The Great Job Hunt

I must admit that I'm a little in denial, and have been trying not to think too much about what happens between completing my degree and leading a class. Job hunting has never been a favourite pastime of mine, if only because every great job is preceded by a nerve-wracking interview process. Job interviews don't just hang dangerously low on my list of things I like; they don't make an appearance at all.

Don't get me wrong - I do fine in job interviews, typically. All but one time, and that was my defining moment - I think I developed my interview phobia courtesy of this early job-hunt experience. I was seventeen, had left home, moved to Toronto and was looking for work. I applied for an entry-level position in a Fortune 500 corporation. Happily, I was offered an interview - I thought I was on my way to something wonderful! I dressed the part. I talked to people about job interview skills. I had my eggs all in a row. Or so I thought. A woman called me into an office, indicating that Mr. So-and-so would be just a few minutes. She remained in the office, doing routine-looking clerical functions. She was making small talk, to which of course I responded, but in a fairly absent-minded way ... my mind was on the impending meeting with her tardy boss. However, after about ten minutes of waiting and cursorily answering the clerk's chit-chat, I was shocked to be dismissed from the "interview" by said support staff person. Huh? There either was no Mr. So-and-so, or else he was never meant to be in the picture. This was a "catch the applicant off guard" pop interview (a seldom-heard-from cousin to the quiz of the same name). Ugh.

After this humiliating experience, I faced interviews with an odd mix of trepidation and suspicion, always alert to the possibility of trickery and deceit. That sounds a little inflated. It probably is. But the truth is that there is something of that experience lurking in the depths of my mind when I am faced with a job interview, and that something is probably responsible for the fear that these darn meetings incite in me.

On the bright side, as I mentioned, I usually fare just fine in interviews. Evidently I'm pretty accomplished at shoving that fear and distrust down into some little, unseen corner of my psyche, at least long enough to get in, be interviewed, and get out again.

The job search for a teaching position will be different from my previous ones, for several reasons. First, and probably most obviously, I'll be looking for a position in a profession rather than a vocation, so the nature of the interview will be somewhat different, in that there will be a mix of the practical and the philosophical. The rest - experience, outlook, efficacy, personality - is pretty standard across job types. But aside from those things, there are other factors that will distinguish this process. My age and stage in life, my determination to spend my remaining fifteen or twenty years of working life doing something meaningful and satisfying, my commitment to finding a work environment that supports my beliefs about teaching, learning, and children - all of these will make the job search a much more reciprocal process than it has been before. I won't only concern myself with whether or not I am what they want - I will be looking to see whether or not  they are what I want as well.

Thankfully, I have time. I won't be commencing a job search for close to a year from now, so I have time to continue crafting my portfolio, learning methodology, considering philosophical questions of the teaching profession. Maybe this time around, I'll prevail over that thirty-year-old memory in the back of my mind, and experience the calm clarity that comes when valuation is a two-way street.