet most of the time.
We were asked who wanted to present first and I said I’d go since I thought that the best thing to do either way. When I got up there and pulled up my sample HTML I said something like, ” Well, you wanted us to bring you some sample of our HTML work, so I decided to redo your website.” This got laughs from most everyone there. That has to be a good thing. Then I pointed out how I had included myself in the new page just to make things easier ‘just in case’. This elicited more laughter. I discussed what I had changed about the website and why, although since I was very nervous I went through everything very quickly. Too quickly.
After I finished, the other three people presented their work. Each person had strengths and weaknesses, but I think I was doing well compared to each of them. After everyone else had gone, we had to do a short group project while the interviewers watched us. We had to come up with a practice curriculum and a way to present it online as a course. It was weird working with your apparent competition. Rhonda and I basically took charge and we came up with the main ideas while I wrote and organized things on paper. Kevin made a couple attempts to really push for his ideas in the group which seemed to me a little ham-handed and not subtle enough. We ran over our time, which was reported to have been 15 minutes even though it seemed like thirty seconds, and we were told it was time for the writing sample.
This was not that bad except you really had to keep your eye out for editorial mistakes which made me paranoid about missing something. Also, since we were slowly running out of time tensions were high. Sitting next to me, I could hear Rhonda muttering oaths under her breath in frustration with the belly button like mouse on the ancient laptop they provided each of us with. I think this section went okay, since I remembered all the HTML tags I had to format it with and I caught a few grammatical errors, but I don’t know if I missed anything or not. We’ll see. I’m supposed to find out if I warrant a second interview by next week. Keep your fingers crossed.