The Interview

I just realised yesterday that I hadn't posted back to here about my interview last Thursday.

It didn't go particularly well. As I mentioned before, the interview was a little different from most in that it was actually more like an oral exam - not particularly surprising I guess seeing as the 4 people interviewed were 3 internal applicants and 1 external applicant who used to be internal. All 4 of which had worked in this particular team before or were currently working in the team.

Anyway, I don't think I'm losing my anonymity by posting the 4 questions - we had 15 minutes to prepare for them and then 30 minutes before the panel to answer them.

The questions were:

1. Give (1) example where you used your skills in each of the following areas -

(a) written and oral communication skills;
(b) interpersonal, consultation and negotiation skills.

2. Give one (1) example of your use of legal research in the preparation of a commercial legal advice and your use of problem solving and analytical skills to effectively resolve the issues involved in that advice.

3. Give one (1) example of a commercial contract, agreement, licence or other commercial document drafted by you and the special issues you had regard to when drafting it.

4. You are experiencing difficulty in your working relationship with a colleague in your team. You are asked to work together on a file in order to provide a detailed advice within a short time frame. How do you approach this task in order to provide a quality outcome within the required time frame?

I think I took only about 20 minutes in the interview to answer them. I just felt crappy and, to be perfectly honest, really only wanted the whole thing to be over and done with. I answered the best I could with my feverish little brain, but walked out of there knowing I hadn't done well.

So it was no surprise to find out yesterday afternoon that I didn't get the job. What was a surprise is that the girl that I thought would get it didn't. The successful applicant was a girl that I had heard wasn't particularly good at the job. An even bigger surprise was that the feedback from the chair of the panel was that we were all very close on interview, but the girl who got the job had better responses to the selection criteria for the job. While I knew that my selection criteria responses were pretty crappy, I had thought that my interview was even worse!

Now I just have to think about the next one on 20th July.

Listening to: East Coast Blues and Roots Festival 2003 - CD2