Interview conditions,and other instructions to staff
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2015-01-12 07:59:36 - Graham Ellis
"Interviews in Progress - please keep quiet". I had to chuckle - I'm working on the site of a large organisation this week, and as such it's naturally become very much more rule-infested and noticified than the typical smaller place. Instructions not to use your mobile phones in certain areas, not to take food or drink into the conference room, and tannoy announcements at 16:30 that all non-organisation visitors must leave the building straight away. The toilet has a sign telling you to turn off the tap when you've finished with it to save water ...
I chuckle because it reminds me of an interview I attended in Basingstoke many years ago - on the top floor of an office block; not highrise, but certainly somewhere to use the lift. Which I did after the interview to exit, or rather to attempt to exit as the lift juddered rather than travelled and got stuck just a couple of inches into its journey. So in the next hour or so, I was in the lift, with the folks working to release me, and the chap who had interviewed me offering to feed me a sandwich through the crack in the door, which was just wide enough.
I got the job; it was said that my ability to deal calmly with a difficult situation was impressive, and (as I learned) there were a number of difficult situations that came up to handle.