My first application was for the post of Personal Advisor at Job Centre Plus.
Getting the interview
I have to say that this was the easiest application form I have filled out as it was a competancy based form so there were hardly any bits to fill out, just a load of situations you had to score for the way you thought you would behave. So that done and sent off I waited to see what the outcome would be. A short time later I received an invitation to attend an aptitude testing session. This consisted of two timed papers, one for literacy and one for numeracy. Now I'm not the best at maths, about average I would say, so I wasn't looking forward to this. Fortunately we were allowed to take calculators. Phew.
7th April 2009
So on arrival I settled down at my table, away from other people so that I wouldn't be distracted. This being my first invite to attend part of the process on from the application form I was super keen and organised. I had my calculator, a pencil case, some mints and a drink as well as my calculator and my son's in case the first one broke for some reason. I organised them all in front of me along with the pencil and paper that had been provided by the testing people.
The first paper arrived and we had 8 minutes to find 15 mistakes in a written piece. Well I found the first 12 pretty easily then after much searching found another one, but for the life of me couldn't find the last two, so I had to just cross my fingers and hope that would be enough.
The papers were taken away for marking and the next paper arrived. In this one we were given 15 minutes to answer 20 questions.
Along with your answer paper you were given a statistics paper that gave details of rooms used in a college. This included times rooms were used, the numbers of computers in each room, whether there was wheelchair access etc, In all there were about 8 different sections of information. The aim of the paper was to analyse the data and work out the maths. So an example would be to say how many wheelchair users had access to computers between 7 and 9 pm, that sort of thing.
Well again I was motoring along, feeling pretty confident and tapping away on my calculator, until I got to a section on ratios and percentages. I have never been able to work out percentages, I always forget the formula so in the end I guestimated these questions. I managed to complete 17/20 questions before the time was up, and wasn't at all confident that I had got enough right to go through.
Once again the papers were taken away for marking then someone arrived with an armful of large envelopes that we were asked to collect on our way out. We were also asked to respect the other applicants and not open the envelope until we were outside the building. As I was queueing to get my envelope I noticed that there were two types of envelope being handed out, at the front of the pile were nice thick envelopes, obviously for successful applicants with details of the next stage of the process, and at the back of the pile thin ones, guess it doesn't take much paper to tell people they have failed the tests!
So finally I was at the front of the queue. I gave my name and waited while she looked through the pile of envelopes. A quarter of the thick envelopes gone and she was still looking, then half then on to the final quarter. By this time I had convinced myself I had failed and waited for her to move on to the thin ones at the back...... but no! to my surprise the second to last thick envelope had my name on it. Relief. Then we had to wait for someone to escort a group of us back through the warren that was the building, down to the exit. I was happily chatting away to a couple of other women who obviously had thick envelopes pointing out my observation and conclusion that those with thick ones had got through, when I noticed a man on my other side clutching a thin one. Decided that was a good time to shut up. Once outside the building my suspicions were confirmed when I saw the man opening his thin envelope and the look on his face and so I went to the nearest (and cheapest) coffee shop and sat down to look through the mountain of paperwork involved in the next stage. I did give a fleeting thought to the rain forest that must have died to provide this information to the large group of successful applicants. The first piece of paper told me I had been successful and would I please attend an interview the following week.
____________________________________________________________________
Preparing for the interview
I have been attending a job search program and when I knew I had scored an interview I managed to time it to coincide with a workshop on how to sell yourself and good interview techniques. This was very good timing and gave me guidance on how to prepare for the day. I was also very pleased to be scored with a perfect handshake.
Unfortunately, in my opinion anyway, this was to be a competency based interview. Now I hate these things, they are a standardised list of questions based purely on the competencies listed for the post. This is when I realised I had made my first mistake. I had applied online for the post and whilst I had made a copy of the application form I had not taken any copies of the list of competencies required for this post. After some trawling of the DWP website I managed to find a similar job and printed off the list hoping that it was the same list that I would need for my interview.
Next step was to go through the competencies list and come up with examples of each, and following the guidelines on the paperwork I focused on experiences from the last 3 years. I carefully typed out the list and the examples and printed them off to be used for reference during the interview if I became stuck.
The next stage was to go to a newsagents and buy a posh folder to put all my paperwork in. I had to take a large amount of paperwork to the interview with me and also had to get a passport photo done. This didn't bode well imo as it meant they had so many people attending they needed a photo to remind them who you were and I have never been the most photogenic person in the world. That ordeal over with all I had to do was prepare a list of reasonably intelligent questions to ask and make sure my interview outfit was ready. I'd already bought a pair of 'interview shoes' with a gift voucher from my previous place of work and just had to decide what clothes I was going to wear. Finally plumped on a black blouse with matching maroon skirt and dug out a jacket from the bin bag it's been in since I moved last year. Damn, it was covered in cat fur and that didn't seem a good look. Several reels of masking tape later I had removed all the fur and the jacket looked reasonably smart. I really must invest in a clothes brush!
Final part of the preparation was to have a look through the DWP website and try to come up with a couple of questions that would show I had done my research on the company. Clothes ironed, shoes clean, jacket defurred, questions printed out and paperwork collected and ready I was as prepared as I could be. All that done I had an early night as I rarely sleep well before an interview.
____________________________________________________________________________
The Interview
14th April 2009
It's the day of the interview. Thankfully all the preparation I had done before hand meant that I got a reasonable night's sleep and woke up nice and early and as refreshed as I could be at that time of the morning on a Saturday (yes the interview and the aptitude tests were held on a Saturday!)
My interview was at 9am and I wasn't sure if this was a good thing, or not on the one hand it meant that I was the first of the day and the inteviewers weren't knackered and fed up of hearing the same answers over and over, on the other they probably weren't that happy about having to give up their Saturday and I really hoped they had had a good breakfast and several cups of coffee. It also gave them a long time to completely forget who I was.
So suited and booted, my shiney new folder in hand I set off into town. I took a nice walk down through the park and got a phone call from a friend while I walked. It was a beautiful sunny day, I had my ipod playing and I felt very positive and excited about my first interview in many years. I had given myself plenty of time, and popped into a newsagent to get mints and a drink and arrived at the venue about 20 minutes early. I hid round the corner and had a sneaky cigarette to calm my nerves which were begining to kick in at this point, swallowed half a pack of mints to get rid of the smell and walked towards the door. I saw a couple of other people in suits hanging around but didn't think much of it. I walked to the door and tried to open it, only to find that we weren't allowed to enter the building until 9.00 on the dot. As I stood there waiting more and more people were arriving including one person who I knew and hadn't seen for several years so we stood chatting and catching up which was a nice distraction. By the time we were allowed into the building, there were about 15 of us waiting including one man who couldn't possibly have looked in the mirror before he left home or he never would have come out looking like that. He was a very large man wearing a puke green suit that was about 4 sizes too small for him, and to make it worse he had even by some miracle managed to do the buttons up, leaving gaping holes. Not a good look and it did make me with my nicely ironed clothes and shiny folder, feel a little bit better.
Finally we were allowed into the building and after signing in and being given visitors passes, we were escorted in groups up the the floor the interviews were being held on. On arrival there we were greeted by a large number of staff who had obviously been roped in to help organise this massive process and all our paperwork was processed. I managed to get the important person who kept getting called away so it was 20 minutes before I was finally ready to be taken to the actual interview room. Due to the volume of people being interviewed there were quite a few people in separate rooms doing the interviews. I was led into a room with two people, a man and a woman. Great I thought, time to show my great handshake. The man returned the handshake with a firm one of his own, the woman did the limp lettuce shake and had a face like sour lemons. The room was set up with a row of desks with the two interviewers one side and me on the other. Water was provided (in a plastic cup). And so the interview commenced.
It took the form of the panel taking it in turns to ask questions related to the four competencies and the other person writing down the answers. These answers would then be scored and added to my previous scores from the application form and the aptitude tests to decide if I would then get the job.
As the interviewers started to ask the questions I quickly realised that I needed to use experience from before the last three years, that I had prepared, to answer the questions better. So there was all my preparation flying out of the window. I did check with them that that was ok, mentioning that my answers wouldn't be so well prepared as they would have been. I managed to talk my way through the interview but was pretty sure I hadn't done as good a job as I would have liked to have done. I did manage to ask my clever questions at the end but as my questions weren't scored because it wasn't part of the 'process' I might as well not have bothered trawling through everything and showing off my knowledge in this part. So finally it was over and I could escape out into the sunny day outside.
____________________________________________________________________________
Conclusion and Feedback
As I left the interview I asked when we were likely to hear the results and was told we would probably hear by the end of that week or the begining of the next. By the middle of the following week when I still hadn't heard anything I phoned the recruitment office and was told they were still analysing and inputting all the scores on the computer and it would be at least a week until the results were known. Great, I was a group of scores not a person. Finally nearly three weeks after the interview I received a letter informing me that I had been unsuccessful (no big surprise there).
I immediately followed advice and phoned to see if I could get any feedback. I spoke to a very snotty woman who told me that they didn't automatically give feedback (which is not what the literature had said) and if I wanted to get any feedback I would have to put it in writing and they would just give me my scores. However as they were very busy recruiting people at the moment it could be several months before I got the feedback as it was not a priority for them. Now bear in mind that this is the goverment organisation that is responsible for helping people find work and that attitude sucks big time in my opinion. Needless to say I didn't bother asking for the feedback in writing.
All in all the whole process was completely impersonal, the cups were plastic, the handshakes limp and the whole thing made me feel like a number not a person. While I do understand that in big organisations like this there has to be some standardisation of proceedure, I think the competency based process like this gives no room for personal expression and I personally do not perform well in such a structured process where I have no room to tell them of my skills and experiences that do not conform to the set questions but are still relevant to my ability to do the job.
So that was that.... on to the next!
Getting the interview
I have to say that this was the easiest application form I have filled out as it was a competancy based form so there were hardly any bits to fill out, just a load of situations you had to score for the way you thought you would behave. So that done and sent off I waited to see what the outcome would be. A short time later I received an invitation to attend an aptitude testing session. This consisted of two timed papers, one for literacy and one for numeracy. Now I'm not the best at maths, about average I would say, so I wasn't looking forward to this. Fortunately we were allowed to take calculators. Phew.
7th April 2009
So on arrival I settled down at my table, away from other people so that I wouldn't be distracted. This being my first invite to attend part of the process on from the application form I was super keen and organised. I had my calculator, a pencil case, some mints and a drink as well as my calculator and my son's in case the first one broke for some reason. I organised them all in front of me along with the pencil and paper that had been provided by the testing people.
The first paper arrived and we had 8 minutes to find 15 mistakes in a written piece. Well I found the first 12 pretty easily then after much searching found another one, but for the life of me couldn't find the last two, so I had to just cross my fingers and hope that would be enough.
The papers were taken away for marking and the next paper arrived. In this one we were given 15 minutes to answer 20 questions.
Along with your answer paper you were given a statistics paper that gave details of rooms used in a college. This included times rooms were used, the numbers of computers in each room, whether there was wheelchair access etc, In all there were about 8 different sections of information. The aim of the paper was to analyse the data and work out the maths. So an example would be to say how many wheelchair users had access to computers between 7 and 9 pm, that sort of thing.
Well again I was motoring along, feeling pretty confident and tapping away on my calculator, until I got to a section on ratios and percentages. I have never been able to work out percentages, I always forget the formula so in the end I guestimated these questions. I managed to complete 17/20 questions before the time was up, and wasn't at all confident that I had got enough right to go through.
Once again the papers were taken away for marking then someone arrived with an armful of large envelopes that we were asked to collect on our way out. We were also asked to respect the other applicants and not open the envelope until we were outside the building. As I was queueing to get my envelope I noticed that there were two types of envelope being handed out, at the front of the pile were nice thick envelopes, obviously for successful applicants with details of the next stage of the process, and at the back of the pile thin ones, guess it doesn't take much paper to tell people they have failed the tests!
So finally I was at the front of the queue. I gave my name and waited while she looked through the pile of envelopes. A quarter of the thick envelopes gone and she was still looking, then half then on to the final quarter. By this time I had convinced myself I had failed and waited for her to move on to the thin ones at the back...... but no! to my surprise the second to last thick envelope had my name on it. Relief. Then we had to wait for someone to escort a group of us back through the warren that was the building, down to the exit. I was happily chatting away to a couple of other women who obviously had thick envelopes pointing out my observation and conclusion that those with thick ones had got through, when I noticed a man on my other side clutching a thin one. Decided that was a good time to shut up. Once outside the building my suspicions were confirmed when I saw the man opening his thin envelope and the look on his face and so I went to the nearest (and cheapest) coffee shop and sat down to look through the mountain of paperwork involved in the next stage. I did give a fleeting thought to the rain forest that must have died to provide this information to the large group of successful applicants. The first piece of paper told me I had been successful and would I please attend an interview the following week.
____________________________________________________________________
Preparing for the interview
I have been attending a job search program and when I knew I had scored an interview I managed to time it to coincide with a workshop on how to sell yourself and good interview techniques. This was very good timing and gave me guidance on how to prepare for the day. I was also very pleased to be scored with a perfect handshake.
Unfortunately, in my opinion anyway, this was to be a competency based interview. Now I hate these things, they are a standardised list of questions based purely on the competencies listed for the post. This is when I realised I had made my first mistake. I had applied online for the post and whilst I had made a copy of the application form I had not taken any copies of the list of competencies required for this post. After some trawling of the DWP website I managed to find a similar job and printed off the list hoping that it was the same list that I would need for my interview.
Next step was to go through the competencies list and come up with examples of each, and following the guidelines on the paperwork I focused on experiences from the last 3 years. I carefully typed out the list and the examples and printed them off to be used for reference during the interview if I became stuck.
The next stage was to go to a newsagents and buy a posh folder to put all my paperwork in. I had to take a large amount of paperwork to the interview with me and also had to get a passport photo done. This didn't bode well imo as it meant they had so many people attending they needed a photo to remind them who you were and I have never been the most photogenic person in the world. That ordeal over with all I had to do was prepare a list of reasonably intelligent questions to ask and make sure my interview outfit was ready. I'd already bought a pair of 'interview shoes' with a gift voucher from my previous place of work and just had to decide what clothes I was going to wear. Finally plumped on a black blouse with matching maroon skirt and dug out a jacket from the bin bag it's been in since I moved last year. Damn, it was covered in cat fur and that didn't seem a good look. Several reels of masking tape later I had removed all the fur and the jacket looked reasonably smart. I really must invest in a clothes brush!
Final part of the preparation was to have a look through the DWP website and try to come up with a couple of questions that would show I had done my research on the company. Clothes ironed, shoes clean, jacket defurred, questions printed out and paperwork collected and ready I was as prepared as I could be. All that done I had an early night as I rarely sleep well before an interview.
____________________________________________________________________________
The Interview
14th April 2009
It's the day of the interview. Thankfully all the preparation I had done before hand meant that I got a reasonable night's sleep and woke up nice and early and as refreshed as I could be at that time of the morning on a Saturday (yes the interview and the aptitude tests were held on a Saturday!)
My interview was at 9am and I wasn't sure if this was a good thing, or not on the one hand it meant that I was the first of the day and the inteviewers weren't knackered and fed up of hearing the same answers over and over, on the other they probably weren't that happy about having to give up their Saturday and I really hoped they had had a good breakfast and several cups of coffee. It also gave them a long time to completely forget who I was.
So suited and booted, my shiney new folder in hand I set off into town. I took a nice walk down through the park and got a phone call from a friend while I walked. It was a beautiful sunny day, I had my ipod playing and I felt very positive and excited about my first interview in many years. I had given myself plenty of time, and popped into a newsagent to get mints and a drink and arrived at the venue about 20 minutes early. I hid round the corner and had a sneaky cigarette to calm my nerves which were begining to kick in at this point, swallowed half a pack of mints to get rid of the smell and walked towards the door. I saw a couple of other people in suits hanging around but didn't think much of it. I walked to the door and tried to open it, only to find that we weren't allowed to enter the building until 9.00 on the dot. As I stood there waiting more and more people were arriving including one person who I knew and hadn't seen for several years so we stood chatting and catching up which was a nice distraction. By the time we were allowed into the building, there were about 15 of us waiting including one man who couldn't possibly have looked in the mirror before he left home or he never would have come out looking like that. He was a very large man wearing a puke green suit that was about 4 sizes too small for him, and to make it worse he had even by some miracle managed to do the buttons up, leaving gaping holes. Not a good look and it did make me with my nicely ironed clothes and shiny folder, feel a little bit better.
Finally we were allowed into the building and after signing in and being given visitors passes, we were escorted in groups up the the floor the interviews were being held on. On arrival there we were greeted by a large number of staff who had obviously been roped in to help organise this massive process and all our paperwork was processed. I managed to get the important person who kept getting called away so it was 20 minutes before I was finally ready to be taken to the actual interview room. Due to the volume of people being interviewed there were quite a few people in separate rooms doing the interviews. I was led into a room with two people, a man and a woman. Great I thought, time to show my great handshake. The man returned the handshake with a firm one of his own, the woman did the limp lettuce shake and had a face like sour lemons. The room was set up with a row of desks with the two interviewers one side and me on the other. Water was provided (in a plastic cup). And so the interview commenced.
It took the form of the panel taking it in turns to ask questions related to the four competencies and the other person writing down the answers. These answers would then be scored and added to my previous scores from the application form and the aptitude tests to decide if I would then get the job.
As the interviewers started to ask the questions I quickly realised that I needed to use experience from before the last three years, that I had prepared, to answer the questions better. So there was all my preparation flying out of the window. I did check with them that that was ok, mentioning that my answers wouldn't be so well prepared as they would have been. I managed to talk my way through the interview but was pretty sure I hadn't done as good a job as I would have liked to have done. I did manage to ask my clever questions at the end but as my questions weren't scored because it wasn't part of the 'process' I might as well not have bothered trawling through everything and showing off my knowledge in this part. So finally it was over and I could escape out into the sunny day outside.
____________________________________________________________________________
Conclusion and Feedback
As I left the interview I asked when we were likely to hear the results and was told we would probably hear by the end of that week or the begining of the next. By the middle of the following week when I still hadn't heard anything I phoned the recruitment office and was told they were still analysing and inputting all the scores on the computer and it would be at least a week until the results were known. Great, I was a group of scores not a person. Finally nearly three weeks after the interview I received a letter informing me that I had been unsuccessful (no big surprise there).
I immediately followed advice and phoned to see if I could get any feedback. I spoke to a very snotty woman who told me that they didn't automatically give feedback (which is not what the literature had said) and if I wanted to get any feedback I would have to put it in writing and they would just give me my scores. However as they were very busy recruiting people at the moment it could be several months before I got the feedback as it was not a priority for them. Now bear in mind that this is the goverment organisation that is responsible for helping people find work and that attitude sucks big time in my opinion. Needless to say I didn't bother asking for the feedback in writing.
All in all the whole process was completely impersonal, the cups were plastic, the handshakes limp and the whole thing made me feel like a number not a person. While I do understand that in big organisations like this there has to be some standardisation of proceedure, I think the competency based process like this gives no room for personal expression and I personally do not perform well in such a structured process where I have no room to tell them of my skills and experiences that do not conform to the set questions but are still relevant to my ability to do the job.
So that was that.... on to the next!
I have my test and interview tomorrow...well, i have the interview depending on my test results! I feel so under-confident. I have only had one proper job before (one that wasn't as a casual waitress in uni!) as an admin assistant, and i am sure that even if by a miracle i get through to the interview i will mess it up. I suffer panic attacks and i think the formal and clinical atmosphere will make me feel worse!
ReplyDeleteHow hard are the tests? I am so worried about them! I just want tomorrow to be over!
Good luck with it all. The tests aren't very difficult, basic grammar check and a maths test as described above. I can't really describe it in more detail than that and if it is for the DWP they usually send a practice sheet which is pretty much the same as the one you will do in the tests.
ReplyDeletei had an interview last saturday and a friends boyfriend sunday, he has been successful however i am still awaiting a response. I no longer feel confident but it was worth a go - however for DWP i did not do the maths and english tests, i did he online one then went straight to interview!! its a bit unusual.
ReplyDeleteWell I wish him luck in the new job, having now got a job where I deal with the DWP all the time, representing customers, I can honestly say that I am sooooo glad I never got that job.
ReplyDeleteThe joke from Little Britain 'Computer says no' is never more appropriate than when dealing with the DWP!