Toto...We're not at ISS anymore!

I’ve been thinking about and planning for the job fair in Anchorage pretty much all year long. It finally happened last weekend. It was nothing like any job fair I’ve ever been to. For one thing, four of the five school districts that I am interested in did not conduct interviews. Confused? I was too.  

I’ve never tried speed dating, but I suspect that this job fair is the professional equivalent of speed dating…meet and chat it up, but don’t commit to anything so serious as a date (aka interview). You chat for a few minutes at a district’s booth, exchange contact info, resumes, and brochures. But no interviewing!

Some districts know what specific positions they have open. Some know that there will be a certain number of openings, but not necessarily what the specific jobs will be. Schools looked at my resume and seemed to be interested in interviewing me, just not at the job fair. In fact, I scheduled a phone interview for a couple of weeks from now. That same school was hoping to give me a tour of the school while I was in town (that didn’t work out because some big art celebration was going on at the school on that particular Friday). But they simply were not going to interview anyone…except by phone, in a couple of weeks. Tres bizarre!

I did have an initial screening interview with Anchorage School District. That was also bizarre. Most interviews I’ve had have been conversations. Each of us had questions were asked during the course of a conversation. The ASD interview started with a scripted statement that was read to me: “You have a 30 min interview. You will be asked 11 questions. Please time your answers accordingly to ensure that you get through all 11 questions. You will not be given extra time.” So rather than a conversation, it was a very definite pattern of question, response, note-taking, question, response, note-taking. There was a grading scale beneath each question and area for notes. That part must have been filled in after the interview. At the end I was asked if I had any questions. At the same time, I was handed a piece of paper with “What happens next” typed across the top. So I didn’t need to ask that question. All of my questions were answered with “depends on the school you are in.”

All in all, a very annoying interview…and I spent buckets o’ money to get to this job fair for this single interview. All in all, a very annoying 2 days!

So what does happen next? I reckon I wait until May when schools seem to do their hiring (from what I’ve heard). That’s scary for me because I need to ship all my stuff from here by the 1^st week of June at the latest. I kind of need to know where to ship it all to…

…to be continued!