Interviews- May 18, 2007

In the last week, I have had three interviews for teaching positions in Japan with two different companies.

First I had one with a company called A_____. The first day was filled with a lot of information about their company, and then I participated in a group interview, in which I presented a teaching lesson, and filled out a written test. They asked me back the next day for a second interview which involved a one-on-one personal interview. This also consisted of some presentations of teaching lessons, but they were more spontaneous, whereas the lesson on the first day was one that I had planned out previously.

Exactly a week after the first interview, I had another interview with another company, N____. Their interview was like the first in that for more than half the time the strengths of the company were presented to a group of us (in both cases, the group was six of us). However, N____ didn't need a second day for a personal interview, but simply scheduled me for the personal interview later in the same afternoon.

The group interview for A____ lasted 4 hours, and the personal interview about 1 and a half hours the next day. For N____, the group interview lasted 2 hours in the morning, and the personal interview lasted half an hour in the afternoon. Needless to say, the interview with A___ was much more intense. Although the N____ interview did include some teaching presentation (which was spontaneous, and given with the half hour personal interview), it was much less demanding than having to prepare a lesson, and present 2 spontaneous lessons, which A___ required.

Before and during both interviews, I was nervous, but especially so during the interviews with A___. I guess that this was because that interview was first, and I wasn't quite sure what to expect, beyond the prepared lesson that I had with me. What made that interview a bit more challenging was the fact that the air conditioning in the room where we were was not working, and it was getting pretty warm in there. I felt like I was sweating a lot, and I frequently had to wipe my brow. That said, even though I had gone through what was the more demanding of the two interviews first, I was still a bit nervous about the second one. For one thing, they didn't require me to bring or prepare anything, so there was that much less that was known before hand.

Even though I did make mistakes during the first interview (different technical errors that the interviewer informed me of), I feel that I made some more glaring omissions during the interview with N___. For one thing, I did not complete the writing sample. There were two pages of multiple choice questions, and one page with two short essay response questions. It is not that the questions were too challenging for me, but rather the time limit imposed did not allow me to finish. I only had fifteen minutes to complete the whole thing. A similar format was given for the writing sample during the interview with A___, but I was given twenty minutes to complete it. All that said, I really am not too worried about it. If I could not complete it in fifteen minutes, I am sure that others could not either. Although I did not like the fact that the only thing I wrote for a question that asked me why I want to move to Japan was, "I like Japanese culture", at least I wrote something, and I knew that during the interview, my talents would be better exhibited.

An interesting thing happened during the interview with N___ yesterday. Exactly a week later, the recruiter from A___ called me up during my break, and gave me an offer for a teaching position in Japan. I would be living and teaching in Nagoya, which is probably the third largest city in Japan. There were a lot of attractive things about the offer, but ultimately I think that I might decline to accept it. The main reason is that they will not offer housing for Paola and myself together. Having just received the offer, though, my spirits were raised, and it only makes me more confident that I will receive a more attractive offer from N___.