Very, very first "real" interview
So i filled the application form in, I sent it off 30 minutes before the deadline on Wednesday last week, then I forgot about it for a while. fast forward to Tuesday (INSET day after a Friday, Monday holiday) and I notice an email in my inbox from myjobscotland. Weird. I open it and it wishes me congratulations for getting through to the interview of the job I had applied (Supply back home). Awesome. My first interview. When is it? Thursday. As in yesterday. As in two days after reading the email.
That then sent me into a panic. I had no experience of "real" professional interviews, I had completed no mock interviews and I was so not prepared! Tuesday and Wednesday were spent swotting up on TES as to interview questions, pulling out various contacts within the local authority I had applied and generally trying to get ahead.
I arrived at the interview at 1.15pm, 15 minutes early, to be handed yet another disclosure form for me to fill out and told to have a seat and someone would come and get me when they were ready for me. Tick tock, tick tock. It was now 1.30pm. No person. Tick tock tick tock. 1.45pm. No person. Tick tock....oh there is someone. Not for me. Hmmm. Should I ask someone? Then a gentleman comes round the screen and he is looking for me! Off I went to get grilled.
4 questions, and half and hour later, and I was out again. The most nerve racking experience I think I have ever faced!
The interview consisted of two gentlemen, one a QIO for the region and one a head of department. The chair of the panel, the QIO, filled me in on the format of the interview and then asked my first question on my main weakness. This was followed by the PT asking me two, one on assessment methodologies and one on creating a good ethos in my classroom. The interview ended with a curriculum for excellence and AiFL question in terms of my strategies used within the classroom.
Overall a fair interview and a gentle entry into the world of teaching interviews. I will find out if I have successfully made it to the Supply list two weeks after Easter. I will let you know then too.