I've attended very few interviews in my life, and that's because I quickly gave up on the idea of job hunting. Also, among the few times I attended interviews, most of them were situations where I was the interviewer. This gave me the confidence and boldness to face the interviews where I was the interviewee. You know that kind of situation where you enter an office to be interviewed and you match the aura of the interviewer, yes, that's the situation.
First interview:
My first time attending an interview happened in a situation where I was the chief interviewer. Yeah, it was during NYSC, and towards the end of our stay, we were to select people who would take over our positions as leaders of a significant body in the NYSC system. So we selected the people we felt were qualified and sent them invitations for the interview. When we were assigned as leaders, interviews were conducted for us, but mine was "off" because I was trying to avoid being among the leaders. So I was forced into the position and didn’t follow the proper interview process.
The day arrived, and my secretary and I arranged the space. I wore a professional look and discarded any unserious and jovial character.
"Welcome, let's meet you,"
I would say, and they would start responding with the exact crammed format of an interview, and I would be laughing inwardly. Why must people follow a defined pattern? I love it when someone is very natural.
Some of them would shy away from direct eye contact, especially the ladies, but since I was the boss, I made sure I challenged them with eye contact to make them more nervous, exactly the way HR personnel in a company do.
There was one in particular, a guy, a very talkative person as we knew him. He came in and was struggling to maintain his flow with simple English. I was surprised to see someone who was once very vocal suddenly appear dull. Forgive me, no matter how hard we try in this part of the world, English is still one of the means we use to rate someone's intelligence. This is why I always like to bring out my mathematics and engineering knowledge, so I have a ground to stand on whenever people start rating someone's ability based on how well they speak English, because I know I am not very good at it myself.
That guy, I saw how difficult it was for him, and I smartly and jokingly switched to pidgin English, and hey, all hell broke loose with his uncontrolled flow of words. Yes, he returned to factory settings.
Thanks for reading.
This is my entry to Com contest
Image: Chatgpt
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I identified with the engineering part; sometimes numbers speak louder than words. Excellent post