Many interview preparatory books and articles always advise you to take an introspective look at yourself. They advocate that you prepare stories to tell about your career accomplishments, mistakes to share in the area of personal growth, and aspirations you wish to achieve in the foreseeable future.
I have been through many interviews in my lifetime. As much as I try to put myself in the shoes of the prospective interviewer, I find that I have always gotten it wrong. That’s because I have been conditioned by these well-meaning articles to sell myself.
This is a wrong approach.
The right approach would be to explore how I would be a good fit in the context of the organisation I’m interviewing for.
This struck me forcibly because of an interview I underwent at the Ministry of Education.
The interviewers didn’t even ask me for an elevator pitch. Tell me about yourself was conspicuously absent.
They did ask me about the gratifying thing about teaching at my current workplace, as well as the reason why I want to leave it. But the remaining questions were about whether I would be a good fit.
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What are the areas of growth I foresee I would need in order to teach successfully in a mainstream classroom? (honestly, I wasn’t expecting this question at all as I considered myself a consummate professional. I have since learnt to consider more deeply about my skillset, as well as the areas I need to brush up on.)
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How would I have stretched the high-progress learners? (I did a lesson observation and this question came up after that. I should have anticipated this because Differentiated Instruction is a big thing in schools.)
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Are you familiar with curriculum and policy changes in mainstream classrooms? Specifically, am I comfortable with facilitating discussions on the LBGTQ community and the Hamas conflict? (I keep abreast of current affairs but I didn’t think about relating it to a teacher’s involvement and responsibilities regarding educating his charges. I think that was the most poorly answered question for me.)
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Am I familiar with Edu Tech? (I didn’t fare so badly for this one because I do use ICT tools often in my teaching.)
Pointers for future interviews
The importance of thorough research on your interviewing organisation cannot be overstated. Instead of examining myself in an insular manner, I need to ground myself and imagine that I were already working in that organisation. What are the challenges it is dealing with? How can I add value to its work? What am I uniquely qualified to problem-solve? In short, present myself as the best fit.
I hope this was useful for you!