Recently, I was involved in a group interview. It was for a job that I would have worked for a tour company in that I would show groups of tourists around New Zealand.
Why did this appeal to me?
1. I like the idea of the tourism industry and in my experience it is such a broad industry and there are lots of opportunities.
2. I like that I would have been gone for a large proportion of the month. In a previous post I talked about the George Clooney movie, Up in the Air. In this movie, Clooney's character spends more than 300 days a year away from home and he loves it. I wanted to find out what this lifestyle would be like so I applied for it.
3. I liked the idea that this company is an international company and the possibility I could tell was that I might be able to work in Japan. Summer in New Zealand and then summer in Japan. Sounds like the dream to me. The other day I read the following article about a woman from New Zealand who wanted to do that and is well on the way to making that dream a reality.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/home-property/350321923/kiwi-buys-stunning-holiday-home-japan-123000
I applied for this job in the traditional way and was surprised to receive a phone call a few short days later. The guy was calling from Melbourne (I think) and he and I spoke for 15 minutes or so. So far, so good.
A couple of weeks later, I received an invitation to another interview, on Zoom online. Great I thought. That's progress. I had to prepare a couple of things which weren't arduous and I thought that I was quite well prepared.
What I didn't think about however, was the fact that it was a group interview.
What is it that people say? 55% of communication is non-verbal? How the hell can you get that across on a Zoom call? Seriously!
I knew after about 5 minutes that I was fucked, especially when they asked questions not specifying the particular person. People were jumping in here and there and I had to wait until right at the end and basically regurgitate what the other people had said.
The people I talked to about this afterwards said that I probably wouldn't have been suited to this particular job. You are basically on call 24/7 and you would probably be expected to socialize to all hours and get up at 6am the next day. For some of you, that sounds like fun and for others it sounds like hell. Maybe it might have been hell for me but I would have like to have had the opportunity.
My advice here is to try and avoid these group interviews if possible and try to get a face-to-face meeting if possible. I know in 2024 that kind of thing is getting more and more difficult as companies are doing more and more things online as a more convenient and a more efficient way of doing things.
When I think of that interview, I think of the number of people who have been passed over because they don't come across very well online or they are not as pushy or as aggressive as they should be when answering questions for the group.
Don't give up on this dream if you come across obstacles like this. There are always ways around it. You just have to be smart about it.
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