Today was another day
Well I think it went OK.
I'm glad that I had mine today, because the 3 interviewers seemed more relaxed than yesterday's folks had suggested. There was James from HR (very keen, nice enough, but also very new), Simon (current Team Manager) and Bethanie (ex Team Manager of 27 days and current Head of Corporate Data). I wore a skirt so that my new tattoo was visible on purpose.
They didn't say it would be grueling, James just said it would be long and some of the questions might be difficult. I restrained myself from saying that we'd know that by the end. In fact I restrained my tongue extremely well I think, especially as I was asked some very pointed questions about my "tone" in emails to some institutions and what I liked about UCAS. The United Nations would snap me up if they knew how diplomatic I was *chuckle* and I got round the tricky bit by saying I've never word in a large organisation before so I have nothing to measure UCAS against.
I even made them laugh, which I think is usually a good thing, especially as it was when they asked me to give an example of when I got something wrong or made a mistake and what I had done about it. I said I had sent a test email to all 835 institution contacts when we were using the new mass-mailing software a couple of years ago. It actually wasn't a big deal, but it did mean that I could emphasis the importance of documentation to follow when learning new procedures (there was none for that software) and that I told Rachel straight away and sent the real email as quickly as possible afterwards.
And at the end I went for the sympathy vote. In my questions to them I asked if we really had to wait til Feb 9th to be told the outcome. I knew we do, its a legal requirement, but Bethanie was quite keen to stress that they wanted to be sure they were putting the right people in the right positions, and that there was a lot of information from these interviews to consider. So I told her that it's my birthday the day after that and I'd like to start my 40th year with a job.
So now I just have to wait. Thanks for your well-wishes, that means a lot :)
I'm glad that I had mine today, because the 3 interviewers seemed more relaxed than yesterday's folks had suggested. There was James from HR (very keen, nice enough, but also very new), Simon (current Team Manager) and Bethanie (ex Team Manager of 27 days and current Head of Corporate Data). I wore a skirt so that my new tattoo was visible on purpose.
They didn't say it would be grueling, James just said it would be long and some of the questions might be difficult. I restrained myself from saying that we'd know that by the end. In fact I restrained my tongue extremely well I think, especially as I was asked some very pointed questions about my "tone" in emails to some institutions and what I liked about UCAS. The United Nations would snap me up if they knew how diplomatic I was *chuckle* and I got round the tricky bit by saying I've never word in a large organisation before so I have nothing to measure UCAS against.
I even made them laugh, which I think is usually a good thing, especially as it was when they asked me to give an example of when I got something wrong or made a mistake and what I had done about it. I said I had sent a test email to all 835 institution contacts when we were using the new mass-mailing software a couple of years ago. It actually wasn't a big deal, but it did mean that I could emphasis the importance of documentation to follow when learning new procedures (there was none for that software) and that I told Rachel straight away and sent the real email as quickly as possible afterwards.
And at the end I went for the sympathy vote. In my questions to them I asked if we really had to wait til Feb 9th to be told the outcome. I knew we do, its a legal requirement, but Bethanie was quite keen to stress that they wanted to be sure they were putting the right people in the right positions, and that there was a lot of information from these interviews to consider. So I told her that it's my birthday the day after that and I'd like to start my 40th year with a job.
So now I just have to wait. Thanks for your well-wishes, that means a lot :)